Burning Down the House: The Jacquerie of 1358 and the Crisis of Feudalism

Abstract

This paper seeks to unravel the Jacquerie of 1358, the peasant rebellion par excellence, and its relationship to the broader patterns of the late Middle Ages. Drawing on British Historian Rodney Hilton's scholarship of rural society, the Jacquerie is placed in the context of the general crisis of feudalism -- a concept he and others theorized -- through a framework which emphasizes peasant agency.