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Updated: June 13, 2025
In 1358, Art, the successor of Maurice, and Donald Revagh, were proclaimed "rebels" in a Parliament held at Castledermot, by the Lord Deputy Sancto Amando, the said Art being further branded with deep ingratitude to Edward III., who had acknowledged him as "the Mac-Murch." To carry on a war against him the whole English interest was assessed with a special tax.
The outbreak of the miserable peasantry, the Jacquerie, who fought partly for revenge against the nobles, partly to help Paris, darkened the time; they were repressed with savage bloodshed, and in 1358 the Dauphin's party in Paris assassinated the only great man France had seen for long.
Never since the days of Charlemagne had the French Monarchy been so powerful as when the Valois came to the throne: in less than a generation Crecy and Poitiers had made the English name a terror in France, and a French king, John the Good, was led captive to England. In 1346 Paris saw her faubourgs wasted, the palace of St. Germain and the fortress of Montjoie St. Denis spoiled and burnt, and the English camp fires nightly glowing. Once again, as in the dark Norman times, she rose and determined to save herself. Étienne Marcel, the leader of the movement, whose statue now stands near the site of the Maison aux Piliers was a rich merchant prince of old family, a member of the great drapers' guild, and elected Provost of the Marchands d'Eau in 1355. He it was who bought for 2400 florins of gold the Maison des Dauphins, better known as the Maison aux Piliers or Hôtel de Ville, on the Place de Grève and transferred thither the seat of the civic administration from the old Parloir aux Bourgeois, enclosed in the south wall of Paris. The Dauphin, who had assumed the title of Lieutenant-General, convoked the States-General at Paris, but he was forced by Marcel and his party to grant some urgent reforms, and a Committee of National Defence was organised by the trade guilds and the provost, who became virtually dictator of Paris. Marcel's rule was however stained by the butchery of the Marshal of Champagne and the Duke of Normandy before the very eyes of the Dauphin in the palace of the Cité, who, horrified, fled to Compiègne to rally the nobles. During the ensuing anarchy the poor, dumb, starving serfs of France, in their hopeless misery and despair, rose in insurrection and swept like a flame over the land. Froissart, who writes from the distorted stories told him by the seigneurs, has woefully exaggerated the atrocities of the Jacquerie." There was much arson and pillage, but barely thirty of the nobles are known to have perished. Of the merciless vengeance taken by the seigneurs there is ample confirmation: the wretched peasants were easily out-manoeuvred and killed like rats by the mail-clad nobles and their men-at-arms. Meanwhile the Dauphin was marching on Paris: Marcel seized the Louvre and set 3000 workmen to fortify the city. In less than a year the greater part of the northern walls, with gates, bastilles and fosses, was completed the greatest feat, says Froissart, the provost ever achieved. A citizen army was raised, whose hoods of red and blue, the colours of Paris, distinguished them from the royal sympathisers. Marcel turned for support to the Jacques, and on their suppression essayed to win over Charles of Navarre. On 30th November 1357, Charles stood on the royal stage on the walls of the abbey of St. Germain des Prés, whence the kings of France were wont to witness the judicial combats in the Prés aux Clercs, and addressed an assembly of 10,000 citizens. Moult longuement he sermonised, says the Grandes Chroniques, so that dinner was over in Paris before he finished. After yet another harangue at the Maison aux Piliers on 15th June 1358, he was acclaimed by people with "Navarre! Navarre!" and elected the Captain of Paris. An obscure period of plot and counterplot followed which culminated in the ruin of Marcel and his followers. Froissart accuses the provost of a treacherous intent to open the gates of St. Honoré and of St. Antoine to Navarre's English mercenaries at midnight on 31st July, and gives a dramatic story of the discovery of the plot and slaying of the provost by Jean Maillart, his friend and associate. We supplement his version from the Chronicle of St. Denis: on the last day of July, Marcel and his suite repaired to the bastille of St. Denis and ordered the guards to surrender the keys to Charles of Navarre's treasurer. Maillart, who had been won over by the Dauphin, had preceded him. The guard refused to hand over the keys and an angry altercation ensued between the former friends. Maillart mounted horse, seized a royal banner, sped to the Halles and to the cry of "Montjoie St. Denis!" called the royal partizans to arms: a similar appeal was made by Pepin des Essards. Meanwhile Marcel had reached the bastille of St. Antoine, where he was met by Maillart and the royal partizans. "Stephen, Stephen!" cried the latter, "what dost thou here at this hour?" "I am here," answered the provost, "to guard the city whose governor I am." "Par Dieu," retorted Maillart, "thou art here for no good," and turning to his followers, said, "Behold the keys which he holds to the destruction of the city." Each gave the other the lie. "Good people," protested Marcel, "why would you do me ill? All I wrought was for your good as well as mine." Maillart for answer smote at him, crying, "Traitor,
The situation is magnificent, and from the sea the view of the town is unique among Dalmatian cities by reason of the strong sea walls, a sign of freedom from the supremacy of Venice, whose winged lion only appears in one place, by the convent of S. Maria, on the gate to the sea, closed in 1358, where the upper border of the panel may also be seen.
The indignant mendicants procured the archbishop's citation to Avignon, and it was a striking proof of the ineffectiveness of recent legislation that Edward III. allowed him to plead his cause before the curia. By 1358 the friars gained the day, but their efforts to get Fitzralph's opinions condemned were frustrated by his death in 1360.
On becoming king, Charles determined himself to hold his son at the baptismal font; but Robert Lecocq, Bishop of Laon, the most intimate of Marcel's accomplices, returned quietly to his diocese; two of Marcel's brothers, William and John, owing their protection, it is said, to certain youthful reminiscences on the prince's part, were exempted from all prosecution; Marcels widow even recovered a portion of his property; and as early as the 10th of August, 1358, Charles published an amnesty, from which he excepted only "those who had been in the secret council of the provost of tradesmen in respect of the great treason;" and on the same day another amnesty quashed all proceedings for deeds done during the Jacquery, "whether by nobles or ignobles."
From 1358 it was practically independent, though it paid a tribute of 500 iperperi to Hungary, and used the Hungarian standard as well as that of S. Biagio. The fifteenth century was the period of greatest prosperity, overshadowed by the fear of being eaten up by Venice.
The outbreak of the miserable peasantry, the Jacquerie, who fought partly for revenge against the nobles, partly to help Paris, darkened the time; they were repressed with savage bloodshed, and in 1358 the Dauphin's party in Paris assassinated the only great man France had seen for long.
He was able to prevent the ratification of the preliminaries of 1358. But in that year the death of Marcel was followed by the return of the regent to Paris, the expulsion of the foreign mercenaries, the collapse of the estates, and the restoration of the capital to the national cause.
What Marcel and his party called the defence of the kingdom was the works of fortification round Paris, begun in October, 1356, against the English, after the defeat of Poitiers, and resumed in 1358 against the dauphin's party in the neighboring provinces, as well as against the robbers that were laying them waste.
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