Croquant Rebellion

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In the rebellion of Croquants is rebellions of farmers in western and southwestern France in the wake of the Wars of Religion . The croquants rebelled towards the end of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries due to attacks by the feudal lords, tax collectors and the army. The French word croquant (spoken: kʀɔkɑ͂) stands for “farmer” in the derogatory sense.

The riots

After the peasants had been plunged into misery by the turmoil of the civil war, they first rose in 1593/94, but the uprising was brutally suppressed.

In 1624 the Croquants in Quercy , where they had raised an army of 16,000 men, suffered another defeat.

Another uprising broke out in May 1636. It covered almost the entire area between the Garonne and Loire rivers , which corresponds to about a quarter of the area of ​​France at that time, which is why it is considered the largest peasant uprising in French history. It was not, however, a unified, organized revolt, but rather a series of activities by numerous roving groups of insurgents. The first major outbreak occurred in the Angoulême area , where a massacre of royal tax officials was carried out. Because the army was mainly concerned with defending the borders, the governor and general manager of Angoulême saw themselves compelled to negotiate with the rebels in August 1636. Tax concessions were made, which settled the conflict for the winter months. However, the uprising broke out again in the spring of 1637 after the director had used troops to collect taxes. In the wake of the popular anger that broke out, tax collectors were again murdered. The Périgord became the center of the uprising . Around 60,000 farmers had taken up arms. Most of the croquants were headed by a nobleman: Antoine du Puy de la Mothe, Seigneur of la Forêt. In the summer of 1637 the military fight against croquants began. In the Eymet area , more than a thousand peasants were left dead on the battlefield. The uprising ended in November 1637.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Emile Zola: Die Erde. The Rougon-Macquart - Vol. 15 , 2014, ISBN 978-3955013776 , note 33.
  2. ↑ a b Peasant revolts - peasant unrest - peasant revolts in medieval Europe and in modern times in Europe up to the year 1789 article on bauernkriege.de
  3. ↑ Cf. Perez Zagorin: Rebels and rulers 1500-1660 . Vol. I: Society, states and early modern revolution. Agrarian and urban rebellions , Cambridge University Press 1982, ISBN 0-521-24472-2 , p. 223.
  4. ↑ Boris Fedorovich Porshnev: The popular uprisings in France before the Fronde 1623–1648, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1954, p. 33.
  5. ↑ See Henry Kamen: The European popular uprisings 1550-1660 and the structure of the revolts . In: Winfried Schulze (ed.): European peasant revolts of the early modern times , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-518-27993-9 , pp. 150–153.