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Abstract

Abstract This chapter looks at the causes and methods behind the Jacquerie’s sudden emergence after 28 May. The massacre at Saint-Leu-d’Esserent was a watershed moment that enabled the rapid transformation of latent resentments into large-scale, violent rebellion. Due both to recent military developments and economic dislocation connected with the Black Death, rural commoners in northern France were experiencing a crisis of the ‘moral economy’ severe enough to make some of them undertake previously unimagined action. But immediate mobilization required previous preparation. As sociologists have demonstrated, rebellion is not a process that happens by chance even if it is made possible by opportunity. It appears that the Jacquerie’s leaders were able to take advantage of pre-existing efforts to ready the countryside’s defences, as well as social and professional networks among commoners in the Beauvaisis. By 31 May, the rebellion was sufficiently organized to capture a traitor and transfer him to a local captain elsewhere who carried out a public execution attended by hundreds of witnesses. The story of this ‘traitor’ is indicative of the kinds of relationships that facilitated the revolt’s almost instantaneous mobilization, as well as the individual and accidental trajectories that led people to join or to eschew the Jacquerie, and how their paths might change over time.