Those of us who are fascinated by the past all learned at some point that a lot of people are, shockingly, not interested in history. As we studied more, we also learned that, to paraphrase Trotsky, history was often interested in those people regardless. The results could often be painful. The denizens of Zurich who took their anger out on the main market and forced the council to bow to their will in December of 1515 were just such victims of history.
The story of what is now called the ‘gingerbread war’ (Lebkuchenkieg) is often told as a charmingly folksy anecdote of medieval hijinks. That does not do the occasion justice. When, in the pre-Christmas days of 1515, a crowd of armed, angry men broke into the town of Zurich, looted the market stalls across from the town hall of their sweet confectionery, pelted the good burghers with gingerbread, and began a military occupation of the market square, they had been brought there by politics and war among the great powers of Europe.
It comes as a surprise to many people who know about modern Switzerland’s almost comically diligent neutrality and un-martial military culture, but in the decades around 1500, the Swiss Confederation was pursuing a ruthless campaign of conquest in Northern Italy. Ever since they had defeated the armies of Charles, duke of Burgundy in 1477, an event we immortalised in cake last year, they had enjoyed an unparalleled reputation for military prowess, and the governments of its member cantons rented them out to belligerent powers for cash. In the process, they also grabbed pieces of territory in Italy. At the time, it was not clear how far they would go. Swiss troops had regularly defeated all comers. As far as anyone knew, if they wanted to take Milan, Florence, Venice, or Rome, they just might.
The Swiss Confederation was dominated by city governments, mostly patrician republics, with little tradition of knighthood and loose ties at best to the Empire. Their armies were drawn mostly from their rural hinterland where the soil was often poor, with few natural resources. Swiss troops were inexpensively equipped. Most of them fought as lightly armoured infantry using pikes and halberds, but the tactics they developed proved unstoppable. The advance of the Swiss pike block was the terror of enemy armies everywhere, to the point that it was said the number of Swiss on your side was the surest indicator of victory or defeat.
To the men who fought these wars, national glory did not feature largely. Mercenary service, called Reislaufen, provided many young men from rural areas with the only chance to escape grinding poverty. They were recruited into military units under the command of patrician officers by the Swiss cantons and sent to fight on behalf of foreign governments that paid their ruling class for the loan of their troops, so the material rewards for the individual were meagre. Plunder and opportunities for advancement were enough of a lure in the end.
The problem began when plunder and victory no longer looked like certain propositions. The chaotic wars over the inheritance of Burgundy and control of Northern Italy had provided ample opportunity for these things, but in September of 1515, a Swiss army, divided by political disagreement and (probably) corruption, went down to defeat at Marignano. With their famous discipline, the troops managed a fighting retreat, but the nimbus of invincibility was shattered and more importantly, the expectations of tens of thousands of young men brutally disappointed.
If your economic and political pre-eminence is based on your ability to deploy overwhelming military power, actually losing a war is dangerous. It was known universally that money stuck to the fingers of the powerful, that many took bribes thinly disguised as ‘pensions’, and were uncomfortably close to enemy powers. After having lost thousands of comrades and untold opportunities, anger boiled over. The events in Zurich were only one such instance, and not even the only one connected with food. Rebels occupied the gardens of the rich in other places, harvesting their nuts and onions. Lebkuchen, though, had a special symbolic significance that helped this episode being remembered.
Lebkuchen is not a specifically German tradition. Spiced honey cakes seem to be a continentwide treat, from panforte to pernik, pain d’epices and gingerbread. Lebkuchen was just the local iteration, familiar everywhere people spoke German. Nuremberg, a city in control of large forests where honey was harvested, became a centre for its production and has retained the industry to this day, but it was far from the only place where it was made. Combining the eminently desirable luxuries of honey and spices in a small, portable package, lebkuchen played an important role in upper-class culture. They could be eaten as they were, nibbled or softened by dunking in wine, but they were also used as ingredients in spicy sauces and occasional other recipes for indulgent treats.
Early recipes suggest that lebkuchen were a good deal spicier and harder than we are accustomed to today, depending solely on what natural fermentation can be produced by resting a honey dough over several weeks. The fifteenth century manuscript Cod Pal Germ 551 records a basic one:
4 Make good gingerbread thus
Take a maß of honey. With that belongs four lot of cut ginger, two lot of pounded ginger, one and a half lot of cloves, one and a half lot of nutmeg, half a lot of pepper, two lot of cinnamon, and four lot of coriander for those who like it in there. This is healthy for the head. And with this belongs rye flour as is proper.
We have several later recipes calling for different spice blends, but the basics remained unchanged. A particularly luxurious iteration called for making gingerbread dough out of ground gingerbread to produce a “twice-baked” version as this one from Balthasar Staindl’s cookbook:
Again, twice-baked gingerbread (Lezelten)
ccli) Make the dough thus: Take half a part of water and half a part of honey. Make a dough of rye flour as described above and work it well to soften it (zaeh in fast ab). Make thin flat cakes and slide them into the oven. Bake them brown. After you have taken them out of the oven, let them harden and quickly put them into a mortar. Pound them to powder, sieve it finely, and add all manner of coarsely pounded spices to that flour. But you must pound pepper powder fine. Also add coriander and anise. Then take properly boiled honey, let it boil up once and pour it onto the gingerbread powder. Make a dough as thick as a porridge (breyn) and let it stand for a while. That way, the dried baked flour (i.e. the powdered gingerbread) draws the honey to itself entirely. Once it seems to you that it is nicely dry, turn it out and work it very well to soften it. You must also keep some of the powdered gingerbread to roll it out because it is spoiled by any other flour. The dough in the manner of gingerbread (lezelten) so it becomes firm enough you can shape it well. Before you slide the pieces (lezelten) into an oven, stick cinnamon and cloves on their corners. Do not bake them too hot, then you will have good lezelten.
Most modern lebkuchen varieties are softer and less durable, made with some kind of chemical leavening, but interestingly, Zurich actually has a traditional version called tirggel that looks much closer to they way things were originally done. These hard honey biscuits would make excellent missiles to pelt people with, an effective gesture of defiance comparable perhaps to throwing brioche at Versailles courtiers, or tins of caviar at investment bankers.
Of course, these were not the only arms the protesters brought to the market square. We probably generally underestimate how common martial skills were in premodern Europe, but in the Swiss Confederation, men were legally obligated to own and train with weapons. Many were veterans of campaigns that had humiliated the armies of kings and dukes. Occupying the centre of town, they represented a serious threat, more so because everybody in power knew they were here because of an absolutely legitimate grievance. Swiss armies had been hired out for foreign money. The men had been sent off to die in distant wars to enrich their rulers, and quite likely betrayed at some point as well. Everyone knew.
The council had no moral leg to stand on in this matter, and in the face of angry, armed citizens, no way of resorting to force, either. In a rare instance of documented surrender, the council and the rebels agreed on a solution. Suspected cases of bribery would be investigated, the culprits fined and banned from holding office for life. Some, possibly the worst offenders, or perhaps those with no powerful protectors, were even executed. The city further agreed to pay the protesters for the costs they had incurred – a remarkable stipulation, but a very sensible one given many came from rural communities, having to pay for travel and lose wages. Both sides further agreed that there would be no adverse consequences from this event for anyone, but that future armed insurrections would be banned. This last stipulation is not as silly as it sounds. The early modern German-speaking world was intensely concerned with laws and contracts, very litigious, and keen on written records – the Swiss Republics more so than most. Having agreed not to rise up against the council might well give the people pause before another attempt. History would show that it was not very effective, but things might well have gone worse without.