The Aristocrat Who Sided With Serfs Against His Own Class
Medieval authorities were brutal when they finally put a lid on peasant uprisings. One of the most vivid examples of such brutality took place in the aftermath of the suppression of the Hungarian Peasant Rebellion, led by Georghe Doja (1470 – 1514). A Transylvanian nobleman and soldier of fortune. After he made a name for himself in wars against the Ottoman Turks, Doja was appointed by Pope Leo X to lead a Crusade. Things went awry, however, and the result was not a crusade, but a revolt by downtrodden Hungarian peasants against their rapacious overlords. The uprising was fierce, but ultimately unsuccessful. After the peasants were put down, Doja went down in history as both a notorious criminal and as a Christian martyr.
After the pope directed Doja to lead a crusade, About 40,000 volunteers gathered beneath his banner. They were comprised in the main of peasants, friars, and parish priests – medieval society’s lowest rungs. The Hungarian nobility however neither supplied the crusaders nor offered military leadership. The later was seen as particularly unseemly, because military leadership was the main justification for the aristocracy’s elevated status. Before long, the gathered throng began to voice its collective grievances against the nobles. At harvest time, the peasants refused to return and reap their lords’ fields. The nobles tried to seize the peasants by force and compel them to toil. That did not sit well with Doja, who sided with the serfs against his own class. So he led Hungary’s peasants in a violent rebellion that morphed into a war of extermination against the landlords.