1597: Jaakko Ilkka, Cudgel War victim

ExecutedToday.com ^ | January 27, 2019 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1597, Jaakko Ilkka, leader of a great Finnish peasant rebellion called the “Cudgel War”, was put to death at at Old Isonkyron Church.

This evocatively named disturbance broke out in the last days of 1596, so the reader will perceive that the cudgels didn’t have much by way of legs; it took place in a Finland which was then still a part of Sweden. In a typical peasant rising pattern, they won a few early encounters wrong-footing the nobility before heavy soldiery was properly mobilized and smashed the revolt.

While the peasants had usual peasantry grievances, most notably crushing levies to fund fruitless wars with Russia, they might also have been somewhat goaded into insurrection as an outgrowth of the schism then opening up between rival claimants to Swedish rulership within the royal family.....