Swabian Peasants

The Swabian Peasants were the villagers of Upper Swabia who rose in the spring of 1525, the largest popular revolt in Europe before the French Revolution, and whose leaders, the furrier Sebastian Lotzer and the preacher Christoph Schappeler, drew up in Memmingen the Twelve Articles: the right to choose their pastors, the abolition of serfdom, free access to woods, water and game, and the reduction of dues, each justified from scripture in the manner Luther had taught. Twenty-five thousand copies were printed in two months. Luther first admonished both sides and then called for the peasants to be slain, and some hundred thousand were.