ahc wi Successful Peasants revolt in Europe

Could the lower class win a revolt in Any European region and maintain gains for a generation some time between 900 and 1800.

If so is the example followed?

Do other states become more repressive?

How likely is some kind of 'terror from bellow'?
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mello

Barbara Tuchman's description of Mello makes it sound like the peasants had discipline (forming a battle line with reserves rather than a big mob) and the knights were actually afraid to attack it. Hence the treachery re: the rebel leader.

If the knights don't think of that plan or the rebel chief doesn't fall for it, the nobles might have a real fight on their hands. The peasants outnumbered them 2-1 per the Wikipedia.

However, even if the peasants defeat the nobles, there's still the fight with England, which will surely take advantage of the political turmoil within France.
 
Well, it's never clearly stated, but Tsars Ivan Asen and Peter of Bulgaria (12th century) could have been pretty low-class by Byzantine standards. Eastern Europe would have been the easiest place to generate a successful peasant's revolt, despite the more famous stuff in Western Europe. You generally had weaker states there and more linguistic, religious, ethnic divides etc., the sort that would motivate peasants to revolt.

A well-timed peasant revolt in Albania or Macedonia during the Great Turkish War might also have been supported by the Austrians, at least for a couple generations or so.

A Swiss peasant uprising would be my best pick for Western Europe. No major threat to any established order, very poor, and terrain that vastly favors the defence.

The example won't be followed, and states won't become more repressive - for if European leaders feared the influence of the peasant revolt, they would have chosen the comparatively 'easier' route and crushed said revolt entirely.

Re: Mello, I think there was absolutely 0% chance that the Jacquerie could have succeeded. No king could take the risk of having peasants rule any economic place of even mild importance - the contagion risk was too strong. And the Paris region was a rich and strategic province, no less.
 
Jacquerie had virtually no chance to be "successful", as similar peasants rebellions. Being generally "epidermic" reactions against nobility and royal power and their failures (in this case, as they didn't fulfilled their military role and were defeated by Plantagenets and pressure from garrisons), they didn't have a real objective.

Finally they were pretty more "used" by other movements, rival nobles, towns as a pressure tool. After the battle, many peasants considered Charles II as their protector, depsite having played an important role in the battle itself.

Eventually, what profxyz said.

No clear goal, no clear discipline (the accounts of Jacquerie being disciplined equals the ones describing it as no better than a mob), and isolated politically.
 

katchen

Banned
To succeed and spread, a peasant rebellion would need to follow an alternative religious ideology of some sort. Something like Mazdakism in 6th Century Persia or Catharism. And ultimately, to prevail against the forces of the State, that ideology would likely need to be subsumed into Islam (as Bogomilism was in Bosnia and Albania) and open the door to an Islamic conquest of Europe.
Or a Mongol conquest of Europe for that matter. I am reminded of how Li Zuzheng's successful peasant revolt in China opened the door for the Manchu Qing conquest of China. Ordinarily, the higher population of France might have been enough to finally defeat Batu Khan and Subotai had Ogadei not died in 1241. But if France was being wracked by a peasant revolt at the time that might not be the case.
For the peasants, it would be a case of exchanging one master for another. Only a Mongol ruling class might be smaller and weigh less heavily, demanding a land tax every year instead of binding the peasantry to the land as serfs, a development which in the 13th Century was a comparatively recent development.
 
Could the lower class win a revolt in Any European region and maintain gains for a generation some time between 900 and 1800.

If so is the example followed?

Do other states become more repressive?

How likely is some kind of 'terror from bellow'?

Well, there was the German Peasant's Revolt in 1524, but I'm not sure how successful it might be. Perhaps you could try to get Maoism developed about 400 years ago and that might succeed...
 
Re: Mello, I think there was absolutely 0% chance that the Jacquerie could have succeeded. No king could take the risk of having peasants rule any economic place of even mild importance - the contagion risk was too strong. And the Paris region was a rich and strategic province, no less.

Assuming a peasant victory at Mello, what happens next in your opinion?
 
If you mean peasant rebellion as in a social revolution where the lower classes topple the upper, like in the french revolution I do not know if that was very common. More often they would have a noble leader, priest or knight.

One example of the opposite is the swedish "Dackefejden" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacke_War which was a regional rebellion led by brigands. But ultimately they failed against mercenary troops called in by the king, Gustav Vasa I.
 
Let's assume the 'blue sky' scenario for the Jacquerie and that not only do they achieve victory at Mello, they systematically continue to win and eventually take over the Beauvais region, perhaps even Paris.

Rumors fly around the courts of Europe regarding the savagery of these unruly peasants. The few church burnings are wildly exaggerated and the Jacquerie are depicted as no better than the spawn of Satan himself. Perhaps the Pope even issues a bull condemning the Jacquerie and calling the faithful to lay down their arms.

The strategic, economic and symbolic importance of the Beauvais Region seals the fate of the Jacquerie. Within a year, Edward the Black Prince leads a relatively-large army of English and French nobles and marches onto Paris, claiming the suppression of the Jacquerie as a pretext. If we assume Poitiers numbers (so around 10,000) no peasant army is going to be able to beat the nobility. Paris falls to this combined force, and Edward perhaps will install a French pretender in the city, who will perhaps sign without question the Treaty of London (replaced by Bretigny in OTL).
 
Assuming a peasant victory at Mello, what happens next in your opinion?

Peasant rebellion goes even more out of control than IOTL (even from their leaders that had a more or less debatable rule on them), Charles II would be certainly discredited, and urban rulers as Etienne Marcel would have an harder time to compromise between agitated groups and their political goals.

Eventually, peasants armies would be stuck with the necessity to work the fields to to abandon them. Either a shortage of food or the disbanding of peasant armies are going to weaken them.

In the first case, urban movements would likely stop joining up and royal power would be strengthened from this (critically with Navarre out of the picture) while more or less stuck itself between a neccessity of a softer repression and the vengeful will of nobility.

I would bet on a harsher repression, personally, as it happened against Tuchins in southern France that became quickly unpopular and a political force not unlike the armed bands they fought against at first.
 
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