French Rebellion Dbq

More than thirty years wars, destruction of the rural fields by the troops and compulsory conscription, created high anti-military attitudes among the peasantry. For instance, Davila pointed out that the brigandage was the reason for the Gautiers’ uprisings, or Moreau had the same idea about the uprising of the hamlets of Cornouaille. The Bonnet Rouges also took up the arms when their fields destroyed by the increase of the military depredations. The military duty was still a seigneurial duty, hence, the military activities of the seigniors besides their fiscal demands caused significant anti-nobility tendency among the peasantry. According to Thou, the Gautiers had the anti-nobility element and nobles of Normandy, saw them as their main enemies

The Gautiers had good connection to the local priests and the Breton peasants even went more than it and claimed to exterminate all the enemy of the Church. The Bonnet Rouges also did not show any enmity against the clergy. Besides their attitude toward the clergies, the peasants showed different religious approaches. First of all, the Calvinism failed to find the support of bulk of population in Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Champagne and Picardy. The Norman and the Briton peasants inspired by their catholic zeal with their struggle against the seigneurs and the gens de guerre, for instance the Gautiers rejected to obey the king just because of his Calvinistic background, but unlike them, the Burgundian peasants turned to the king in order to defend themselves against the catholic fanatics in the towns and the tyranny of the league. In Brittany, the isolation and peculiar aspects of the peasantry pushed them to a kind of religious conservatism and

In the western provinces, the fiscal policy of the Royalists, perhaps besides their religious affiliations caused the peasantry to adhere to the League, in eastern provinces the same happened as a consequence of the behavior of the league nobility. The radicalization of the peasant revolts in Normandy is tangible, from the Gautiers who adhered to the League and Catholicism to the Franc-museaux of Senlis, and the Lipans who did not accept the authority of any political parties, however; apart from the sheer peasant revolts such as Franc-museaux, the Chateau-Verts, the Gautiers and the Lipans were conducted under the leadership of the gentry. The peasants in Brittany achieved to a better class solidarity due to their particular conditions such as their language, isolation, and religious enthusiasm. Their aim also went further than the Gautiers goals, and formed in a utopian vision for making the better society, at least in the very local scale. The collapsing of the League authority and destruction of the countryside in Burgundy led to the formation of one of the well-organized peasant revolts of the 1580s. Generally, the demands of the peasants altogether are classified into three parts as follow: those related to the taxes and illegal impositions, those related to military issues, such as conscription, supplying the garrison and brigandage and those