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THey weren’t tax revolts.

They had rights and appealed to them and their cases were heard. They were not slaughtered by the millions. If you would actually read some history, you would discover that the late medieval peasant revolts were largely the result of a rising standard of living for peasants due to the labor shortages caused by the great Plague, combined with the lords, who were being squeezed by inflation (obligations of peasants had to some degree been converted into money but at fixed rates because no one understood or expected inflation), so the lords were losing ground and tried oppressive means to squeeze the peasaznts IN NEW WAYS. The peasant revolts did not challenge the notion of serfdom itself (most peasants had actually been granted personal freedom by the later Middle Ages) but claimed that the Lords were violating ancient rights and customary laws. They were simply asking for their due under the law, largely because they were better off than their ancestors a few centuries earlier and they knew it.

Sure, being personally free they could run off to the cities, but most of them did not want to. In the cities they were on their own and had fewer rights. Having a piece of land that was yours by long tradition that you could farm to earn a living was not a bad thing for everyone. Entrepreneurial types wanted the city with its risk and freedoms, but not everyone did. And not all peasants reolted. And the ones who revolted were, for the most part, not serfs but free men—their expectations had been raised. But they thought, rightly or wrongly, that the lords were not upholding their end of the bargain.

But if it makes you feel better to use the Middle Ages as your bogeyman so you don’t have to confront the truly horrific conditions of the early modern and modern era,

be my guest.

It’s just bad history. That’s all.