You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [12]
There was only one problem with the crusade. The king of Hungary had just concluded at about the same time a wide-ranging peace and trade accord with the Turks. And with a sizable percentage of the healthiest serfs in the army rather than working the fields, the crops were going untended and famine, not to mention the nobles’ possible poverty, was likely. Pressure was brought on the cardinal and the pope to rescind the papal bull, which was promptly done. At the same time the nobles, their land sitting and the crops wasting in the fields, turned to their most familiar tool in an effort to force the mass of crusader serfs back to their peonage. They used intimidation, threatening the serfs and their families. They used force on anyone trying to join the crusade, and a number of families were slaughtered as examples. On May 23, just over a month later, the crusade was officially suspended.
Dozsa, the Transylvanian noble and sympathizer to the serf’s plight, called a meeting of the “crusades” leaders. Rather than see the serfs go back to the same intolerable conditions they had fled, he drew up a program that called for an end to all the privileges of the nobility. Dozsa also called for the dividing of land among the poor, equality for everyone on the same level under church law (I’ll bet you thought those were new revolutionary ideas) and a full-scale revolution. The core would be the army already gathered, but he called for every serf to rise up in support. They did. Fields were burned, masters slaughtered, monasteries and homes burned. It was most certainly a rural preview of the worst of the French Revolution that would occur two hundred and fifty years later.
For weeks Hungary descended into anarchy and chaos. Then another Transylvanian, Janos Zapolya, was hired and the well-trained regular military forces he led rather easily crushed the still disorganized and poorly armed crusader serfs. Within a few months they had once again enforced order on the countryside. Anyone thought to have led or abetted the serfs was executed, and the serfs were legally bound even more tightly to the land. Gyorgy Dozsa was brutally executed and his closest followers forced to eat his charred flesh.
By October the crusade and its aftermath were a bitter memory. Those serfs who remained alive harvested the crops, famine was averted, and for a few years things seemed to return to normal. At least 70,000 nobles and serfs died in those six bitter months. Entire families were wiped out and the entire economy of Hungary was seriously weakened. The Turks, peace treaty and all, were soon poised to take advantage of their neighbor’s new weakness. Worse yet, the idea of such a revolt was firmly planted in the minds of everyone in Europe. Ten years later the peasants’ revolt in Germany lasted almost a year. Much later the revolts in 1776 America and in 1789 France permanently changed Europe and the world.
Thousands died, the country was impoverished and a good percentage of the nobility slaughtered. What could you expect when you arm 100,000 oppressed and resentful serfs? No crusade ever got started, and a good percentage of the nobility was dead all because of one lapse of judgment. Clerics were protected and privileged. Was the cardinal a bit out of touch? Not much debate there. You do have to wonder how he felt at the end of the revolt.
You Chose Whom to Be the What?
Including this set of high-profile mistakes was a no-brainer. The problem with being a king, and an important one at that, was that your mistakes tended to have rather major consequences. Such as when the desire for a male heir, a necessary thing for a stable succession, changed the face of both politics and religion in the sixteenth century.
THE PROBLEMATIC PERSONNEL DECISIONS OF HENRY VIII
ENGLAND, 1535
Brian M. Thomsen
The term “Renaissance man” is perfectly applied to King Henry VIII, who ruled England from