The Battle of Hemmingstedt took place on February 17, 1500 south of the village of Hemmingstedt

Hemmingstedt

Hemmingstedt is a German municipality in the district of Dithmarschen in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.-History:Hemmingstedt is the namesake of the Battle of Hemmingstedt, which took place south of the place in today's municipal area of Epenwöhrden...

, near the present village of Epenwöhrden

Epenwöhrden

Epenwöhrden is a municipality in the district of Dithmarschen, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.-History:Epenwöhrden, south of Hemmingstedt, was the venue of the Battle of Hemmingstedt. In 1500 the militia of the then Farmers' Republic of Ditmarsh, led by Wulf Isebrand, defeated an army of Hans, king...

, in the western part of present-day Schleswig-Holstein

Schleswig-Holstein

Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the sixteen states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig...

 in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It was an attempt by Duke Friedrich

Frederick I of Denmark

Frederick I of Denmark and Norway was the King of Denmark and Norway. The name is also spelled Friedrich in German, Frederik in Danish, and Fredrik in Swedish and Norwegian...

 and Duke Johann to subdue the peasant

Peasant

A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...

ry of Dithmarschen

Dithmarschen

Dithmarschen is a district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Nordfriesland, Schleswig-Flensburg, Rendsburg-Eckernförde, and Steinburg, by the state of Lower Saxony , and by the North Sea.-Geography:The district is located on the North Sea...

, who had established a peasants' republic

Republic

A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...

 on the coast of the North Sea

North Sea

In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

. Duke Johann was at the time also king of the Kalmar Union

Kalmar Union

The Kalmar Union is a historiographical term meaning a series of personal unions that united the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway , and Sweden under a single monarch, though intermittently and with a population...

.

Forces

The ducal army consisted of the "Great Guard", 4,000 mercenaries from the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, commanded by a petty noble (Junker

Junker

A Junker was a member of the landed nobility of Prussia and eastern Germany. These families were mostly part of the German Uradel and carried on the colonization and Christianization of the northeastern European territories during the medieval Ostsiedlung. The abbreviation of Junker is Jkr...

) named Thomas Slentz, 2,000 armoured cavaliers, about 1,000 artillery-men and 5,000 commoners. The defenders were about 6,000 men, all peasants. These men were a well-armed and well-organized militia

Militia

The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...

, not the desperate, badly-armed rabble one would associate with the term "peasant army".

Use of terrain

After seizing the village of Meldorf the ducal army advanced, but was stopped at a barricade, equipped with guns (Geschütze). The defenders opened at least one dike sluice in order to flood the land. The land quickly turned into morass and shallow lakes. Crammed together on a narrow road with no solid ground on which to deploy, the ducal army was unable to make use of its numerical superiority. The lightly equipped peasants were familiar with the land and used poles to leap over the ditches. Most of the ducal soldiers were not killed by enemy arms, but drowned. The casualties among the Dithmarsians are not known, but the Danish and the Dutch lost together more than half of their army, making about 7,000 men killed and 1,500 men wounded.

Personalities; real and imagined

The farmer Wulf Isebrand (d. 1506) was the leader and organiser of the peasants' defence. While he was a real person, the existence of other participants of the battle is not proven. For instance, the legendary Reimer von Wiemerstedt is said to have killed Junker Slentz, the chief of the "Great Guard"; another doubtful participant was the "virgin" Telse.

Propaganda use

Many details about the battle were made up later in order to heroize the defenders. In 1900 a monument to the defenders was raised. The cult reached its peak in the Nazi

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

era, when local party members used the names of the battle participants for their propaganda. Today there is a more neutral museum at the site commemorating the battle.