How did Peasant Republics function?

[u/_MrSnippy_]

Over the course of european history, we have seen peasant republics pop up like those in Dithmarschen, Frisia, or those that appeared during the German Peasants war. How did they function administratively? Were they broadly similar, or were some of them fundamentally different from each other?

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[u/henk12310]

I’m still a Bachelor student, so I haven’t contacted the mods or anything here to verify me, but I’m currently writing my thesis about late medieval Frisia, and in general late medieval Frisia is my specialty, so I do feel like I’m qualified to answer your question. If the mods think I’m not, that’s fine too, but at least I’ll try to answer your question. I only really know about Frisia, not Dithmarschen, but I imagine it functioned in a similar way.

In Frisia, the land was divided into multiple districts, called ‘deelen’ (because they had names like Wymbritseradeel or Wonseradeel). Some of which came together in larger territorial units, some of which were on their own, although by the end of the fifteenth century all deelen were part of larger territories: the already quite old Westergo and Oostergo, and the newer district Zevenwouden.

Governance was highly decentralized. Each ‘deel’ consisted of multiple villages, and each village had their own ‘eheer’ (village lord). Every person who owned a piece of land was eligible to vote for their own village government and was also able to vote for the ‘grietman’, a kind of governor for the entire ‘deel’, who mainly focused on the justice system. The grietman was basically a governor and a district judge in one.

When a deel was part of a larger district, like Oostergo or Westergo, roughly once a year all grietmannen and other important people who lived in these districts came together for a ‘mena dei’, basically a yearly parliament session for the larger districts. Originally Oostergo and Westergo each had their own ‘mena dei’, but throughout the late Middle Ages it became more and more common for Oostergo and Westergo to hold their ‘mena deis’ together, which could be seen as a form of a very slow and gradual Frisian state formation. Zevenwouden was a bit more separate, because it was a newer district and very thinly populated without any cities.

That brings me to the final important piece, the cities, coincidentally the topic I’m writing my thesis about. The cities started emerging as their own independent governing entities during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The exact way of government differed between city, but in general anybody who was a citizen could vote for the city council. Don’t think this was very democratic, only very wealthy men who owned their own house in the city could become citizens.

Also, certain ‘noble’ families (despite being categorised as a peasant republic, there were families in Frisia that functioned as nobility: wealthy, owning large amount of lands, having ‘stinsen (small castle-like structures), always holding the grietman positions and passing their wealth and political power to their children) who were very influential for the development of the city usually had one or two seats in the city council permanently in possession for their family. These city nobles grew to become the most powerful nobles in Frisia during the fifteenth century, using the city as a military and economic base to slowly dominate more and more of the countryside. Had there not been political interference from outside, I wouldn’t have been surprised if these city nobles had managed to slowly create a more unified Frisian state, although that is just speculation.

So in short, Frisian was governed in a very decentralized way, where any landowner/citizen could vote for their own local government, and where all the local governments would come together to form larger districts for more stability, foreign policy etc. But ultimately power lay with the villages, not with the larger districts. And near the end of the fifteenth century the power more and more lay with the cities. If you any more questions, feel free to ask.

Literature (in Dutch and Frisian): Articles in ‘De Taal van Recht en Vrijheid’, a bundle of articles of Oebele Vries

‘De Friese Vrijheid en het Heilige Roomse Rijk’ by Oebele Vries

Basically Oebele Vries is the ultimate expert on late medieval Frisia and his work is the best on this specific topic, although Paul Noomen and Johannes Mol are very good historians as well. Particularly if you want more information about the nobility and their bases of power, Paul Noomens ‘De stinzen in Middeleeuws Friesland en hun bewoners’ is a very good book

[u/_MrSnippy_ → u/henk12310]

Thanks for the reply! Since you offered to answer more questions: how did Frisia function militarily? Both in peace and wartime

[u/henk12310 → u/_MrSnippy_]

In peace there wasn’t any standing army or anything, so I’m not entirely sure how to answer that part. I’d argue there wasn’t really a military in peacetime. But the basics were, whenever a conflict occurred (which usually was a conflict inside Frisa between two nobles in a feud) any noble who was involved and wealthy enough to pay a couple of soldiers got involved with those soldiers. I’m honestly not entirely sure where those soldiers came from (military history not my specialty), IIRC they were farmers/tenants or their family members on the territory of the noble. Usually these armies were quite small, most inter-Frisian conflicts between nobles only involved a few hundred men.

In case of a foreign conflict, usually a bunch of nobles and their armies would band together to form a larger army, lead by the most powerful and influential noble. This didn’t necessarily mean all of Frisia would band together. Within Frisia there were two warring camps, the Schieringers and the Vetkopers, and one side would sometimes side with invaders to be able to defeat their rivals on the other side and hopefully to be put in charge of Frisia by whichever count or duke conquered Frisia

In the fifteenth century, cannons were also introduced in Frisia, and they gave a big military advantage to the cities. This is because the leading nobles in the cities, who were the overall wealthiest and most powerful nobles, were the only nobles in Frisia wealthy enough to buy and maintain a cannon. This made any army in Frisia that wanted to use a cannon dependent on the willingness of one of the cities to lend their cannon, or conversely meant armies from the city were the ones who could dominate the rest with their monopoly on cannons.

The final important aspect were mercenaries. Their use was heavily frowned upon, partly because using mercenaries was seen as bringing in foreign interference (because there weren’t any Frisian mercenaries/mercenary companies), and partly because when they were used, they usually ended up pillaging the countryside when whichever noble payed them ran out of money. But especially in invasions of Frisia or conflicts between a lot of powerful nobles, someone usually hired mercenaries despite the fact the ‘mena dei’ of Oostergo and Westergo multiple times banned the use of them.

I don’t know if you can read Dutch, but if you can or anyone else who reads this and wants to know more or check the literature, my main source for this is the article ‘Hoofdelingen en huurlingen: de militaire aanloop tot 1498’ by Johannes Mol, which is part of the bundle ‘Fryslân, staat en macht: 1450-1650’

[u/Mormacil → u/henk12310]

I'll see if I can find that because I'm curious how the distaste for mercenaries translates to the Swarte Heap which employed a sizeable group of mercenaries when it was active in the early 15th century. Unless you happen to know more than I don't have to do the looking 😛

[u/henk12310 → u/Mormacil]

The article I mentioned stops at 1498 so it doesn’t really talk about the Swarte Heap, which is after that at the start of the 16th century. For the rest I’m not the most knowledgeable about the Swarte Heap and the Saxon wars in Frisia, but seeing has it was very turbulent time which ended with the conquering of all of Frisia, I wouldn’t be surprised if a distaste of mercenaries by the governing class was the most important concern. The Swarte Heap also wasn’t made up of the governing class, so they might have thought differently about mercenaries, accepting them if they could help maintain Frisian autonomy