Jacquerie - Background

Background

After the capture of the French King (John II, Froissart's bon roi Jean "John the Good") by the English during the Battle of Poitiers in September 1356, power in France devolved fruitlessly among the States General, Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, and John's son, the Dauphin, later Charles V. However, the Estates General was too divided to provide effective government and the disputes between the two rulers provoked disunity amongst the nobles. Consequently the prestige of the French nobility – which had begun the century at Courtrai (the "Battle of the Golden Spurs") by fleeing the field and leaving their infantry to be hacked to pieces, and had given up their king at Poitiers – had sunk to a new low. To secure their rights, the French privileged classes, the nobility, the merchant elite, and the clergy, forced the peasantry to pay ever-increasing taxes (for example, the taille) and to repair their war-damaged properties under corvée— without compensation. The passage of a law that required the peasants to defend the châteaux that were emblems of their oppression was the immediate cause of the spontaneous uprising; it was particularly onerous as many common people already blamed the nobility's corruption for the defeat at Poitiers. The chronicle of Jean de Venette articulates the perceived problems between the nobility and the peasants, yet some historians, Samuel K. Cohn being one of them, see the Jacquerie revolts as a reaction to a combination of short and long-term effects dating as early as the grain crisis and famine of 1315. In addition, bands of English, Gascon, German and Spanish routiers— unemployed mercenaries and bandits employed by the English during outbreaks of the Hundred Years' War— were left uncontrolled, to loot, rape and plunder the lands of Northern France almost at will, the States General powerless to stop them. Many peasants questioned why they should work for a government that clearly could not protect its citizens.