The Jacquerie of 1358

The great Jacquerie of 1358, a short-lived but intense peasant revolt in northern France, was a ‘social war’ resulting from various developments that mobilised different social groups. This is convincingly demonstrated by Justine Firnhaber-Baker in a very well researched monograph. This book about one of the later Middle Ages’ most important uprisings— if not perhaps in terms of its duration and scale then certainly in political significance and its exceptional character—is based on what must have been years of painstaking archival research and constitutes an important contribution to the study of pre-industrial popular politics in Europe. Systematic use of documentary evidence was the only way to overcome the limitations and bias of the chronicle sources that formed the basis of most previous interpretations (usually used together with a non-exhaustive selection of letters of pardon). But the interpretation of the chronicles too has been revised, with more attention given to their internal narrative logic than has hitherto been the case. The great lengths to which Firnhaber-Baker has gone become visible in the learned and often quite lengthy footnotes which contain a mass of a lively anecdotes and interesting source passages quoted in full, as well as new information about individual rebels

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