Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

Philip of Valois was dead, but his son, John ‘the Good’, had succeeded him, and earned his title, it must be supposed, by his punctilious regard for the laws of mediaeval chivalry. His reckless daring, extravagance, and rash generalship made him at any rate a very bad ruler according to modern standards. Froissart says that on the field of Poitiers, where the two armies met, ‘King John on his part proved himself a good knight; indeed, if the fourth of his people had behaved as well, the day would have been his own.’

This is extremely doubtful, for the French, though far the larger force, were outmanœuvred from the first. The Black Prince had the gift of generalship and disposed his army so that it was hidden amid the slopes of a thick vineyard, laying an ambush of skilled archers behind the shelter of a hedge. As King John’s cavalry charged towards the only gap, in order to clear a road for their main army, they were mown down by a merciless fire at short range from the ambush; while in the ensuing confusion English knights swept round on the French flank and put the foot-soldiers to flight. The Black Prince’s victory was complete, for King John and his principal nobles were surrounded and taken prisoners after a fierce conflict in which for a long time they refused to surrender. ‘They behaved themselves so loyally’, says Froissart, ‘that their heirs to this day are honoured for their sake’: and Prince Edward, waiting on his royal captive that night at dinner, awarded him the ‘prize and garland’ of gallantry above all other combatants.

Evil days followed in France, where her king’s chivalry could not pay his enormous ransom nor those of his distinguished fellow prisoners. For this money merchants must sweat and save, and the peasants toil longer hours on starvation rations; while the ‘companies’, absolved by a truce from regular warfare, exacted their daily bread at the sword-point when and where they chose.

Famous captains, who were really infamous brigands, took their toll of sheep and corn and grapes; and those farmers and labourers who refused, or could not give what they required, they flung alive on to bonfires, while they tortured and mutilated their wives and families. Against such wickedness there was no protection either from the government or overlords; indeed, the latter were as cruel as the brigand chiefs, extorting the very means of livelihood from their tenants and serfs to pay for the distractions of a court never more extravagant and pleasure-seeking than in this hour of national disaster.

‘Jacques Bonhomme,’ the French noble would say mockingly of the peasant, ‘has a broad back ... he will pull out his purse fast enough if he is beaten.’ The day came, however, when Jacques Bonhomme, grown reckless in his misery, pulled out his knife instead, and, in the words of Froissart, became like a ‘mad dog’. He had neither leaders nor any hope of reform, nothing but a seething desire for revenge; and in the ‘Jacquerie’, as the peasant rebellion of this date was called, he inflicted on the nobles and their families all the horrors that he himself, standing by helpless, had seen perpetrated on his own belongings. Castles were burned, their furniture and treasures looted and destroyed, their owners were roasted at slow fires, their wives and daughters violated, their children tortured and massacred.

This is one of the most hideous scenes in French history, the darker because France in her blindness learned no lesson from it. The nobles, who soon gained the upper hand against these wild undisciplined hordes, exacted a vengeance in proportion to the crimes committed, and fixed the yoke of serfdom more surely than ever on the shoulders of Jacques Bonhomme. This was the only way, in their conception, to deal with such a mad dog; but Jacques Bonhomme was in reality an outraged human being of flesh and blood like those who loathed and despised him; and during centuries of tyranny his anger grew in force and bitterness until in the Revolution of 1789 it burst forth with a violence against both guilty and innocent that no power in France was strong enough to stem.

Étienne Marcel

The outrages of the Jacquerie unfortunately discredited real efforts at reform that had been initiated in Paris by the leader of the middle classes, the Provost of Merchants, Étienne Marcel. This Marcel had demanded that the States-General should be called regularly twice a year, that the Dauphin Charles,[28] eldest son of King John, who was acting as regent during his father’s imprisonment, should send away his favourites, and that instead of these fraudulent ministers a standing council of elected representatives should be set up to advise the crown.

To these and many other reforms the Dauphin pretended to yield under the pressure of public opinion; but he soon broke all his promises and began to rule again as he chose. Marcel, roused to indignation, summoned his citizen levies, and, breaking into the Prince’s palace, ordered his men-at-arms to seize two of the most hated ministers and drag them to the royal presence. ‘Do that quickly for which you were brought,’ he said to the soldiers; whereupon they slew the favourites as they crouched at Charles’s feet, their fingers clinging to his robe.

This act of violence won for Étienne Marcel the undying hatred of the Dauphin and his court, and from this time the decline of his influence may be traced. In order to maintain his power the popular leader was driven to condone the excesses of the peasants, in their rebellion, that had shocked the whole of France, and to ally himself with Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, to whom he promised to deliver the keys of Paris in return for his support against the Dauphin.