said, and they got the name of
Jacques Bonhomme (Jack Goodfellow); but this taunt they belied in a
terrible manner. We will quote from the last continuer of William of
Nangis, the least declamatory and the least confused of all the
chroniclers of that period: "In this same year 1358," says he, "in the
summer [the first rising took place on the 28th of May], the peasants in
the neighborhood of St. Loup de Cerent and Clermont, in the diocese of
Beauvais, took up arms against the nobles of France. They assembled in
great numbers, set at their head a certain peasant named William Karle
[or Cale, or Callet], of more intelligence than the rest, and marching by
companies under their own flag, roamed over the country, slaying and
massacring all the nobles they met, even their own lords. Not content
with that, they demolished the houses and castles of the nobles; and,
what is still more deplorable, they villanously put to death the noble
dames and little children who fell into their hands; and afterwards they
strutted about, they and their wives, bedizened with the garments they
had stripped from their victims. The number of men who had thus risen
amounted to five thousand, and the rising extended to the outskirts of
Paris. They had begun it from sheer necessity and love of justice, for
their lords oppressed instead of defending them; but before long they
proceeded to the most hateful and criminal deeds. They took and
destroyed from top to bottom the strong castle of Ermenonville, where
they put to death a multitude of men and dames of noble family who had
taken refuge there. For some time the nobles no longer went about as
before; none of them durst set a foot outside the fortified places."
Jacquery had taken the form of a fit of demagogic fury, and the Jacks [or
Goodfellows] swarming out of their hovels were the terror of the castles.

Had Marcel provoked this bloody insurrection? There is strong
presumption against him; many of his contemporaries say he had; and the
dauphin himself wrote on the 30th of August, 1359, to the Count of Savoy,
that one of the most heinous acts of Marcel and his partisans was
exciting the folks of the open country in France, of Beauvaisis and
Champagne, and other districts, against the nobles of the said kingdom;
whence so many evils have proceeded as no man should or could conceive."
It is quite certain, however, that, the insurrection having once broken
out, Marcel hastened to profit by it