Summer of Fire and Blood:
The German Peasants’ War
Lyndal Roper
Basic Books
The definitive history of the 16th-century uprising that revolutionized Europe.
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 one 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 and beliefs of the people themselves, this is the thrilling, tragic story of the peasants’ fight to change the world.
- Roper radically retells early modern Europe’s largest popular uprising, placing the spiritual, emotional and material worlds of the peasants at the heart of this brutal story.
Wolfson History Prize judges
An exclusive extract, read by Lyndal.
- I tried to visit every place involved in this revolt, which covered what are now five European countries, because I wanted the landscape to be an actor in the book.
Lyndal Roper
About the author
Lyndal Roper is Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford. Her previous books include Martin Luther and Witch Craze. She is a fellow of the British Academy, a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a fellow of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. She lives in Oxford, South Wales, and Berlin.
