A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

“Know, citizens, how you are despised!” cried a cobbler in passionate oratory to his followers. All the bitterness of the little against the great was expressed in his denunciation of the “endless greed of seigneurs” who “would take from you, if they could, even your share of daylight.” They crush the people with their exactions, more each year. “They do not wish us to breathe or to speak or to have human faces or mix with them in public places.… These men to whom we render forced homage and who feed on our substance have no other thought but to glitter with gold and jewels, to build superb palaces and invent new taxes to oppress the city.” He poured scorn on the cowardice of the merchants, citing in comparison the stalwart citizens of Ghent who at that very moment were in arms against their Count because of taxes. If the cobbler’s eloquence was owed in part to embellishment by the Monk of St. Denis, who recorded it, that only serves to indicate the sympathy of many monastic chroniclers with the plight of the people. In his famous prophecy, the friar Jean de Roquetaillade had seen the day coming when “the worms of the earth will most cruelly devour the lions, leopards and wolves … and the little and common folk will destroy all tyrants and traitors.” For the cobbler and his 300 companions, that day was at hand. Screaming and brandishing knives, they forced the Provost of Merchants to carry their demand for tax abolition to Anjou and the Chancellor. At the Marble Table in t...