3 ms·

Serfs might decide to kill the local lord. And most local lords didn't have a huge standing army to prevent that. So you don't sound too correct.

by guappa 3y ago

red_admiral 3y ago
With the exception of Switzerland, this didn't tend to go too well in the middle ages - the early modern age was the first time this became viable "at scale", hence the French Revolution. There were plenty of earlier cases of one family of minor nobility killing another family of minor nobility and taking over their farmland and serfs, but successful peasant revolts that led to a change in the hierarchy were really rare (outside of Switzerland). Even the 1381 "Great Revolt" in England, which called for the abolition of serfdom among other things, is evaluated by the World History Encyclopaedia [1] as "largely unsuccessful" despite having many factors in its favour: a rise in the bargaining power of surviving peasants after the Black Death, and peasants armed and trained with knight-killing longbows. And yet Wat Tyler's head ended up on a pike, and despite the poll tax being rolled back, serfdom as an institution remained. [1] https://www.worldhistory.org/Peasants'_Revolt/ https://www.worldhistory.org/Peasants'_Revolt/
- guappa 3y ago
  https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuchinaggio https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuchinaggio
- doktrin 3y ago
  > peasants armed and trained with knight-killing longbows The longbow's reputation as a hard-counter to heavy cavalry is, I think, a little context dependent. The famous set pieces like Poitiers, Agincourt, Crecy all featured favorable terrain - and in the case of Agincourt, favorable weather - ideal for massed fire into predictable funnels (where, strictly speaking, the longbow served first and foremost as a horse killer). All this to say, it's IMO a mischaracterization to imply the peasants in the aforementioned peasants revolt held the military edge relative to the crown and its allies. After the initial shock of the uprising, they were a clear underdog matched against a well resourced and ruthless opponent.
  - red_admiral 3y ago
    I agree entirely. Even with the longbow (or crossbow), a peasant uprising could maybe kill a few local lords and knights, but most of the time they would then find themselves very much the underdog against the forces that would be mobilized in response. We have to wait until gunpowder (for example Jan Zizka's Hussites - and even that was more an exception that proves the rule) for peasants, on average, to have a decent chance.

Serfs might decide to kill the local lord. And most local lords didn't have a huge standing army to prevent that. So you don't sound too correct.

by guappa 3y ago

Serfs might decide to kill the local lord. And most local lords didn't have a huge standing army to prevent that. So you don't sound too correct.

red_admiral 3y ago

With the exception of Switzerland, this didn't tend to go too well in the middle ages - the early modern age was the first time this became viable "at scale", hence the French Revolution. There were plenty of earlier cases of one family of minor nobility killing another family of minor nobility and taking over their farmland and serfs, but successful peasant revolts that led to a change in the hierarchy were really rare (outside of Switzerland). Even the 1381 "Great Revolt" in England, which called for the abolition of serfdom among other things, is evaluated by the World History Encyclopaedia [1] as "largely unsuccessful" despite having many factors in its favour: a rise in the bargaining power of surviving peasants after the Black Death, and peasants armed and trained with knight-killing longbows. And yet Wat Tyler's head ended up on a pike, and despite the poll tax being rolled back, serfdom as an institution remained. [1] https://www.worldhistory.org/Peasants'_Revolt/ https://www.worldhistory.org/Peasants'_Revolt/

guappa 3y ago
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuchinaggio https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuchinaggio
doktrin 3y ago
> peasants armed and trained with knight-killing longbows The longbow's reputation as a hard-counter to heavy cavalry is, I think, a little context dependent. The famous set pieces like Poitiers, Agincourt, Crecy all featured favorable terrain - and in the case of Agincourt, favorable weather - ideal for massed fire into predictable funnels (where, strictly speaking, the longbow served first and foremost as a horse killer). All this to say, it's IMO a mischaracterization to imply the peasants in the aforementioned peasants revolt held the military edge relative to the crown and its allies. After the initial shock of the uprising, they were a clear underdog matched against a well resourced and ruthless opponent.
- red_admiral 3y ago
  I agree entirely. Even with the longbow (or crossbow), a peasant uprising could maybe kill a few local lords and knights, but most of the time they would then find themselves very much the underdog against the forces that would be mobilized in response. We have to wait until gunpowder (for example Jan Zizka's Hussites - and even that was more an exception that proves the rule) for peasants, on average, to have a decent chance.