peasent uprising [Sweden]

[Kenneth Gauck]

To quote briefly from Geoffrey Barraclough:
"Uprisings against the state were a fact of life throughout the 16th and
17th centuries. Some revolts rose from attacks on the priveleges of the
various estates [any group with special legal rights]; others were caused by
economic hardship -- from taxes imposed when prices were high and
unemployment widespread, as was the case in most French popular revolts, or
from the enclosing of common land, which caused the revolts of 1549 and 1607
in England. In all cases the revolts were a responce to attempts at
innovation."

I would hope that mere mention of the Great Peasant Revolt in England in
1381 and the Jacquerie in France in 1357 will remind readers that peasant
unrest is as much a medieval phenomena as it is early modern. I have seen a
fugure of 500 uprisings in France between 1500 and 1650. If anyone has a
source for late medieval France, I would be very interested.

BTW, Trizt, let us not forget that Sigusmund was Catholic in Lutheran
Sweden, saw himself as reconquering Sweden for Catholicism, was married to a
Habsburg, and was close to tha Papacy. As king of Poland he clashed with
his father (Sweden) over Lithuania, and once succeding in Sweden he became
involved in a major constitutional crisis over his abuse of powers. It was
not Charles (Karl) who stole Sweden from Sigusmund, but the Swedish people
who deposed Sigusmund and placed a Lutheran Vasa on the throne.

Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net

- -----Original Message-----
From: Trizt
To: birthright@MPGN.COM
Date: Sunday, January 17, 1999 1:49 PM
Subject: Re: [BIRTHRIGHT] - peasent uprising [was --I recant (sort of)]


>
>
>I would disagree with you Kenneth, the medieval "folk uprise" is quite
>uncommon, it was more commmon with a lord making rebellion against a
>leade which he disliked. It may sometimes seem that it was an "folk
>uprise" but if you examine those happening you will find a noble who
>undermined another lord and pumped in money to people who too disliked
>the noble in power, a good example of this is how councler Karl managed
>to steal part of the crown from King Sigismund of Finalnd, Poland and
>Sweden. Karl paid anormous amounts of money to make a "folk uprise"
>against Vice Ruler Flemming.
>
> //Trizt
>************************************************** *************************
>>'unsubscribe birthright' as the body of the message.
>

[Trizt]

Kenneth Gauck wrote:

> BTW, Trizt, let us not forget that Sigusmund was Catholic in Lutheran
> Sweden, saw himself as reconquering Sweden for Catholicism, was married to a
> Habsburg, and was close to tha Papacy. As king of Poland he clashed with
> his father (Sweden) over Lithuania, and once succeding in Sweden he became
> involved in a major constitutional crisis over his abuse of powers. It was
> not Charles (Karl) who stole Sweden from Sigusmund, but the Swedish people
> who deposed Sigusmund and placed a Lutheran Vasa on the throne.

Even if the population was classed as catholic in Sweden-Finland, many
of them did favor the catholic form of worshiping. The reformation
wasn't a total success, there where major forces in the churs who wanted
a form of "Catholic-Lutheran" version, but due Karl's luck to have the
larger pile of gold he could buy more supporters and could buy a uprise
in Finland which weekened the more catholic friendly forces (supporters
of Sigusmund) so much that they where quite easy to defeat later during
the short "civilwar". It's first after Karl managed to defeat Sigusmunds
troops that the church could be called Lutheran.
As I did say in my previous post, if you dig enough about the
folk-upraise you will find the nobles behind this.

//Trizt

[Kenneth Gauck]

Nobles are the natural leaders of the people. Most sustained and most
successful anti-regent uprisings will be the result of the nobles comming to
the head of their peasasnts in such moments. These even the French
revolution was originally a popular uprising combined with a noble revolt.
That does nothing, however, to diminish the real grievances of the peasants
in any of these cases. There would be no peasants to lead without
grievances. Fortunatly for BR campaigns, there are always grievances, as
one DM recently mentioned regarding his campaign in Roesone.

It makes for some interesting politics when the people revolt becuase of
high taxation and the price of bread, and the nobles join them (note that
peasants don't follow nobles, nobles do join peasant revolts though -- as
leaders) over completely different set of grievances, such as the regent's
hard line against El-Hadid which harms their incomes, and the installment of
a High Steward who offends them.

There are several ways to end this revolt.
1) Quell the rebels and display the supremacy of the regent (should be
hardest of the three).
2) lower takes and win back the peasants (with no one to lead the nobles are
silenced)
3) Allow the High Steward to be tried for crimes, moderate your position on
El-Hadid for a short time, and attempt to win the nobles back to the regent.

Without nobles, peasant revolts tend to focus on the immediate problem
without any understanding of the larger causes. Bakers are often attacked
and forced to sell bread at a *fair* price. Of course the bakers paid the
high costs to get the flour, so hurting them is not going to fix things.
They would never just take the bread because then the baker is likely to
just leave town. There is no bread that way. The nobles could unite the
peasant's cause to their own by arguing that El-Hadid's trade helped keep
the prices low, so it becomes harder for thge regent to seperate the
peasants from the nobles. The nobles could also argue that the High Steward
is behind all the high taxes, too. If the nobles could link there causes to
the peasant's causes, it becomes very difficult to satisfy one and not the
other.

Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net

P.S.: Regarding Sweden, Reformation was by and large a top down phenomena.
Even during the time of Luther, most German princes became Lutheran for
political reasons, as did Henry VIII in England (break with Rome). The
theological issues are complicated enough very few understand them (many can
express an incorrect, "close" approximation of the reasons). The fact that
Swedish elites took an active roll to prevent Counter Reformation is hardly
surprising. At the time of Sigusmund, Spain was contemplating aquiring
Baltic possesions to counter the Dutch, who dominated Baltic trade. It was
reasonable for Swedish elites to steer away from becoming a Spainish puppet,
and preventing a Catholic return which would have resulted in strict
Catholic discipline lead by Spanish and Italian Jesuits. When the Swedish
people and elites saw Sigusmund's Habsburg wife, what they knew would follow
was Spanish soldiers and Jesuits. This is not a pretty picture. The Dutch
certainly didn't like it.

KG

- -----Original Message-----
From: Trizt
To: birthright@MPGN.COM
Date: Monday, January 18, 1999 10:20 AM
Subject: Re: [BIRTHRIGHT] - peasent uprising [Sweden]


>
>
>Kenneth Gauck wrote:
>
>> BTW, Trizt, let us not forget that Sigusmund was Catholic in Lutheran
>> Sweden, saw himself as reconquering Sweden for Catholicism, was married
to a
>> Habsburg, and was close to tha Papacy. As king of Poland he clashed with
>> his father (Sweden) over Lithuania, and once succeding in Sweden he
became
>> involved in a major constitutional crisis over his abuse of powers. It
was
>> not Charles (Karl) who stole Sweden from Sigusmund, but the Swedish
people
>> who deposed Sigusmund and placed a Lutheran Vasa on the throne.
>
>Even if the population was classed as catholic in Sweden-Finland, many
>of them did favor the catholic form of worshiping. The reformation
>wasn't a total success, there where major forces in the churs who wanted
>a form of "Catholic-Lutheran" version, but due Karl's luck to have the
>larger pile of gold he could buy more supporters and could buy a uprise
>in Finland which weekened the more catholic friendly forces (supporters
>of Sigusmund) so much that they where quite easy to defeat later during
>the short "civilwar". It's first after Karl managed to defeat Sigusmunds
>troops that the church could be called Lutheran.
>As I did say in my previous post, if you dig enough about the
>folk-upraise you will find the nobles behind this.
>
> //Trizt
>************************************************** *************************
>>'unsubscribe birthright' as the body of the message.
>

[Trizt]

Kenneth Gauck wrote:

> Nobles are the natural leaders of the people. Most sustained and most
> successful anti-regent uprisings will be the result of the nobles comming to
> the head of their peasasnts in such moments.

I think we have to agree on that we have completly different views on
what is a folk-uprise or not.

> The fact that
> Swedish elites took an active roll to prevent Counter Reformation is hardly
> surprising. At the time of Sigusmund, Spain was contemplating aquiring
> Baltic possesions to counter the Dutch, who dominated Baltic trade. It was
> reasonable for Swedish elites to steer away from becoming a Spainish puppet,
> and preventing a Catholic return which would have resulted in strict
> Catholic discipline lead by Spanish and Italian Jesuits.

To say that the people would have been behind this "new" religion (as
you inderectly said in your prevous post) can't be much more from the
trut, they did "love" the mystisism (spl?) in the catholic xianity. In
compareson the lutheran mess (spl?) is quite boring comapared with the
catholic and at the same time the the reformator did complain that the
east-land was hardly christian.

> people and elites saw Sigusmund's Habsburg wife, what they knew would follow
> was Spanish soldiers and Jesuits. This is not a pretty picture. The Dutch
> certainly didn't like it.
What the western nobles didn't see was that larger armies would have
made it much easier to defend the east-lands from Russian agression,
this was one reason why Flemming supported Sigusmund.

//Trizt