The King of Navarre was ready enough. He placed himself at the head of four hundred lances, and by the time he came up with the Jacques, near Clermont, his troop had increased to a thousand men, many of whom were English. The Jacques were put to flight with great slaughter, and their leader, Guillaume Cale, put to death. Some say that he was arrested by treachery; at any rate Charles of Navarre declared that the Jacques were furious wild beasts, with whom it was not possible to treat or make any terms. The Regent had been in arms ever since the insurrection had broken out, and the attack upon his wife rendered it more hateful to him.
The Jacquerie was soon at an end; it only lasted about a month, and when once the nobles had recovered from the surprise and shock of its outbreak, it was put down and punished with tremendous severity. Pierre Gilles was beheaded at the Halles on the 4th of August. He appears to have been a man of considerable wealth, and in the inventory of his merchandise was a large quantity of sugar in loaves and in powder from Cairo, or, as it was called, Babylon. It came chiefly from Egypt at that time.
That part of Champagne, Ile-de-France, and other districts which had been the scene of these atrocities of the Jacques, was so devastated with fire and sword that for some time it remained almost without inhabitants.[25] The towns and villages which had taken part in the Jacquerie were heavily fined, as may be seen by the records in the “Trésor des Chartes.” Chavanges, for instance, was fined a thousand gold florins.[26]
A note, tome vi. p. 117, of the “Grandes Chroniques de France,” M. Paulin Paris, makes the following remarks and gives the following quotation respecting the complicity of Etienne Marcel in the Jacquerie, and the fallacious hopes in which the rebels indulged with regard to the King of Navarre:—
“C’est que ces Marseillais du XIVme siécle avoient été bien réellement soulevés par les anarchistes de Paris. Je demande la permission de citer à l’appui de cette opinion la précieuse chronique manuscrite conservée sous le No. 530, Supplément françois. A l’occasion de l’expédition du roi de Navarre contre les Jacques, on y lit: En ce temps assembla le roy de Navarre grans gens et ala vers Clermont-en-Beauvoisie, et en tuêrent plus de huit cens et fist copper la teste à leur cappitaine qui se vouloit tenir pour roy; et dient aucuns que les Jacques s’attendoient que le roy de Navarre leur deust aidier, pour l’alliance, qu’il avoit au prévost des marchans, par lequel prévost la Jacquerie s’esmeut, si comme on dit.”
CHAPTER III
1358–1361
Return of Charles and Jeanne to Paris—Marriage of Catherine de Bourbon to the Comte de Harcourt—The Céléstins—The Treaty of Bretigny—Marriage of Isabelle de France to Giovanni Visconti—Return of the King—Death of the children of the Dauphine—The plague—The Duchy of Burgundy.
The Duchess of Normandy and her friends were now free, after the horrible experience of the last few days. The enemy was destroyed, the revolt quelled, and the town, at which they could hardly have looked without shuddering, was half burnt down and deserted; for the inhabitants, who had so lately been raging and clamouring for their blood, were either slain or carried away prisoners. The Duchesse d’Orléans, after this second narrow escape within a few days, set off on her journey towards Paris, which was still in a disturbed state, and in the neighbourhood of which her mother, Queen Jeanne d’Evreux, was busy trying, as she repeatedly did, to patch up a peace between the Duke of Normandy and the King of Navarre, who, although he hated and put down the Jacquerie, was a friend and ally of Etienne Marcel and had a powerful party at Paris.