Battle of Frankenhausen


Battle of Frankenhausen
Part of the Peasants' War

Peasants' War map
Date May 15, 1525
Location near Bad Frankenhausen in the present-day German state of Thuringia
Result Habsburg-Hungarian victory
Belligerents
Landgraviate of Hesse
Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Duchy of Saxony		 Peasants' army
Commanders
Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse
George, Duke of Saxony		 Thomas Müntzer
Strength
c. 6,000 mercenaries c. 8,000
Casualties and losses
Unknown 6,000 (?)

The battle of Frankenhausen was fought on 15 May 1525. It was the final act of the Peasants' War: joint troops of Landgraf Philipp I of Hesse and George, Duke of Saxony defeated near Frankenhausen in the County of Schwarzburg the peasants under the Anabaptist leader Thomas Müntzer.

On April 29, 1525 the struggles in and around Frankenhausen had culminated into an open revolt. Large parts of the citizenry joined the uprising, occupied the town hall and stormed the castle of the Counts of Schwarzburg. In the following days a rising number of insurgents gathered around the town and when Müntzer arrived with 300 fighters from Mühlhausen on May 11 several thousands peasants of the surrounding estates camped on the fields and pastures. However Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Duke George of Saxony were on Müntzer's trail and directed their Landsknecht troops toward Frankenhausen.

The Princes' troops were mostly mercenaries. As such they were well equipped, well trained and had good morale. The peasants, on the other hand, were badly equipped, had no training whatsoever, and furthermore were in disagreement whether to fight against or to negotiate with the enemy. Nevertheless on May 14 they had been able to ward off some smaller attacks of the Hesse and Brunswick troopers, but failed to reap the benefits from their victory. Instead the insurgents arranged a ceasefire and withdrew into a wagon fort.

The next day Philip's troops united with Saxon army of Duke George and immediately broke the truce, starting a heavy combined infantry, cavalry and artillery attack. The peasants were caught off guard and fled in panic to the town, followed and continuously attacked by the mercenaries. Most of the insurgents were slain in what turned out to be a massacre. Casualty figures are unreliable but peasant losses have been estimated at 3-10,000 and the Landsknecht casualites estimated as low as 6 (2 of whom were only wounded). Müntzer himelf was captured, tortured and finally executed at Mühlhausen on May 27, 1525.

Aftermath

At Frankenhausen, the battle is depicted, along with many other scenes of that age, on the world's largest oil painting, Werner Tübke's "Frühbürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland" (early Bourgeois revolution in Germany), which is 400 feet (120 m) long, 45 feet (14 m) high, and housed in its own specially built museum. The painting was ordered by the socialist leadership of East Germany, who regarded Müntzer as a revolutionary and thus as one of their forebears; work on it went on between 1975 and 1987. However Tübke did not produce a heroic painting, contrary to the state's wishes, but depicted the events at Frankenhausen as a colossal failure for all parties involved.

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