rtrapasso
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Joined: 9/3/2002 Status: offline
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Year 1251: Bohemia's Wenceslas I gains control of Austria by forcing the Austrian estates to accept his son Premysl Ottakar II as their duke (see 1253). The deposed German king Conrad IV leaves for Italy and becomes king of Sicily, leaving the German states to Wilhelm of Holland (see 1247; 1252). Portuguese forces seize the Algarve in the southwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Several thousand shepherds and farm workers in northern France abandon flocks and fields in a widespread insurrection that begins at Easter under the leadership of a renegade Hungarian monk and will be remembered as the Pastouraux. Inspired by loyalty to Louis IX, who is away on the Seventh Crusade, the rebels arm themselves with pitchforks, pikes, daggers, and hatchets, assemble at Amiens, terrorize Picardy by asking for food and taking it by force if it is not forthcoming, and move on to Paris by December; their agitation turns against the propertied classes, they will spread out to England, and the revolt will reach as far as Syria, with bloody demonstrations and riots that will meet with ruthless suppression by the French regent.
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