How To Become a Medieval Warlord? (Basically, How Realistic is Mount and Blade: Warband?)

The german peasant war gained traction because landscknecht and lower nobles threw there lot in with the peasants
 
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My question is how medieval peasant riots began really

Same way any riot begins- a critical mass of angry and/or drunk young men (and others) deciding to go on a bit of a rampage. This tended to happen more often in cities both in modern times and in pre-modern eras (the mob in major cities, like Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, etc. were infamous for rioting, at sporting events even!)

Of course "riot" isn't the same thing as a "revolt" and that's what the peasants did quite a lot especially in the later middle ages.
 
Same way any riot begins- a critical mass of angry and/or drunk young men (and others) deciding to go on a bit of a rampage. This tended to happen more often in cities both in modern times and in pre-modern eras (the mob in major cities, like Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, etc. were infamous for rioting, at sporting events even!)

Of course "riot" isn't the same thing as a "revolt" and that's what the peasants did quite a lot especially in the later middle ages.

Well a lot of revolts began with riots no?

Honestly I don't really know how peasant revolts began
 
Well a lot of revolts began with riots no?

Honestly I don't really know how peasant revolts began

It depends on where, in plenty of places the local aristocrats were allowed to demand labour, sons for war, goods, taxes, kill non-noble non-clergy if they paid a fine after. There was a lot of reasons.
 
The most illustrious example amongst all of these, is Timur. Timur himself was a person of no noble pedigree and no amount of prestige. Beginning as a lowly steppe child and becoming a warrior under the Ilkhans, he was able to manipulate his position as a man of immense ambition and intellect (though never literate) to become the dominant political player for the weak Chagatayid rulers. From his position as a general, he used the Chagatayid army to conquer the Ilkhan remanants and build a fearsome empire.
 
The most illustrious example amongst all of these, is Timur. Timur himself was a person of no noble pedigree and no amount of prestige. Beginning as a lowly steppe child and becoming a warrior under the Ilkhans, he was able to manipulate his position as a man of immense ambition and intellect (though never literate) to become the dominant political player for the weak Chagatayid rulers. From his position as a general, he used the Chagatayid army to conquer the Ilkhan remanants and build a fearsome empire.

Really? That's very interesting I never knew it.
 
Well yeah I figured, but what like the tax collector would come and it happened to be a bad harvest that year so instead of pay they just killed the guy and his guards or something?

You really can’t standardise the events of medieval peasant revolts, but if you look at the 1381 Peasant’s War in England, the events leading up to the uprising mirror your assumption quite nicely.
 
Ah another big piece in Mount and Blade is the ability to kinda just go to a village and ask if anyone wants to join your party and have a few folks do so. Now I assume it didn't work like that in real life (or if it did please inform me lmao) but is that part of the game at all realistic in any way?
 
You really can’t standardise the events of medieval peasant revolts, but if you look at the 1381 Peasant’s War in England, the events leading up to the uprising mirror your assumption quite nicely.
In that case it was that the Royals demanded everyone pay a tax twice, and when a committee in one village came to say they wouldn't do it (also there was apparently some issues of men checking under women's dresses to see if they were virgins or taxable) the tax collectors attacked sports tried to arrest them.
 
So I was playing a video game called Mount and Blade: Warband, and basically you're this character who comes to this land called Calradia, full of internal strife and medieval warfare and bandits and whatnot. You can almost immediately just kinda get a few peasants to volunteer to follow you and all of a sudden you're a minor warband.

Obviously this is wildly unrealistic, but really how easy would it be to make a minor bandit group, or peasant rebellion (I know those are very different things) or something to that end in medieval Europe?


I imagine it would depend on the place. A high-density rural region like Denmark it would be harder to hide in the wilderness (but also harder to notice a few serfs missing?) Meanwhile in Italy the semi-urbanized regions would be hard to live like that in.


Any ideas on what I'm going for?

There are quite a few peasants turned kings or emperor. However, ironically it seems easier to do in states with professional armies and bureaucracies like Imperial Rome or China.

http://www.abroadintheyard.com/slave-to-emperor-rises-to-power-humble-beginnings/
 
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Temujin, who went from a shackled captive with no following, to being known to history as Genghis Khan.
 
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