Precursors: Peasant Uprisings, 1475-1517 A bout fifty years after the suppression of the Hussite movement, the first symptoms of a budding revolutionary spirit became manifest among the German peasants.
The first peasant conspiracy came into being in 1476, in the bishopric of Wuerzburg, a country already impoverished "by bad government, manifold taxes, payments, feuds, enmity, war, fires, murders, prison, and the like,"and continually plundered by bishops, clergy and nobility in a shameless manner.A young shepherd and musician, Hans Boeheim of Niklashausen, also called the "Drum-Beater" and "Hans the Piper," suddenly appeared in Taubergrund in the role of a prophet.He related that the Virgin had appeared to him in a vision, that she told him to bum his drum, to cease serving the dance and the sinful gratification of the senses, and to exhort the people to do penance.Therefore, he said, everybody should purge himself of sin and the vain lusts of the world, forsake all adornments and embellishments, and make a pilgrimage to the Madonna of Niklashausen to attain forgiveness.
Already among these precursors of the movement we notice an asceticism which is to be found in all mediaeval uprisings that were tinged with religion, and also in modern times at the beginning of every proletarian movement.
This austerity of behaviour, this insistence on relinquishing all enjoyment of life, contrasts the ruling classes with the principle of Spartan equality.
Nevertheless, it is a necessary transitional stage, without which the lowest strata of society could never start a movement.In order to develop revolutionary energy, in order to become conscious of their own hostile position towards all other elements of society, in order to concentrate as a class, the lower strata of society must begin with stripping themselves of everything that could reconcile them to the existing system of society.They must renounce all pleasures which would make their ,subdued position in the least tolerable and of which even the severest pressure could not deprive them.
This plebeian and proletarian asceticism differs widely, both by its wild fanatic form and by its contents, from the middle-class asceticism as preached by the middle-class Lutheran morality and by the English Puritans (to be distinguished from the independent and farther-reaching sects) whose whole secret is middle-class thrift.It is quite obvious that this plebeian-proletarian asceticism loses its revolutionary character when the development of modern productive forces increases the number of commodities, thus rendering Spartan equality superfluous, and on the other hand, the very position of the proletariat in society, and thereby the proletariat itself becomes more and more revolutionary.
Gradually, this asceticism disappears from among the masses.Among the sects with which it survives, it degenerates either into bourgeois parsimony or into high-sounding virtuousness which, in the end, is nothing more than Philistine or guild-artisan niggardliness.Besides, renunciation of pleasures need not be preached to the proletariat for the simple reason that it has almost nothing to renounce.
Hans the Piper's call to penitence found a great response.All the prophets of rebellion started with appeals against sin, because, in fact, only a violent exertion, a sudden renunciation of all habitual forms of existence could bring into unified motion a disunited, widely scattered generation of peasants grown up in blind submission.A pilgrimage to Niklashausen began and rapidly increased, and the greater the masses of people that joined the procession, the more openly did the young rebel divulge his plans.The Madonna of Niklashausen, he said, had announced to him that henceforth there should be neither king nor princes, neither pope nor other ecclesiastic or lay authority.Every one should be a brother to each other, and win his bread by the toil of his hands, possessing no more than his neighbour.All taxes, ground rents, serf duties, tolls and other payments and deliveries should be abolished forever.Forests, waters and meadows should be free everywhere.
The people received this new gospel with joy.The fame of the prophet, "the message of our Mother," spread everywhere, even in distant quarters.Hordes of pilgrims came from the Odenwald, from Main, from Kocher and Jaxt, even from Bavaria and Suabia, and from the Rhine.Miracles supposed to have been performed by the Piper were being related; people fell on their knees before the prophet, praying to him as to a saint; people fought for small strips from his cap as for relics or amulets.In vain did the priests fight him, denouncing his visions as the devil's delusions and his miracles as hellish swindles.But the mass of believers increased enormously.
The revolutionary sect began to organise.The Sunday sermons of the rebellious shepherd attracted gatherings of 40,000 and more to Niklashausen.
For several months Hans the Piper preached before the masses.
