Skipper Clement

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Skipper Clement (Klemen Andersen) (c. 1484 - September 9, 1536) was a Danish privateer and peasant rebel, known for his leadership of the peasants in the Count's Feud.

He probably belonged to a North Jutland large farmer family. Though often called a peasant, he seems to have been just as much a minor merchant and a citizen as a farmer. Already in the 1520s he supported the exiled King Christian II as a privateer (hence his nickname) and later on at the ex-king’s come-back attempt in Norway but it was not until the Count’s War that he got his chance of playing a greater military role.

At the outbreak of the war 1534 Skipper Clement went back to Jutland by sea, declaring rebellion against the nobility and the newly elected King Christian III who fought the Lübeckers. Apparently without co-operation with Lübeck - his own former enemy - Clement raised a large army of peasants making the city of Ålborg his headquarters. He expelled the noblemen and burned down many of their castles, for a time he was the master of much of Jutland. On October 16 he even defeated an improvised army of aristocrats at the village of Svenstrup. In the long run, however, his men were too poorly armed and too undisciplined. When Christian III had made a separate peace with Lübeck the same year, his general Johan Rantzau was free to campaign against Clement and December 1534 he crushed the peasant army which had taken refuge in Aalborg. After a very hard struggle, Rantzau's army stormed through the walls and sacked Aalborg and massacred as many as 2000 individuals. Clement escaped but was denounced to the victors, caught up and kept in prison until the end of the civil war after which he was beheaded in Viborg.

Later historians and fiction writers – radicals, socialists and communists - have admired Clement as a revolutionary figure and a champion for the rights of the common man (see [1]). Also as a local North Jutland hero he is admired and a statue was erected here 1931. The depth of his social or ideological engagement is unprovable but as the last active, and perhaps most influential, peasant rebel in Danish history he might be viewed a Danish parallel of Wat Tyler in England, Thomas Münzer in Germany and Pugachev in Russia.

[edit] References

• Dansk Biografisk leksikon, vol.3, Copenh. 1979.
• Politikens Danmarkshistorie, vol 6, by Svend Cedergreen Bech, Copenh. 1963.