> are you the bad guy for not surrendering?

those peasants who died are killed by the feudal lord, so no - 100% not the bad guy for fighting.

The only way you could be considered a bad guy is if you used peasants as suicide bombers - and only if those people didn't volunteer.

I disagree to the blanket form of statement. Yes, it is the feudal lord who does the killing, but that doesn't mean there is no guilt if your actions effectively lead to the named peasants are killed. Whether one shares some guilt by the actions has to be judged in each case separately.

> doesn't mean there is no guilt if your actions effectively lead to the named peasants are killed.

but it's not a law of physics that the feudal lord kills a peasant - they did it by choice. This is what absolves the rebels from any guilt of the deaths. The rebels, a priori, believes that their rebellion is just, and therefore, by definition it cannot be morally wrong. It's not their fault if the feudal lord decides to do something morally wrong, based on any reason (including to extort the rebels).

This is different from a case where actions of the rebel directly lead to deaths of peasants - for example, bombing the residence of the feudal lord which causes collateral damage. In this case, the action must be judged individually.

Yes, if the right you're defending is as arcane and hard to explain as libre software.