From a preeminent historian, the definitive history of the sixteenth-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 well over a hundred thousand 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 proved 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, historian Lyndal Roper exposes the far-reaching ramifications of this rebellion. Though the war's victors portrayed the uprising as naive and inchoate, Roper reveals a mass movement that sought to make good on the radical potential of the Protestant Reformation. By recovering what the people themselves felt and believed, Summer of Fire and Blood reconstructs the thrilling, tragic story of the peasants' fight to change the world.

About the Author
Lyndal Roper is the first woman to hold the prestigious Regius Chair at Oxford University. She is one of the most respected scholars of early modern history on both sides of the Atlantic. She is the winner of the Gerda Henkel Prize (2016), and her previous books include Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany; Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Religion, and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe; The Witch in the Western Imagination; and The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg.

Reviews
A riveting account of a seismic event in German history which conveys a real sense of why so many ordinary people thought they could change the world. Lyndal Roper writes beautifully and displays a compassionate understanding for the protagonists on both sides of this complex and bloody struggle -- Peter Wilson, author of THE THIRTY YEARS WAR



Book Information
ISBN 9781399818025
Author Lyndal Roper
Format Hardback
Page Count 544
Imprint Basic Books
Publisher John Murray Press