JACQUERIE, zhft'kre" (from Jacques Bon homme, the common epithet bestowed by the nobles in derision on the French peasant). The name given to the insurgent peasants in France in the middle of the fourteenth century, in the reign of John the Good. The insurrec tion of the Jacque•ie broke out in the year 1358, when the French King was a, prisoner in England, and France in a state of the greatest disorder and anarchy as a result. of the invasions by the armies of Edward ill. The immediate occasion of it was a collision between adherents of some nobles and the peasants in the month of Nay, in the neighborhood of Beauvais; but it was really caused hy long-continued oppression on the part of the nobles. Suddenly rising against their lords. the peasants laid hundreds of castles in ruins. murdered the nobles. and practiced every afrocity—acting. as they said. on the principle of doing as had been done to them. For some days the region of the Lower Marne and the Oise was entirely at their mercy, and the peasants were joined by the bourgeoisie in some of the towns; but the magnitude of the danger induced the quarrelsome nobles to make common cause against them, and on June 10th the peasants were defeated with great slaughter near Meaux by Charles the Bad of Navarre. This put an
end to the insurrection. But the nobles took a terrible revenge, burning the villages and killing the peasants. In two weeks 20,000 are said to have been murdered. The barbarous retaliation went on for two years. Froissart, who had little sympathy for the peasants, undoubtedly drew too dark a picture of the atrocities committed by the Jacquerie, while minimizing the sanguinary vengeance exacted by the nobles. Consult: Luce. Ilistoire de la Jacquerie (Paris. 1859) ; and Flammermont, in the Revue Historique, vol. ix., pp. 123-143 (Paris, 1879).