Summer of Fire and Blood

Winner of the Cundill Prize

From a prize-winning historian, the definitive account of the sixteenth-century uprising that revolutionized Europe.

“A balanced, comprehensive survey of the uprising, gripping in its narrative and perceptive in its assessments, making it easily the most accessible study in English for a general readership.” –Financial Times

The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In spring 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. But they proved no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy thousand and one hundred thousand peasants in just over two months.

In Summer of Fire and Blood, the first history of the German Peasants’ War in a generation, historian Lyndal Roper exposes the rebellion’s far-reaching ramifications. Though the war’s victors portrayed the uprising as naive and inchoate, Roper reveals a mass movement that sought to manifest the radical potential of the Protestant Reformation.

Through the stories of the people themselves, Summer of Fire and Blood reconstructs the thrilling, tragic saga of the peasants’ fight to change the world.

• “This is a riveting account of a seismic event in German history that conveys a real sense of why so many ordinary people thought they could change the world. Lyndal Roper writes beautifully and displays a compassionate understanding for the protagonists on both sides of this complex and bloody struggle.”
  Peter Wilson, author of The Thirty Years War
• “Summer of Fire and Blood is an extraordinary and brilliant book. In Roper’s evocatively beautiful, crystal-clear prose, the complex landscapes of early sixteenth-century Germany—physical, psychological, spiritual, social, and political—unfold before our eyes. She shows us the dreams and deeds that shaped the Peasants’ War, the greatest popular revolt in western Europe before the French Revolution, and the ways in which that war shaped the future that followed. This is a profound account of an attempt to change the world, a sensational narrative that is both human and humane, illuminating, resonant, and unsettling.”
  Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves
• “Summer of Fire and Blood brings the drama, violence, and contingency of the German Peasants’ War to vivid life thanks to the unparalleled scholarly and writing skills of historian Roper. There is simply no more compelling or insightful account of this tumultuous mass uprising.”
  Joel F. Harrington, author of The Faithful Executioner
• “Beautifully and sensitively written, Summer of Fire and Blood tells the forgotten trauma of the sixteenth century—when thousands of ordinary people risked all they had in the hope of ushering in a new world. It takes the stories of our unlettered, peasant ancestors from the sidelines of history and, recentering them, restores their full humanity. And it warns us that the questions they posed are the very urgent questions that confront us again now.”
  Suzannah Lipscomb, author of Journey Through Tudor England
• “Roper is a breathtaking storyteller. Her explosive reassessment of the Peasants’ War is a theological, ecological, and social epic. She shows why the chaotic violence, symbolic arsenal of brotherhood, and maze of dreams and visions should matter to us in the twenty-first century.”
  Joanna Bourke, author of Fear