The Reaper’s War: A Peasant Uprising in Catalunya

What is known as The Reaper’s War (1640-1659) took place in the context of the conflict between France and Spain commonly referred to as the Thirty Years’ War, from 1618 to 1648. It showed just how important the role the Principality of Catalunya played as a strategic stronghold between these two European powers.

The end result of the war ultimately shaped the geography of this part of Europe as we know it: the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 officially made the northern half of the province of La Cerdanya and the entire province of Roussillon a part of France, meaning the northernmost Catalan provinces were now cut off from Spain by the Pyrenees mountains.

A number of factors contributed to what would essentially become a class war between Catalan peasants and the ruling classes. These factors included the presence of an army composed of French troops and mercenaries of several nationalities that were stationed in Catalunya during this period of military conflict. Their excesses and violence exacerbated fiscal tensions and class strife that already existed in Catalunya.

Why the War Began

The chief minister of King Philip IV was the Count-Duke of Olivares, Gaspar de Guzmán. He implemented a controversial policy called the Union of Arms requiring that each province contribute soldiers and funds according to its population in an attempt to redistribute the economic and military burden of running the Spanish empire. This created a backlash in several parts of Spain and was especially strongly felt in Catalunya; until now, Catalunya had not been taxed to support Spain’s military expansion.

Its separate representative assembly and its political traditions—which in some ways had more in common with France than with the Spanish traditions that had taken shape since the Castilian Reconquest—gave Catalunya a limited autonomy, which was now under serious threat.

In the meantime, the Catalan peasants were growing more and more restless. On top of onerous taxes, it was in their homes that soldiers were quartered during the conflict, resulting in reports of rape, property destruction and other forms of violence. The poorer classes felt increasingly frustrated with the bourgeoisie and the land-owning nobility, as their attitudes towards the monarchy were generally more moderate. This combination of general unrest, financial strain and growing distrust of the aristocracy came to a head in 1639.

Local rebellions began to occur spontaneously in various towns, and the general tension and anger continued to grow. News of violent clashes in rural areas spread from village to village, and eventually into the city of Barcelona.

Bloody Corpus

This culminated in a popular uprising on Corpus Christi in 1640, in which Barcelona’s segadors (reapers) rose up in protest, beginning in the town of Sant Andreu del Palomar and spreading rapidly. The reapers ultimately murdered the Spanish Viceroy of Catalunya and Count of Santa Coloma, Dalmau de Queralt, and the day became known as Bloody Corpus, or Corpus de Sang in Catalan.

This rebellion reportedly took the king’s minister, Olivares, by surprise, as many of the crown’s troops were busy fighting in other parts of Spain. The Council of Aragon immediately demanded a beefed-up military presence in Catalunya as a way of restoring order.

The head of the military for the Generalitat de Catalunya, Francesc Tamarit, had previously been imprisoned by Spanish forces for not providing sufficient funding and lodging to Spanish soldiers. He was freed by the rebels once they reached the city of Barcelona.

French Influence

Pau Claris, the President of the Generalitat at the time, called for an emergency assembly (or junta de braços), of all the representatives of the Cortes Catalanes in order to implement certain revolutionary measures, for example, the establishment of a Council of Defense of the Catalan Principality, and a special tax on the upper classes. These measures only exacerbated tensions with the Spanish crown.

Claris also asked for help from nearby France to put down the peasants’ revolt, establishing closer ties than ever between the Catalan government and the French. The two governments later came to an agreement called the Pact of Ceret, in which the French promised to help support the Principality of Catalunya against Spain. It was with this French support that Catalunya declared itself a republic under the protection of the French monarchy on January 17, 1641. The republic only lasted about a week, however; it ended when Catalunya officially declared the French Louis XIII to be the Count of Barcelona.

This consolidation of French strategic influence in the Pyrenees attracted the attention of the Spanish throne, which sent a mass of troops under Pedro Fajardo to recapture Barcelona.

While the combined French and Catalan forces won an important victory in the Battle of Montjuïc in 1641, they also suffered significant losses, such as the execution of hundreds of rebels at the hands of Fajardo and the defeat of a rebel Republican army at Martorell. Meanwhile, the Catalan ruling classes had to contend with the ever-increasing peasant anger towards them; the peasants’ daily lives had not noticeably improved since their rebellion first began.

The End of the War and Its Legacy

Twelve years later, the war finally ended when Don Juan José de Austria and Spanish troops eventually seized Barcelona in 1652. French soldiers would continue to occupy the northern regions of Catalunya until France and Spain signed the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659.

Catalunya was not to be at peace, however; the French and Spanish crowns would clash for the rest of the 17th century, and the War of Spanish Succession that would drag half of Europe into conflict—and determining the final political fate of the Principality of Catalunya in 1714—was still to come. Some historians write that the Spanish crown’s focus on the Catalan conflict played a role in the downfall of its empire, as it used valuable resources that it was unable to employ in its wars with Portugal or in Latin America.

The Catalan people commemorate the importance to their identity of the reapers’ revolution with their anthem “El Segadors” (“The Reapers”). Its lyrics were written down by Manuel Milà i Fontanals, drawn from oral histories of the Reapers War dating back the 17th century. Later, the modern version of the song would be finalized in 1899, when the political party Unió Catalanista launched a competition to simplify the song’s lyrics. A man named Emili Guanyavents won the competition, paring down the many stanzas to just three short verses, but his selection was considered controversial amongst the more conservative Catalans due to his anarchist political leanings.

The song, like many Catalan symbols, was banned during the Franco era. It was formally recognized as the Catalan “national anthem” by the Catalan Parliament in the year 1993.