Editing Jacquerie (section)

==Uprising==

This combination of problems set the stage for a brief series of bloody rebellions in northern France in 1358. The uprisings began in a village of St. Leu near the [[Oise]] river, where a group of peasants met to discuss their perception that the nobles had abandoned the King at Poitiers. "They shamed and despoiled the realm, and it would be a good thing to destroy them all."<ref name=Tuchman/>

The account of the rising by the contemporary chronicler [[Jean le Bel]] includes a description of horrifying violence:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gottfried |first=Robert Steven |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oK4HTBcdSJsC&pg=PA100 |title=The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe |date=1983 |publisher=Free Press; Collier Macmillan |isbn=978-0-02-912630-1 |location= |pages=100}}</ref>

{{blockquote|I dare not write the horrible deeds that they did to ladies and damsels; among others, they slew a knight and [then] put him on a spit and roasted him at the fire in sight of the lady, his wife and children, and after that the lady was forced and raped by ten or twelve of them, and then they made her eat of her husband, and after made her die an evil death with all her children.}}

Examples of violence on this scale by the French peasants are offered throughout the medieval sources, including accounts by Jean de Venette and [[Jean Froissart]], an aristocrat who was particularly unsympathetic to the peasants. Among the chroniclers, the one sympathetic to their plight is Jean de Venette, sometimes (but erroneously) known as the continuator of the chronicle of [[Guillaume de Nangis]].<ref>Remarked on by de Vericour, Louis Raymond (1872). "The Jacquerie". ''Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'' '''1''': 302.</ref>

Jean le Bel speculated that governors and tax collectors spread the word of rebellion from village to village to inspire the peasants to rebel against the nobility. When asked as to the cause of their discontent they apparently replied that they were just doing what they had witnessed others doing. Additionally it seems that the rebellion contained some idea that it was possible to rid the world of nobles. Froissart's account portrays the rebels as mindless savages bent on destruction, which they wrought on over 150 noble houses and castles, murdering the families in horrific ways. The bourgeoisie of [[Beauvais]], [[Senlis, Oise|Senlis]], Paris, [[Amiens]], and [[Meaux]], sorely pressed by the court party, accepted the Jacquerie, and the urban underclass were sympathetic.<ref name = vericour304>Vericour 1872:304.</ref> Village notables often provided leadership for some of the peasant bands, although in letters of pardon issued after the suppression of the rising, such individuals claimed that they were forced to do so.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Firnhaber-Baker |first=Justine |date=2020 |title='The Social Constituency of the Jacquerie of 1358' |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/709361 |journal=Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies |volume=95 |issue=3 |pages=689–715 |doi=10.1086/709361 |hdl=10023/23458 |s2cid=225085698 |via=University of Chicago Press|hdl-access=free }}</ref>

The Jacquerie must be seen in the context of this period of internal instability. At a time of personal government, the absence of a charismatic king was detrimental to the still-[[feudal]] state. The Dauphin had to contend with roaming free companies of out-of-work mercenaries, the plotting of [[Charles II of Navarre|Charles the Bad]], and the possibility of another English invasion. The Dauphin gained effective control of the realm only after the supposed surrender of the city of Paris after the murder of the leader of the Estates General [[Étienne Marcel]], ''prevôt des marchands'' on 31 July 1358. It is notable that churches were not generally the targets of peasant fury, with the possible exception of some clerics in Champagne.