The Club War (also Cudgel War, Finnish Nuijasota, Swedish Klubbekriget) was a 1596/97 peasant uprising in the kingdom of Sweden against exploitation by nobility and military in what is today Finland. The name of the uprising derives from the fact that the peasants armed themselves with various blunt weapons, such as cudgels, flails and maces, as they were seen as the most efficient weapons against the heavily armoured enemies. The yeomen also had swords, some firearms and two cannon at their disposal. Their opponents, the troops of Clas Eriksson Fleming, were professional, heavily armed and armoured men-at-arms.
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The peasants took up residence in Nokia Manor and won several skirmishes against small cavalry forces, but were decisively defeated by Clas Fleming[1] on January 1–2, 1597. A field battle had ensued at Nokia, which ended indecisively; the men-at-arms could not break the fortified positions of the yeomen nor could the yeomen defeat the men-at-arms at open. Clas Fleming then attempted a stratagem, promising the yeomen to leave their positions should they give their leaders up to Fleming. They yeomen obliged. Once they had surrendered their leaders, Clas Fleming ordered an all-out assault against the yeomen, who had left their positions. The yeomen were massacred in heaps. Their commander-in-chief, Jaakko Ilkka[1] managed to flee, but was captured a few weeks later and beheaded with four other yeoman leaders at church of Ilmajoki. A second wave of insurgents suffered a decisive loss at Ilmajoki in the Battle of Santavuori on February 24. In total almost 3000 people died in the rebellion.
The insurgents were mostly Finnish peasants from Ostrobothnia, Northern Tavastia, and Savo. Tired of the hardships of the Russo-Swedish War of 1590–1595, they were disappointed to find out that they were still required to provide food, transport, and lodging for a sizable army even after the Treaty of Tyavzino. The insurgents also complained that soldiers abused the system of taxation by taking by force more than to which they were legally entitled. The events can also be seen as a part of a larger power struggle between King Sigismund, whom Fleming powerfully supported, and Duke Charles, who expressed sympathy for the peasants' cause but was unable to intervene militarily.
In his groundbreaking work Nuijasota, sen syyt ja tapaukset (1857–1859), historian and prominent fennoman Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen saw the peasants as fighting for freedom and justice. Albert Edelfelt's Poltettu kylä (1879) depicts a woman, a child, and an old man hiding behind a rock as a village burns in the background. The poet Kaarlo Kramsu praised the insurgents and lamented their defeat in patriotic poems such as Ilkka, Hannu Krankka, and Santavuoren tappelu, published in Runoelmia (1887). After the Finnish Civil War, the debate has centered around an interpretation that emphasizes Duke Charles's role in inciting the revolt, as found in Pentti Renvall's Kuninkaanmiehiä ja kapinoitsijoita Vaasa-kauden Suomessa (1949); and an explanation that stresses the roots of the rebellion in class conflict, as argued by Heikki Ylikangas in Nuijasota (1977).