FREDERICK  ENGELS
CONCERNING  THE PEASANT WAR
The Reformation, both Lutheran and Calvinist, was the
first bourgeois revolution, in which the peasant war formed
the crucial episode. The disintegration of feudalism and
the development of towns, both of which had a decentralising effect, made the absolute monarchy quite indispensable
to the integration of the nationalities. It had to be absolute,
precisely because of the centrifugal nature of all [other]
factors. But "absolute” must not be understood in the vulgar sense; the monarchy was constantly fighting, sometimes with the social estates and sometimes with insurgent
feudal lords or towns. The estates were nowhere abolished,
hence it could rather be called a monarchy based on the
social estates, a monarchy which was still feudalistic,
though decreasingly feudalistic and incipient bourgeois.
The first revolution, which was much more European
than the English revolution and became much more rapidly
European than the French one, was victorious in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scotland, England and in a way
also in Sweden as early as the reign of Gustavus Vasa, and
in Denmark, but only in 1660 in the orthodox absolutist
form.
I.  Causes in Germany. History from the beginning. *
* In the manuscript this section, which was marked I by Engels, follows section II.-Ed.
J

CONCERNING  THE  PEASANT WAR 473
After the heroic period of the Volkerwanderung Germany
disintegrated. The impulse to Germany's re-establishment
by Charlemagne came from France. And thus also the idea
of a Roman Empire. It was revived by Otto. It comprised
more non-Germans than Germans. This policy-of plundering Italian cities-led to Germany’s ruin under the Hohen-
staufen. This increases fragmentation-excepto casu revolutionist The development from the interregnum150 up to
the fifteenth century. The rise of towns. Decline of feudalism, which was never fully developed in Germany, due to
the pressure exerted by the princes (the emperor as territorial prince opposed the knights of the empire, as emperor
he supported them). Gradual liberation of the peasants,
until the setback in the fifteenth century. Germany was
then materially abreast of the other countries.
It was crucial that because of its territorial fragmentation and the long ireedom from invasion, the need for
national unity was not as strong in Germany as it was in
France (the Hundred Years War), Spain, which had only
recently been reconquered from the Moors, Russia, which
had only recently ejected the Tartars, and England (the
Wars of the Roses), and that precisely at that time its
emperors were so contemptible.
II. Including the Renaissance in its European form,
based on the general decline of feudalism and the rise of
towns. Then absolutist national monarchies-everywhere
except in Germany and Italy.
III. The Reformation as the only feasible, popular expression of generally existing tendencies, etc.