13. Medieval France’s Greatest Peasant Uprising
In 1358, French peasants in northern France rose up in a rebellion that came to be known as The Jacquerie. The name was derived from the French nobility’s habit of contemptuously referring to all peasants as Jacques or Jacques Bonhomme, after a padded over-garment worn by them called a “Jacque”. The uprising was led by a well-off peasant named Guillaume Cale, from Beauvais, about 50 miles from Paris.
France at the time was undergoing a rough patch following the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War. The peasantry, upon whose toil all rested and through whose fields the armies marched and pillaged, enduring the roughest patch of all. Their French noble overlords were not doing well, either, and their prestige had sunk to a low ebb after decades of humiliating defeats. Early in the century, France’s aristocrats had turned tail and fled at the Battle of the Spurs, leaving the infantry commoners to be slaughtered. More recently, the English had routed them in the Battles of Crecy and Poitiers.
Also Read: 12 of History’s Greatest Peasant Revolts.