In the winter of 1524-25 serfs in many places of what is now Germany, shading into France and Switzerland, got annoyed enough about being treated as serfs to take direct action.
By March, they were taking over/reclaiming castles and holdings of the oligarchs of their day, largely nonviolently, and they were often citing Martin Luther's objections to the Church's behavioral expectations as a basis for resistance.
Luther himself didn't agree, and took the side of the billionaires-I-mean-aristocrats.
"In his treatise “Admonition to Peace,” Luther complained that the peasants had made “Christian liberty an utterly carnal thing,” which “would make all men equal … and that is impossible.”
Responding to the revolt, Luther produced a tract entitled “Against the Murdering and Robbing Hordes of Peasants.” “Let everyone who can,” he infamously wrote, “smite, slay, and stab” the rebellious peasants. The rulers did just that."
When the nobility organized their own armies, the peasants didn’t stand a chance. On the battlefield, the nobles’ cavalry and superior artillery brutally cut down the rebels. Many who escaped the battlefield were hunted down and executed.
Luther’s rejection of the peasants had important long-term consequences. His decision to side with the princes transformed the Reformation from a grassroots movement into an act of state. Everywhere the Protestant reformers went, they sought to work with the authorities. The close cooperation of Christian leaders and secular authorities would last for centuries.