Popular rebellions happened throughout the Middle Ages. It would have been strange if they did not. The vast majority of medieval human beings were rural peasants, supplemented after the millennium by significant numbers of urban poor.28 The lot of these people usually hovered somewhere just above terrible, and there were inevitably moments during the Middle Ages when groups of the dispossessed perceived this to be the fault of their leaders rather than just the way of the world. As a result, from time to time ordinary folk banded together to express their anger and try to effect change.
