This summary is taken from a book titled The Dawn of a New Era 1250-1435 written by Edward P. Cheney, the first book in the 20-volume historical series The Rise of Modern Europe. The original copyright was in 1936; this particular copy is dated 1971, so the monetary figures in �modern value� are not accurate.
Popular Insurrections
Some of the insurrections were the result of the mob leader�s policy; more often they were spontaneous upheavals. Most were purposeless, fruitless, ruthless and short lived. Popular revolts often start leaderless, until someone with leadership qualities steps forward. The revolts were then put down with the same brutality that it generated.
The Insurrection of the Shepherds:
In 1250 Louis of France was in Syria where the Saracens defeated him. Looking to resume his quest for the Holy Land Louis sent letters back to Europe for men and money. While the church, the nobles and the majority of the population were not interested the common folks were. The following year from northern France came thousands of shepherds and rural laborers volunteered to rescue their king and the Holy Sepulchre.
At Easter time a leader known as the �Master from Hungary� stepped forward. He was, tall, sixty-years-old and well educated, said to have been a Master of Arts at one of the universities. He was a mystic who kept on hand continually closed, claiming that he held a written commission from the Virgin about continuing the Crusades. The believers were on their knees before him. Other people said he out for revenge, leading people to their deaths, and that he was a Mahometan, an occultist or one of the persecuted Albigenses.
Men, women and children were at his command, some carrying swords, axes and primitive arms. As they made their way through the country refugees and outlaws joined them. Hostile to the church, they abused clergymen and pillaged monasteries. They preached, gave blessings and performed other priestly duties.
At Paris, where the queen mother was regent for her son the king, the horde was welcomed. The queen sent for the Master and gave him presents. Conflicts broke out several people died. On their exiting of Paris the Shepherds divided into several bodies, each with a leader. They proceeded to raise hell wherever they went, rioting, killing and being killed and plundering. To stop them their chiefs were hanged, the Master was hacked to pieces, one leader was bound and tossed into a river and the rest of the rabble was decimated. One group of the Shepherds sailed to England. They were attacked and ordered to leave. When the movement was put down, some actually joined the king in Syria while others returned home.
The Sicilian Vespers:
In Palermo in the year 1282, while the bells were ringing for vesper [late afternoon or evening] service, a murderous rage lashed out against French soldiers, officials and merchants, killing 200. The violence spread throughout Sicily, with nearly 2,000 men, women and children dead, practically exterminating the French. The guess is that this was the result of the forcible occupation of the island by the French, the rule under a French king and a harsh administration.
The Netherlands Uprising:
The Netherlands and Italy led Europe in popular insurrections. Flanders of the Netherlands was quite active. There were four parties seeking control of its wealthy cities, the king of France was its overlord. The Count of Flanders was a feudal prince and a vassal of the French king. There were also the city governments of about 50 towns, and many affluent families, all with the powers of self-government. Beneath all this were the common people.
The �Matins of Bruges�, 1302, was the result of the bitterness between the classes of people that was aimed at the French garrison, since the Flemish upper class was loyal to the French king. The less wealthy sided with the Count of Flanders.
In the year 1297 the count allied himself with England, drawing the ire of the Flemish upper class. The king had forced the count into submission, occupied the country, placing it under a French governor, Jacques de Chatillon. The governor antagonized the common people. A poor weaver of Bruges, Peter Koninck, led a secret movement, supported by a butcher, Johan Breydel and others.
Chatillon entered Bruges in 1302 and the people revolted, killing scores of soldiers. Many well-to-do Flemish also perished. The riot spread and induced other peasants to join. This led to the struggle for independence from France.
Two months later another battle was fought at Courtrai. Even though Chatillon and his French soldiers, the Flemish aristocracy, Genoese bowmen and German horsemen opposed the Count of Flanders, several knights and the Flemish people, the commoners, most armed with only a short heavy pike, won. As many as 20,000 were killed and 700 gold spurs of the defeated chivalry was collected after the battle that came to be known as the �Battle of Spurs.�
The French king and the Flemish aristocracy regained control over time, and the class warfare continued. A prolonged peasant revolt occurred from 1323 and 1328 in coastal Flanders. Nicolas Zannequin was the leader against lay and clerical landowners. In 1324 the attacks were vicious, with pillaging, arson and the slaughter of the gentry and their families.
From the rural areas the uprising then took to the town. Bruges supported the rebels. Ypres sent for Zannequin hoping he would drive out the upper class and set up a government run by common folk. They assaulted the churches and abbeys. They also revolted against the count, murdered his counselors and imprisoned him. The count, the pope the nobility and the town aristocrats appealed to the king of France, who gathered a large army.
At Cassel in 1328 the French tore through the rebels. Zannequin and several thousand others were killed. Over the next decade revenge was had against hundreds of rebels as they were executed and their property confiscated.
Jacques Van Artevelde of Ghent led the most famous Flanders insurrection from 1337 to 1345. He was of the upper class and the leader of a national movement, not an uprising of the lower classes. In 1381 to 1382 there was also an uprising of the lower classes led by Philip Van Artevelde. Like the movement of 1337 to 1345 it was more of a political social struggle.
The Jacquerie and the Rising Under Marcel:
This was the most brutal of all uprisings, occurring in France in 1358. Commoners ran amok in Beauvosyn, killing a knight and his family and burned his house to the ground. They repeated the carnage several times. The mob grew to 6,000, resorting to torture and, according to one account, forced cannibalism on at least one of their victims. While this is no excuse for their behavior, the perpetrators had suffered in the past. They went through twenty years of war and ravaging, the barbarities of the �free companies,� the Black Death, extortions by their lords, forced labor, high taxes and petty tyranny.
They were under the influence of Guillaume Cale (or Charles). Also named was a mythical Jacques Bonhomme, a colloquial corresponding to Piers Plowman in England. Cale had planned to capture several cities and to join Stephen Marcel, but was caught and beheaded at Clermont and the uprising was stopped. Knights returning from battling the Prussians slaughtered the rebels in the town of Meaux, leaving them in heaps. When they knights returned they enclosed the peasants in the town and burned it to the ground.
Marcel, defeated in his efforts to reorganize the government, called the riffraff of Paris to his aid, in an attempt to pressure the royalist party. He held Paris for a few months, but soon his rivals and even his supporters were growing strong against him until he was finally assassinated at the gate of St. Antoine.
Italian Risings:
Cola di Rienzi�s rising at Rome 1347 to 1354, along with other conspirators and a large mob, took possession of Capitol Hill looking to return to the ancient government of Rome, declaring it to be the buono stato or the �good government.�
Rienzi was lowborn, but educated. He took the title of �Tribune� and established a civic guard of cavalry and foot soldiers from each of the thirteen divisions of the city. The feudal families that were governing the cities (in the absence of the pope who was at Avignon) were ordered to take the oath of allegiance to the �good state.� Some fled, others yielded. This lasted for seven months.
Rienzi summoned the pope and the cardinals to return and ordered the rival claimants to the imperial title to bring their claims before him for settlement. He arrested several nobles on a charge of conspiracy, ordered their execution and then pardoned them. He lost support from his followers with his arrogance and his magnificent mode of life. The pope excommunicated Rienzi as a heretic and he fled from Rome in disguise.
In 1353 the populace reasserted their control and elected a new leader named Baroncelli. The new leader was not a success, however, and the pope reestablished Rienzi at Rome. Rienzi took the title of Senator. His followers became suspicious of Rienzi and the next year put him to death on Capitol Hill.
Florence was the most troubled of the Italian cities. Most of the struggles showed little or no trace of class conflict. The party victory that drove Dante from Florence in 1302 involved no economic or social question. Guelfs and Ghibelins, Albizzi and Ricci, Whites and Blacks, even nobles and the richer citizens were not necessarily of different classes. The popolo grasso and popolo minuto, the great guilds and the lesser guilds, the aristocracy and democracy, were natural opponents, and the government of the republic changed from one to the other or balanced in temporary compromise. Through the middle years of the 14th century it was coming increasingly completely into the hands of the aristocracy.
The Ciompi, or common workmen of the city, had a position lower than even the members of the smaller guilds revolted in 1378. A poor wool comber named Michele Lando became their leader. He was made gonfalonier, or head of the city government, by the populace. Disorders were stopped, new guilds were formed of unorganized workers and their representatives were added to the signoria alongside the older and richer organizations. Lando resigned after two months and he was the only popular leader of the period to die in peace and obscurity. The new government lasted four years then was restored to its old form. Although 161 prominent leaders of the movement were executed there was a revival of the movement in 1381.
From 1378 to 1383 there were many revolts. The two Ciompi risings, the English �Peasants� Rising� in 1381, the �Maillotins� of Paris, the revival revolt in Flanders, the �Harelle� of the city of Rouen in 1382 and others. On St. Matthews Day, 1382, the journeymen coppersmiths and drapers of Rouen rang the tocsin from the great bell, �Rouvel,� in the city belfry, calling the populace into the streets; the mob pillaged the homes of the upper classes, opened the wine casks, attacked the ghetto, summoned the cathedral clergy to renounce their rents and tolls, and secured the agreement of some of the richer merchants to the adoption of a new and more popular constitution for the city. But another group of citizens took power and a month later the gate to the city was adorned with the heads of the insurrection leaders.
The struggle at Ghent was renewed in Flanders in 1381 under Philip Van Artevelde son of the leader of the 1337 rising. Philip died violently as his father did.
In 1382 in Paris a crowd (known as Malliotins or Malletmen) armed with lead mallets overpowered the guards and rushed to the city hall. Barricades were thrown across the streets and they succeeded in extorting from the government repeal of the new sales tax. King Charles VI returned to Paris from Flanders and occupied the city with his troops and proceeded to execute the rebels and withdrew many of the city liberties.
In 1413 there was a rising led by Caboche, the butcher, in which the Bastille and the Louvre were taken by the mob. The next year with much bloodshed the revolt was ended.
The Peasant�s Insurrection in England:
This was the most famous of the risings, occurring in 1381. It has been chronicled enough to give a clear picture of the cause and its goals. Its foundation was laid in the last quarter of the 14th century.
Complaint was made in Parliament by both Lords and Commons in 1377 that in various parts of the country that the peasants �affirm them to be quit and utterly discharged of all manner of serfdom. They gather themselves together in great routs and do menace the servants of their lords, and will not suffer any distress or other judgment to be made upon them.�
According to Froissart [Jean Froissart (1337 - 1405), French chronicler] a recreant priest named John Ball would gather the people and say �Ah, ye good people, the matter goeth not well to pass in England, nor shall not do so till everything be common, and that there be no villains or gentlemen, but that we all may be united together and that the lords be no greater masters than we be. What have we deserved or why should we be thus kept in serfdom; we all be come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve.� He repeated the same words that a Johanes Quares in 1302 uttered and put in a Flemish prison �every man should possess as much as every other man.�
So in England the lower classes of Cambridge intervened in one of the frequent conflicts between the university and the town. Then the inhabitants of two villages in Essex refused to pay their poll tax and beat the tax collectors and ran them out of town. Then it became a full-scale riot.
The populace of Kent and Essex rose; of Kent they made themselves masters of Canterbury, Maidstone and Rochester; they seized country gentlemen and their families as hostages; stopped pilgrims on the way to Canterbury and made them go down on their knees and swear, �to be faithful to King Richard and his commons,� never to agree to any tax except the familiar fifteenths, and �never to accept a king named John� (as in John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the king�s uncle suspected of usurping his nephew). The mob in Essex was doing the same.
The leaders were Thomas Barker and Jack Straw in Kent Essex; Geoffrey Dyer a dyer in Norfolk; Robert Cave, a baker, Abel Kerr, and Walt Tyler in Kent. The mobs from the various areas converged in London, looking for approval of the king, who fled by boat and did not return until the maniacs left.
Arriving at Southwark, they, with the assistance of the city alderman, they entered the city, finding support from the commoners as well as artisans and city proletarians. They burned the palace of John of Gaunt, the Temple (the abode of the lawyers), and the building of the Knights Hospitallers. They murdered several of the Flemings and sent the Germans fleeing for safety. Some raided the wine cellars of the elite and drank themselves senseless while others committed murder.
The king looked on from the safety of the Tower as he watched the city burn in the distance and listened to the sounds of the drunken mob. He met with some of the rioters the next day at Mile End and heard their demands. An agreement was made, but was not to be honored by the king, who sent most of the rebels home. Other rioters punished the �traitors�, several of the town�s ministers and beheaded them and put their head on poles and paraded them through the streets.
After another day of rioting there was another meeting and more demands were made. The confessions they later made were constructed by the chroniclers and may not have been their own words. But they admitted plans to remove all the clergy; killing the nobles and taking their land; to kill the judges, lawyers and ministers of the government and killing the king and electing their own leaders.
Their downfall was recorded by Froissart, who was either present or interviewed an eyewitness. The king, on horse, with his courtiers, the mayor of London and other city officials rode into the open square of Smithfield to meet with Walt Tyler and other of the rebels. Tyler, who may have been drunk, rode forward to greet the king and grasped his hand. He then guzzled some beer and rinsed out his mouth. He then tossed about a dagger from one hand to the other. Two of the king�s men then dashed forward, dragged Tyler from his horse and stabbed him to death.
The mob first thought that their leader was being knighted. When they realized that their leader was assassinated they drew their bows at the king and his men. King Richard (age fourteen) may or may not have rode forward to the mob seeking peace and their loyalty. But the crowd dispersed and vacated London. The magistrates that assisted the mob were arrested and put on trial.
The insurrection had spread, however, in all directions, with riots affecting ten counties, their cities towns, villages, abbeys, castles and monasteries, 75 incidents in all. There was pillaging, arson and justices of the peace were murdered amid other acts of rebellion. They also burned and destroyed charters and court rolls. These were the records of their services, rents and disabilities. The lawyers who kept the records were beheaded.
The nobles, knights, gentry, even some prelates struck back to end the rebellion and punishment, including execution, was served with trial and conviction. The king revoked all promises made to the rioters and ordered everyone home and back to their duties. Special court sessions were held with the guilty either hung or beheaded and Parliament forgave the nobles and the others for ignoring the law.
The king�s proposal for the abolishment of serfdom was rejected, but Parliament announced a general pardon for all but a few of the mad dogs and Englishmen, and before the year was over all was forgotten.
The two times the rebels met with the king, at Mile End and Smithfield, the rebels presented a list of demands. They were the cahiers of a Fourth Estate. They were seeking the end of serfdom and its burdensome fines and disabilities. The were also seeking the end of compulsory service to employers under the Statutes of Laborers, no more toll payments in the local markets, and to be charged no more than four pence an acre for rent of land (a rate of a dollar an acre) and the freedom to use of all woods, to hunt and to fish. They wanted pardon for the rebellion and the release of any who had been imprisoned. They sought the execution of fifteen �traitors�, ministers they considered to behind their sufferings and a few other demands, all hopeless aspirations.