The other peasants' revolt

MARK STOYLE is impressed by a new account of a violent uprising that destroyed castles, monasteries and thousands of lives in 16th-century Germany

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In 1524-25, hundreds of thousands of countryfolk rose up in arms across the German lands. Forming large groups - themselves agglomerations of many smaller bands, each representing an individual Gemeinde, or village community - the protesters threw off the authority of their lords. They launched a series of attacks upon the monasteries and castles that dominated the local landscape, plundering these imposing buildings and often burning them to the ground. The devastation wrought by the peasant bands was utterly unprecedented: 200 castles were destroyed in a single month in the region of Bamberg alone, and it has been calculated that no fewer than 530 monastic institutions had been attacked by the time the disturbances came to an end.