A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [245]
In these “days of wrath and anguish, days of calamity and misery,” the laboring men’s revolt seemed to many but one more tribulation signifying, like the Black Death, the anger of God. An anonymous poet, associating the rising of the peasants with an earthquake that occurred in 1382 and with the “pestilens,” concluded that these three things
Beeth tokenes of grete vengaunce and wrake
That schulde falle for synnes sake.
Even the French raids on the English coast could be taken, as the monk Walsingham suggested, as the Lord “calling men to repentance by means of such terrors.” Seen in these terms, revolt conveyed no political significance. “Man cannot change,” a Florentine diarist wrote at this time, “that which God, for our sins, has willed.”
How much impact the insurrection in England had on revolutionary sentiment abroad is uncertain. With or without it, war and its attendant demon, taxes, would have supplied enough fuel for discontent. Yet war could hardly have failed to give employment and spread money—to armorers, carters, grain dealers, bakers, horse-breeders, and a hundred other trades besides the archers, foot soldiers, and servants in the army. Contemporaries are silent on the subject of war as economic stimulus, but very vocal about its unequal burden on the poor. “It should be an established principle,” wrote Villani, “that war ought not to be paid for out of the purses of the poor but rather by those to whom power belongs.”
This was not a principle recognized by the Duc d’Anjou, whose pursuit of money provoked a new wave of insurrection in France beginning in February of 1382. His projected inheritance of the Kingdom of Naples had just been jeopardized by the overthrow of Queen Joanna by a rival. Against the advice of Coucy, who was summoned again from Picardy for consultation, Anjou was bent on leading an army to Italy. At a meeting with the Provost of Merchants and principal bourgeois in January 1382, he seems to have wrung consent for a new sales tax on wine, salt, and other merchandise. In fear of popular reaction, the edict was issued secretly and the bidding for the lucrative post of tax-collector was held behind closed doors in the Châtelet. Many came willingly enough to bid, but hesitated to make the public announcement. No less apprehensive, the court remained at Vincennes outside the walls.
When tradesmen and travelers spread news of the new tax, an outcry of angry refusal was voiced in riots at Laon, Amiens, Reims, Orléans, and Rouen, as well as in Paris. As spokesman for the bourgeois of the capita], Jean de Marès, an aged, respected, and eloquent advocate who had served under every King since Philip VI, tried in vain to persuade Anjou to rescind the order. Shopkeepers locked out tax-collectors who came to evaluate their merchandise; citizens seized arms, rang the tocsin, and rampaged through tax offices. That the agitation was heated by “the example of the English,” and even by “letters and messages from the Flemings” was common belief. Concerted action, however, was less a fact than a fear of the ruling class.
The riots burst into violence at the end of February in Rouen, capital of Normandy. Here the tax on wine injured important vintners who wished to excite popular resistance without compromising themselves. They harangued artisans and poor workers of the cloth trade about the shame of submitting to the tax while distributing free wine among them. To shouts of “Haro!” against the government, “Haro!” against tax-collectors (an obscure cry implying rebellion), a company of 200 intoxicated drapers rushed for the city hall to ring the tocsin. So began the famous Harelle.