Black Company

The Black Company or the Black Troops (German: Schwarze Haufen) was a unit of Franconia farmers and knights that fought on the side of the peasants during the Peasants' Revolt in the 1520s, during the Protestant Reformation in Germany.

The original German name of the Black Company was Schwarzer Haufen. The term Schwarz (black) pointed out the ideological distance of the company from the large peasant army at that time, which called itself the Heller Haufen (Hell meaning "light-colored"). The German word Haufen was the name the peasants gave to their armed companies.

It was never used again for an army, possibly because the word Haufen means "heap" in German and was used to refer to loosely organised armed rabbles.

The Black Company was formed in 1525 in Rothenburg, out of local, home guard farmers - maybe 600 men - and a company of mercenary knights.

The leader of the Black Company, at least nominally, was nobleman Florian Geyer.

Geyer managed to shape the Black Company into something like a company of real soldiers, instead of just an armed mob. Some of the knights were probably his vassals.

After the Company took over the area around Rothenburg, it proceeded to Swabia to destroy fortified monasteries and castles and prevent their becoming strongholds of the Swabian League. Those who didn't attack the Black Company were left unharmed during these actions. But in Sweinsburg, Swabia, another company, led by peasant leader , executed about 50 local knights after they had opened fire on two negotiators. Geyer disapproved of this slaughtering and moved his troops back to Franconia to continue the fight. But Rohrbach's action had sealed the fate of captured peasants and of Geyer's men. From that time on, the Truchsess ("Steward") of Waldburg, commander of the Swabian League, showed little mercy to the Black Company and hunted them down ruthlessly throughout Swabia. Rohrbach himself was burned alive when he was captured in 1525.

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