Battle of Frankenhausen

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Peasants' War map.

The battle of Frankenhausen was fought on 15 May 1525, and was the final act of the Peasants' War: joint troops of George, Duke of Saxony, Landgraf Philipp I of Hesse, and Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, defeated near Frankenhausen, Thuringia, the peasants led by the Anabaptist leader Thomas Müntzer. The Imperial troops were mostly Landsknechte mercenaries. As such they were well equipped, well trained and had good morale. The Peasants on the other hand were badly equipped, had no training whatsoever, and fled as soon as the Imperial troops attacked. Casualty figures are unreliable but Peasant losses have been estimated at 3-10,000 and the Imperial casualites estimated as low as 6 (2 of whom were only wounded).

At Frankenhausen, the battle is depicted, along with many other scenes of that age, on the world's largest oil painting, Werner Tübke's "Frühbürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland" (early Bourgeois revolution in Germany), which is 400 feet long, 45 feet high, and housed in its own specially built museum. The painting was ordered by the socialist leadership of East Germany, who regarded Müntzer as a revolutionary and thus as one of their forebears; work on it went on between 1975 and 1987. However Tübke did not produce a heroic painting, contrary to the state's wishes, but depicted the events at Frankenhausen as a colossal failure for all parties involved.