It was with the aim of instructing the German bourgeois democracy that in 1850, Engels, supported by the factual material collected by the democrat, Zimmermann, wrote this splendid account of the German Peasant War.First, he gives a picture of the economic situation and of the class composition of Germany of that time.Then he shows how out of this soil spring the various opposition groups with their programmes, and gives a colourful characterisation of Luther and Muenzer.The third chapter contains a brief history of the peasant uprisings in the German Empire from 1476to 1517, that is, to the beginning of the Reformation.In the fourth chapter we have the history of the uprising of the nobility under the leadership of Franz von Sickingen and Ulrich von Hutten.The fifth and sixth chapters contain a narrative of the events of the Peasant War as such, with a detailed explanation of the main causes of the peasants' defeat.In the seventh and last chapters the significance of the Peasant War and its consequences in German history are explained.
Permeating the whole of Engels' work is the idea of the necessity of a merciless struggle against the feudal masters, the landlords.Only a radical abolition of all traces of feudal domination, he said, could create the most favourable conditions for the success of a proletarian revolution.In this respect Engels was in full harmony with Marx, who wrote to him later (August 16, 1856), "Everything in Germany will depend upon whether it will be possible to support the proletarian revolution by something like second edition of the Peasant War.Only then will everything proceed well."Quite different was the conception of Lassalle, who overestimated the significance of the uprising of the nobility, idealized Franz von Sickingen and Ulrich von Hutten, and treated the revolutionary movement of the lower plebeian strata too contemptuously.In his opinion, the Peasant War, notwithstanding its revolutionary appearance, was in reality a reactionary movement."You all know," he said to the Berlin workers, "that the peasants killed the nobles and burned their castles, or, according to the prevailing habit, made them run the gauntlet.However, notwithstanding this revolutionary appearance, the movement was, in substance and principle, reactionary."The Russian revolutionary populists, especially the adherents of Bakunin, often identified Lassalle's view of the peasants with the views of Marx and Engels.In this they followed Bakunin's lead, who wrote the following:
