Rebellions

Two forgotten incidents of history have always been special to me.  They are Wat Tyler's Rebellion in England  in 1381 and the Jacquerie in France.    Wat Tyler was far ahead of his time, resembling nothing as much as the French Revolution 400 years later,  promoting ideas of equality that are still not practiced in the UK.  He sought to curb the accumulation of land and wealth by the church and to end the influence of the nobility.    He died for it, being run through by the lord mayor of London as he tried to dictate terms to Henry VI.  

(We think of the Magna Carta as "guaranteeing the rights of Englishmen" and so on, but it didn't.   The Magna Carta confirmed the power of the nobility versus the king and little more.   Most Englishmen were in effect slaves.)

There were other rebellions, even less well known.  My dabbling in genealogy has unearthed several touching my forebears.

The Borden family of Kent, England, may have participated in Jack Cade's Rebellion in 1450.   Henry VI pardoned Cade and other leaders, then as the rebellion died down revoked the pardons and apprehended and executed Cade; royal prerogative.   There was more to it than that; see http://www.warsoftheroses.co.uk/chapter_39.htm for a good discussion.

In 1645 in certain villages on Lake Zurich including Richterswil where the Bachmanns lived there occurred the Wädenswiler Steueraufstand, a tax revolt.  One Rudolf Goldschmid who led the movement was executed.   Was he related to the Anna Goldschmitt born 1655 who was the mother of Heinrich Bachmann?

In 1676 there was Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia.   An uprising of indentured servants, the landless, and those unprotected on the frontier against the landed interests in power in the colony.  Bacon himself cheated the hangman's rope by dying of malaria, but others were hanged.

From 1765-1771 in the western counties of North Carolina there occurred the War of the Regulation, a political and economic revolt against colonial officeholders and the wealthy families in the east, that presaged the American Revoluton..  Anson County was the heart of the movement.   Quite a few of my ancestors were in North Carolina, in Anson, Mecklenburg, and Cabarrus counties around that time.  That revolt ended in a mini-massacre as a trained militia fired on farmers and townsmen.  And with the hanging of about 20 leaders.

It is a thesis of mine that the American Revolution was in part a revolt of class against class, or the poor and unenfranchised against the wealthy; an Occupy Wall Street  movement with teeth.    A broad generalization but there is truth in it.