A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [229]
At Ghent, where the weavers were in greatest strength, the Count invited trouble when he levied a tax on the city to pay for a tournament. Led by the cry of an angry tradesman that tax money must not be squandered “on the follies of princes and the upkeep of actors and buffoons,” the citizens refused to pay. The Count, playing on the commercial rivalry of the cities, secured the support of Bruges by a promise to build a canal connecting it to the sea, to the advantage of its commerce and the detriment of Ghent. When 500 diggers began work on a channel to divert the river Lys, Ghent dispatched its militia to the attack, and from that point on, the conflict enlarged itself like a cell dividing. Of Flanders’ fierce tribulations that now began, Froissart wrote, “What shall they say that readeth this or heareth it read, but that it was the work of the Devil?”
At the opposite end of France at the same time, revolt erupted in Languedoc, where famine, oppression, war, and taxes had left a trail of misery under the harsh rule of the Duc d’Anjou. Impatient, bold, and habitually forcing events, Anjou exercised virtually sovereign power over a region amounting to a quarter of the realm. He swallowed its revenues whole, without distinguishing what was applied to his personal use from what was applied to the defense of Languedoc or the kingdom. To make up for fewer hearths as a result of the plague, the tax per hearth was raised each year, but the people obtained no benefit in better defense. Bandit companies still penetrated their valleys, still forced their villages to buy respite from pillage. In 1378, food taxes on consumption were added to those on sales, falling most heavily on the poor. When tax-collectors began the practice of house searches, like agents of the Inquisition, outrage was piled on misery.
“How can we live like this?” protesting groups cried as they gathered before the Virgin’s statue to implore her aid. “How can we feed ourselves and our children when already we cannot pay the heavy taxes laid on us by the rich for their own comfort?” Riots and disorders spread and reached revolt in July 1379 when Anjou’s Council levied a heavy new tax of twelve francs per hearth without convoking the Estates, merely asking the assent of the municipal councils. The Duke himself was absent at the time, conducting the war in Brittany. The wrath of his overburdened subjects burst with extraordinary violence against all in authority: royal officials, nobles, and the upper bourgeois of the town councils, whom the common people held responsible for the new tax. “Kill, kill all the rich!” was the cry, as reported by a seigneur of Clermont afterward. “Seigneurs and other good men of the country and towns,” he said, “went in great fear of death” and in that other fear inspired by all revolts, “that if this infamous insolence of the common people was not rigorously suppressed, worse would follow.”
At Le Puy, Nîmes, Clermont, and other towns, the people formed armed mobs, looted rich households, murdered officials, and committed acts of savagery—even, it was reported, “cut open bodies with their knives and ate like animals the flesh of baptized men.” In October the commotion reached a climax in Montpellier when five of Anjou’s councillors were killed and eighty others reportedly massacred. The insurgents sent out emissaries in an effort to raise a general revolt, but lacking the solid industrial base and traditions of the Flemish struggle, the rising quickly flared and was soon suppressed. Clement VII, dependent on Anjou’s control of Languedoc for his support, instantly sent Cardinal Albano, a native of Languedoc, to calm the people and warn them of the terrible punishment for lèse-majesté. Already afraid of their rebellion,