The paper establishes that the Italian Wars, 1494-1559, provoked a sharp rise in the frequency and significance of popular protest yet to be recognised by historians. A large component of that rise were fiscal revolts against taxes imposed by new occupying armies and foreign monarchical powers across the Italian peninsula. The reasons for revolt, however, rarely derived from hardship or the economic oppression per se. Rather, the type of fiscal demands – unfair and unequal regressive taxes – were principally the ones to provoke the revolts. Moreover, these revolts quickly widened from economic matters of meeting fiscal demands to protests for representation and against inequality. The tax revolts became political revolts.