The Bundschuh movement  refers to a series of localized peasant rebellions in southwestern Germany from 1493 to 1517. They were one of the causes of the German Peasants' War . The Bundschuh movement was not a movement in the proper sense, but a number of loosely linked local conspiracies and planned uprisings. It was so called because of the peasant shoe  the peasants displayed on their flag. Under this flag, peasants and city dwellers had defeated the troops of the French count of Armagnac along the upper Rhine in 1439, 1443 and 1444. Individual uprisings - seeking relief from oppressive taxes, arbitrary justice systems, high debts, costly ecclesiastic privileges, serfdom, prohibitions on hunting and fishing, and the like - occurred in 1476 in Niklashausen , 1493 in Schlettstadt /Alsace , 1502 in Bruchsal and Untergrombach, 1513 in Lehen , and 1517 along the upper Rhine. Each of these was defeated very quickly, and the leaders, such as Joß Fritz, were generally executed.. who was oppressing the germans?