Featuring Sir John Froissart
Previously on The Jacquerie Rebellion. And now Sir John Froissart
Time: 1358
Place: Paris
When the gentlemen of Beauvoisis, Corbie, Vermandois, and of the lands where these wretches were associated, saw to what lengths their madness had extended, they sent for succor to their friends in Flanders, Hainault, and Bohemia; from which places numbers soon came and united themselves with the gentlemen of the country. They began therefore to kill and destroy these wretches wherever they met them, and hung them up by troops on the nearest trees. The King of Navarre even destroyed in one day, near Clermont in Beauvoisis, upward of three thousand; but they were by this time so much increased in numbers that, had they been all together, they would have amounted to more than one hundred thousand. When they were asked for what reason they acted so wickedly, they replied, they knew not, but they did so because they saw others do it, and they thought that by this means they should destroy all the nobles and gentlemen in the world.
Showing posts with label 1358. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1358. Show all posts
Monday, September 8, 2014
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Rebellion from Defeat in the 100 Years War
Featuring Sir John Froissart
Introduction to our series The Jacquerie Rebellion:
The defeat of the French under King John II, at Poitiers, by the British forces of Edward, the Black Prince, September 19, 1356, aroused great indignation among the common people of France, with scorn of the nobility; for these leaders, with an army of sixty thousand, had fled before an enemy whom they outnumbered seven to one. In the next assembly of the states-general the bourgeois obtained a preponderance so intolerable to the nobles that they withdrew to their homes. A little later the deputies of the clergy also retired, leaving only the representatives of the cities--among whom the supremacy of the members from Paris was generally accepted--to deal with the affairs of the kingdom.
At this point appeared a man who in an age "so uncivilized and somber," says Pierre Robiquet, "by wonderful instinct laid down and nearly succeeded in obtaining the adoption of the essential principles on which modern society is founded--the government of the country by elected representatives, taxes voted by representatives of the taxpayers, abolition of privileges founded upon right of birth, extension of political rights to all citizens, and subordination of traditional sovereignty to that of the nation." This man was Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris--that is to say, mayor of the municipality, whom eminent historians have called the greatest personage of the fourteenth century. During a career of three years his name dominates French history—a brief ascendancy, but of potent influence. His endeavor, in Thierry's view, "was, as it were, a premature attempt at the grand designs of Providence, and the mirror of the bloody changes of fortune through which those designs were destined to advance to their accomplishment under the impulse of human passions."
After the disaster of Poitiers, Marcel finished the fortifications of Paris and barricaded the streets, and in the assembly there he presided over the bourgeois--the Third Estate. In the growing conflict between the two other estates--nobles and clergy--and the third, Marcel armed the bourgeois and began an open revolution, thus organizing the commune for carrying out his designs. The nobles were meanwhile laying heavier miseries upon the peasantry, and in the spring of 1358 occurred the rising of the Jacquerie, here described by Froissart, whose brilliant narrative is to be read in the light of modern critical judgment, which regards it as an exaggeration both of the numbers of the insurgents and their atrocities, while Froissart had no capacity for understanding the conditions which explain, if they do not also justify, the present revolt.
This outbreak, to which Marcel gave his support, was enough to ruin his cause, and he died in a massacre, July 31, 1358, having failed "because the time was not yet ripe," and because the violence to which he lent his sanction was overcome by stronger violence.
And now, Sir John Froissart.
Time: 1358
Place: Paris
A marvelous and great tribulation befell the kingdom of France, in Beauvoisis, Brie, upon the river Marne, in the Laonnois, and in the neighborhood of Soissons. Some of the inhabitants of the country towns assembled together in Beauvoisis, without any leader; they were not at first more than one hundred men. They said that the nobles of the kingdom of France, knights and squires, were a disgrace to it, and that it would be a very meritorious act to destroy them all; to which proposition everyone assented, and added, shame befall him that should be the means of preventing the gentlemen from being wholly destroyed. They then, without further counsel, collected themselves in a body, and with no other arms than the staves shod with iron which some had, and others with knives, marched to the house of a knight who lived near, and, breaking it open, murdered the knight, his lady, and all the children, both great and small; they then burned the house.
Introduction to our series The Jacquerie Rebellion:
The defeat of the French under King John II, at Poitiers, by the British forces of Edward, the Black Prince, September 19, 1356, aroused great indignation among the common people of France, with scorn of the nobility; for these leaders, with an army of sixty thousand, had fled before an enemy whom they outnumbered seven to one. In the next assembly of the states-general the bourgeois obtained a preponderance so intolerable to the nobles that they withdrew to their homes. A little later the deputies of the clergy also retired, leaving only the representatives of the cities--among whom the supremacy of the members from Paris was generally accepted--to deal with the affairs of the kingdom.
At this point appeared a man who in an age "so uncivilized and somber," says Pierre Robiquet, "by wonderful instinct laid down and nearly succeeded in obtaining the adoption of the essential principles on which modern society is founded--the government of the country by elected representatives, taxes voted by representatives of the taxpayers, abolition of privileges founded upon right of birth, extension of political rights to all citizens, and subordination of traditional sovereignty to that of the nation." This man was Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris--that is to say, mayor of the municipality, whom eminent historians have called the greatest personage of the fourteenth century. During a career of three years his name dominates French history—a brief ascendancy, but of potent influence. His endeavor, in Thierry's view, "was, as it were, a premature attempt at the grand designs of Providence, and the mirror of the bloody changes of fortune through which those designs were destined to advance to their accomplishment under the impulse of human passions."
After the disaster of Poitiers, Marcel finished the fortifications of Paris and barricaded the streets, and in the assembly there he presided over the bourgeois--the Third Estate. In the growing conflict between the two other estates--nobles and clergy--and the third, Marcel armed the bourgeois and began an open revolution, thus organizing the commune for carrying out his designs. The nobles were meanwhile laying heavier miseries upon the peasantry, and in the spring of 1358 occurred the rising of the Jacquerie, here described by Froissart, whose brilliant narrative is to be read in the light of modern critical judgment, which regards it as an exaggeration both of the numbers of the insurgents and their atrocities, while Froissart had no capacity for understanding the conditions which explain, if they do not also justify, the present revolt.
This outbreak, to which Marcel gave his support, was enough to ruin his cause, and he died in a massacre, July 31, 1358, having failed "because the time was not yet ripe," and because the violence to which he lent his sanction was overcome by stronger violence.
And now, Sir John Froissart.
Time: 1358
Place: Paris
A marvelous and great tribulation befell the kingdom of France, in Beauvoisis, Brie, upon the river Marne, in the Laonnois, and in the neighborhood of Soissons. Some of the inhabitants of the country towns assembled together in Beauvoisis, without any leader; they were not at first more than one hundred men. They said that the nobles of the kingdom of France, knights and squires, were a disgrace to it, and that it would be a very meritorious act to destroy them all; to which proposition everyone assented, and added, shame befall him that should be the means of preventing the gentlemen from being wholly destroyed. They then, without further counsel, collected themselves in a body, and with no other arms than the staves shod with iron which some had, and others with knives, marched to the house of a knight who lived near, and, breaking it open, murdered the knight, his lady, and all the children, both great and small; they then burned the house.
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