R2015thand16th

Theme: The character of and changes in agricultural production and orginization.

Peasant revolt. (1525) In the early sixteenth century the economic conditions of the peasants was generally worse than it had been in the 15th century and it was deteriorating even further. Crop failures in 1523 and 1524 just aggravated an explosive situation. So in 1525 representatives of the Swabian peasants met in the city of Memmingen and drew up the Twelve Articles, which expressed their grievances. The articles claimed that nobles seized village common lands traditionally used by all, that they had imposed new rents on manorial properties, and also that they had forced the poor to pay unjust death duties in the form of their best animals. Great revolts first broke out in the Swiss Frontier and then spread through Swabia, Thuringia, the Rhineland and Saxony. However the nobility ferociously crushed the revolt and there was an estimated seventy-five thousand peasants killed. The revolts in 1525 greatly strengthened the authority of lay rulers, however the peasants economic conditions slightly improved.

McKay, John P. __A History of Western Society__. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003