Some chroniclers told hair-raising stories about the rebels' violence, accusing them of gang rape and the slaughter of children. Nobles fled in terror, some dressed only in their shirts with their children clinging to their shoulders. In time, the word jacquerie became a catch-all term in French for lower-class uprisings, especially ones involving violence by disorganized mobs. French journalists recently applied it to the gilets jaunes protests that caused property damage along the Champs-Élysées.
It might come as a surprise, then, to learn that the original Jacquerie of 1358 had as much or more in common with wars waged by late medieval royal or seigneurial armies than it did with a jacquerie in this sense. From its organizational structures to its battlefield tactics, the Jacquerie resembled a war. The rebels carried banners, shouted the traditional French battle-cry ‘Mont-joie’, and arranged themselves in well-ordered battalions behind ad-hoc ramparts before battle, just like any medieval army. They had captains and a hierarchy of command made up of men of higher social status than the rank and file they commanded, and women participated primarily in the supporting and defensive roles that they traditionally played in medieval warfare.
The Jacquerie was even called a war – “a guerre of the non-nobles against the nobles” –in several sources. Where it differed significantly from other contemporary wars was in being waged not only by, but on behalf of, common people, most of whom were peasants.
Nobles and peasants at war
At least in theory, medieval wars
