How Accurate is Monty Python's Anarcho-Syndicalist Peasant Scene?

"Come and see the violence inherent on the system. Help, help, I'm being repressed" might be the greatest line in movie history.

Here what I see is often missed in this scene. The two peasants are muckrakers. They are gathering manure to sell as fertilizer. This is called muckraking. However, in modern times muckraking has anew meaning. Journalists who dig up dirt on politicians, expose corruption, etc, are also called muckrakers. So, the two peasants are literally muckrakers, in the older definition of the word. However, they are also muckrakers in the modern definition of the word, in they are exposing the violence inherent in the system.

I think Dennis is quite sane and logical actually

Be quiet. I order you to be quiet.

I think it still stands that my all time favorite movie line is , “Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government”

"You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!"

"Suddenly, strange women, lying in ponds, distributing swords, seems like an increasingly viable basis, as a form of government"

I still remember an occasion back in the eighties when I was able to ask the late Arthurian Historian Geoffrey Ashe what he thought was the most accurate Arthurian movie ever made? Without hesitation, he answered "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

Damn, every anarchist I know loves the scene as comedy gold.

"What I object to is that you automatically treat me as an inferior."

A reminder everyone. 'Dennis the anarcho-syndicalist" is now Sir Michael Edward Palin. I guess he got tired of all that lovely filth

6:25 Imagine being a history channel and mistaking the Holy Roman Empire for the Roman Empire

If I went around saying I was Emperor just 'cause some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Wait that actually happened? A lord saying ''This shit is too much for me'' and abandoning his lands and titles to go live in a larger town as a commoner, or would he still be considered a landless noble?

as an anarchist i absolutely adore this scene

2:11 well, i didn't vote for you.(love the scene)

At least one major theoretician of anarchism, Petr Kropotkin, used medieval cities and guilds as models of autonomous or semi-autonomous rule. Runaway serfs typically fled to cities, regarding them as free places. See his "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution," published 1902.

Dennis was just ahead of his time , and unafraid of articulating his principles .

"Wahr di Garr, de Bur kumt!" It's interesting, that you brought up Dithmarschen, because they were indeed the prime example of it I thought about as well. about 20 years ago I held a presentation about in our history lessons, using Age of Empires II screenshots to illustrate everything. There is much more to this peasant republic than you could do in your short video. How they fought for they land against King Johann I. in the battle of Hemmingstedt in the year 1500. They warned the peasants to obey the king, but as they refused, the king attacked with a massive army, including the infamous "Black Guard" mercenary force. "Wahr di Bur, de Garr kumt!" - "Beware peasant, the guard is coming!" But the military expedition failed miserably, and the black guard wasn't equipped to fight in the swamps, and of about 2000 guard fighters, 800 died and drowned within three hours in heavy armor. It ended in chaos and slaughter and the army of the King crumbled to nothing as the survivors fled in panic. The leaders of the "Black Guard" were killed and the organization was dissolved. The aristocratic cavalry forces tried to win the battle by them selves, but the farmers attacked the horses in the marshy lands and the noble knights died and drowned in large numbers as well, including many members of higher nobility of that region. The king had to withdraw, and the peasants flipped their battle slogan around: "Wahr di Garr, de Bur kumt!" - "Beware guard, the peasant is coming!" The Danish kingdom was so weakened, that as a consequence, the Swedish Kingdom could gain independence afterwards.

Seeing that most of the troupe were Cambridge educated why is this surprising? To say Terry Jone had studied up on Medieval history is a bit of an understatement, as he was one of the foremost experts on Chaucer and Her Royal Majesty's Expert on ancient documents.