Rappenkrieg (Basel)

The Rappenkrieg was a peasant uprising lasting from 1591–1594, involving a conflict between the Swiss city of Basel and the surrounding Prince-Bishopric of Basel.

At issue was an increase in the rate of sales tax on wine and meat. After several years the conflict was ended through negitiations headed up by the Basel merchant turned politician .

The name "Rappenkrieg" comes from the local word, Rappen, then as now the term for a low value coin: "Rappenkrieg" can be loosely translated as the "Pence/Cents War".

The Basel Rappenkrieg is not to be confused with the Rappenkrieg in Western Austria from 1612 to 1614 in the adjacent Fricktal and the Rhine, although both had similar causes.

The economic backdrop was furnished by agricultural prices which had risen to record high levels as a result of population increase, the splitting of small holdings on inheritance, and resulting shortage of land. This was occurring in the context of a succession of poor harvests attributed by some historians to a "Little Ice Age".

The political context from the second half of the sixteenth century included a sustained increase in religious tensions as protestantism grew in popularity among the citizenry in this part of the Swiss confederation, while the Roman Catholic Prince-Bishops of Basel, galvanized into an increasingly active fight-back by the Counter-reformation, lost respect and influence.

In 1575 Jakob Christoph Blarer von Wartensee, the newly appointed Prince-Bishop of Basel, committed himself to the of the entire region, and in 1579 he secured alliances with the principal catholic towns and territories locally. His relationship with the Swiss city of Basel was now polarised along religious lines. The city found itself increasingly isolated among its more regiously conservative Swiss confederate neighbours, and was obliged to agree to the 1585 , a principal feature of which was the requirement to make prince bishop an enormous payment of 200,000 Guilders. The Baden Agreement was seen at the time as a major victory for the counter-reformation.

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