Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War

Name: Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War
Author: Lyndal Roper
ISBN: 9781399818063

Lyndal Roper

award won

score

Lyndal Roper

award won

score

#705 of 3,809 books · #263 in History

Won the Cundill History Prize (2025). Also shortlisted or longlisted for 1 other award.

The German Peasants' War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they would prove no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants in just over two months. In Summer of Fire and Blood, the first history of the German Peasants' War in a generation, leading historian Lyndal Roper uncovers the far-reaching ramifications of this doomed rebellion. Though the victors portrayed the uprising as naive and chaotic, Roper's deeply researched account reveals instead a coherent mass movement inspired by the radical principles of the Protestant Reformation. Told through the voices of and beliefs of the people themselves, this is the thrilling, tragic story of the peasants' fight to change the world.

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