Contemporaries almost universally referred to the War as the ‘Aufruhr’, the turbulence. In his infamous condemnation of the Peasants, Luther used the word six times in the key paragraph. Aufruhr must be punished, and those involved ‘slain like mad dogs’. This lecture draws on ideas from fluid mechanics to understand why contemporaries experienced the war as ‘turbulence’, exploring where, when and how peasants moved and formed bands. It concludes with a discussion of Dürer’s Dream of 1525.