Did the Peasants Have Cause to Rebel?
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Did peasants have cause to rebel?
Throughout history people have been oppressed. Its a fact of life. In a society there will always be that three-tier type structure of High class, Middle class, and Lower class citizens. While today the idea of oppression we have become widespread to incorporate race, gender, and sexual orientation, back in the 16th century it was fairly clear-cut. The main group that was oppressed was the third estate or the peasants. They endured their fair share, and more, of indignities for no other reason than not being birthed into royalty and for their lack of social status. It might be fair to say that this group of people was one of the most put down and discriminated in history. Obliviously anybody who is put into this type of situation would seek to find an immediate change to it so that they could survive without so much struggling. You wouldnt expect people to be passive in these types of situations. You expect them to rise up and rebel. So the question is did they have enough reason to try to change the status quo? Of course they did.
The society was structured as having three estates or classes of people. The 1st estate was the church, the 2nd estate was the aristocracy, and the 3rd estate were the commoners who were the largest by far of the three groups yet held barely and status and were tasked to carry most of the burdens of the country. The 1st and 2nd estate were not charged to pay taxes but rather all of those monetary needs fell mostly on the 3rd estate. Most of them did not own much land but rather just small pieces but most were landless and forced to become tenant farmers which meant that they would work on a piece of land that was owned by the aristocrats and others of that higher status and in exchange were given shelter and food to live. While this may sound as a reasonable exchange, they were never really given more than the bare minimum to survive. There were nobles who have the best intentions in mind and tried to protect their peasant, but were quickly squashed by the monarchy which was rough, evil, violent, and grasping (pg. 28). This 3rd estate occupied approximately 80% of Europe and even with these overwhelming numbers, they were never taken as more than pieces of dirt who deserved nothing from the king and the higher ups. Because of there economic and social status, most of them were never educated which means that a majority of them were illiterate. What this causes is a lack of knowledge from todays view point as to how harsh life really was for them because of the fact that most written documents were written by the higher ups who had a skewed view on things. So because of this historians are forced to look at other areas to help gain an understanding of these people such as archeology, photographs, tombstones, and statistical data.
Survival was the main thought on the peasants mind. The didnt demand much but rather just enough to get by like enough acreage to make food that will last a whole year which was the bare minimum