Popular revolts in late medieval Europe

Popular revolts in late medieval Europe were uprisings and rebellions by (typically) peasants in the countryside, or the bourgeois in towns, against nobles, abbots and kings during the upheavals of the 14th through early 16th centuries, part of a larger "Crisis of the Late Middle Ages". Although sometimes known as Peasant Revolts, the phenomenon of popular uprisings was of broad scope and not just restricted to peasants. In Central Europe and the Balkan region, these rebellions expressed, and helped cause, a political and social disunity paving the way for the expansion of the Ottoman Empire.

Before the 14th century, popular uprisings (such as uprisings at a manor house against an unpleasant overlord), though not unknown, tended to operate on a local scale. This changed in the 14th and 15th centuries when new downward pressures on the poor resulted in mass movements of popular uprisings across Europe. To provide an example of how common and widespread these movements became, Germany between 1336 and 1525 witnessed no fewer than sixty instances of militant peasant unrest.

Most of the revolts expressed the desire of those below to share in the wealth, status, and well-being of those more fortunate. In the end, they were almost always defeated and the nobles ruled the day. A new attitude emerged in Europe, that "peasant" was a pejorative concept, it was something separate, and seen in a negative light, from those who had wealth and status. This was an entirely new social stratification from earlier times when society had been based on the three orders, those who work, those who pray, and those who fight, when being a peasant meant being next to God, just like the other orders.

There were five main reasons for these mass uprisings: 1) an increasing gap between the wealthy and poor, 2) declining incomes of the poor, 3) rising inflation and taxation, 4) the external crises of famine, plague and war, and 5) religious backlashes.

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