Significance of the Peasant War A fter Geismaier's withdrawal into Venetian territory, the epilogue of the Peasant War was ended.The peasants were everywhere brought again under the sway of their ecclesiastical, noble or patrician masters.The agreements that were concluded with them here and there were broken, and heavy burdens were augmented by the enormous indemnities imposed by the victors on the vanquished.The magnificent attempt of the German people ended in ignominious defeat and, for a time, in greater oppression.
In the long run, however, the situation of the peasants did not become worse.Whatever the nobility, princes and priests could wring out of the peasants had been wrung out even before the war.The German peasant of that time had this in common with the modern proletarian, that his share in the products of the work was limited to a subsistence minimum necessary for his maintenance and for the propagation of the race.It is true that peasants of some little wealth were ruined.Hosts of bondsmen were forced into serfdom; whole stretches of community lands were confiscated; a great number of peasants were driven into vagabondage or forced to become city plebeians by the destruction of their domiciles and the devastation of their fields in addition to the general disorder.Wars and devastations, however, were every-day phenomena at that time, and in general, the peasant class was on too low a level to have its situation made worse for a long time through increased taxes.The subsequent religious wars and finally the Thirty Years' War with its constantly repeated mass devastations and depopulations pounded the peasants much more painfully than did the Peasant War.It was notably the Thirty Years' War which annihilated the most important parts of the productive forces in agriculture, through which, as well as through the simultaneous destruction of many cities, it lowered the living standards of the peasants, plebeians and the ruined city inhabitants to the level of Irish misery in its worst form.
The class that suffered most from the Peasant War was the clergy.Its monasteries and endowments were burned down; its valuables plundered, sold into foreign countries, or melted; its stores of goods consumed.They had been, least of all capable of offering resistance, and at the same time the weight of the people's old hatred fell heaviest upon them.The other estates, princes, nobility and the middle-class, even experienced a secret joy at the sufferings of the hated prelates.The Peasant War had made popular the secularisation of the church estates in favour of the peasants.The lay princes, and to a certain degree the cities, determined to bring about secularisation in their own interests, and soon the possessions of the prelates in Protestant countries were in the hands of either the princes or the honourables.The power and authority of the ecclesiastical princes were also infringed upon, and the lay princes understood how to exploit the people's hatred also in this direction.Thus we have seen how the Abbot of Fulda was relegated from a feudal lord of Philipp of Hesse to the position of his vassal.Thus the city of Kempten forced the ecclesiastical prince to sell to it for a trifle a series of precious privileges which he enjoyed in the city.
The nobility bad also suffered considerably.Most of its castles were destroyed, and a number of its most respected families were ruined and could find means of subsistence only in the service of the princes.
Its powerlessness in relation to the peasants was proven.It had been beaten everywhere and forced to surrender.Only the armies of the princes had saved it.The nobility was bound more and more to lose its significance as a free estate under the empire and to fall under the dominion of the princes.
Nor did the cities generally gain any advantages from the Peasant War.The rule of the honourables was almost everywhere reestablished with new force, and the opposition of the middle-class remained broken for a long time.Old patrician routine thus dragged on, hampering commerce and industry in every way, up to the French Revolution.Moreover, the cities were made responsible by the princes for the momentary successes which the middle-class or plebeian parties had achieved within their confines during the struggle.Cities which had previously belonged to the princes were forced to pay heavy indemnities, robbed of their privileges, and made subject to the avaricious wilfulness of the princes (Frankenhausen, Arnstadt, Schmalkalden, Wurzburg, etc.), cities of the empire were incorporated into territories of the princes (Muehlhausen), or they were at least placed under moral dependence on the princes of the adjoining territory, as was the case with many imperial cities in Franconia.
