A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [246]
Gathering adherents, the drapers sacked the houses of the rich, broke open coffers, threw furnishings into the streets, smashed windows and wine barrels, and let the contents flow after drinking all they could hold. Priests, pawnbrokers, Jews, and the houses of all former mayors were attacked, while the tocsin rang all night. The rich fled for refuge to monasteries, and a few royal officials and tax-collectors were killed. The chief of the drapers’ guild, a fat, simple-witted character called, for his bulk, Jean le Gras, was dragged against his will to leadership of the mob and paraded through the streets on a throne, thus compromising the upper bourgeois in spite of their effort to remain behind the scenes.
In climactic assault, the rioters, joined by many of the better class, attacked the Abbey of St. Ouen, hated for its large land holdings and the privileges it maintained against the town. Doors were smashed with axes, rent registers and charters burned, and the Abbé forced to sign remittances of all dues owed by the town. The fact that these documents were formulated in proper legal language testifies to the role of the upper bourgeois in the affair. Afterward, in a solemn if not sober assembly in the market place, the crowd petitioned their fat “King” to declare them “free of the yoke of taxes,” while some “laughed and shook their heads” at the performance.
Fearing royal punishment, the upper bourgeois sent delegates to Vincennes to plead for pardon. The Royal Council, fearing in its turn the spread of rebellion to other towns, advised the boy King to conceal his wrath and “appease the people who were very riotous.” With appropriate display of the sacred aura of kingship, Charles VI was sent to Rouen, where the town’s leaders, evidently nervous of the agitation they had unleashed, promised a fixed sum in aids in return for the King’s pardon. Underneath the temporary lid, the struggle was unresolved, and wrath on both sides only awaited another chance.
In the same moment that Rouen was subdued, Paris rose. No one had yet ventured to proclaim the new levy in public until one herald, on being offered a bonus, rode into the market place and, having won all ears by announcing a reward for the return of gold plate stolen from the palace, then cried out the new tax and, setting spurs to his horse, galloped away. As the news sped through the streets, people gathered in angry groups, vowing with “terrible oaths” never to pay, and plotting resistance. Arrests of the agitators brought in porters, tinkers, candle-makers, pastry cooks, knife-grinders, cowl-makers—the small tradesmen, artisans, and servants of Paris. Next morning, March 1, when a tax-collector was seen to demand payment from a woman vendor of watercress at Les Halles, the market people fell upon him and killed him.
In an instant Paris was in an uproar. People ran through the quartiers calling on their neighbors to arm “for the liberty of the country” and rousing them with fierce yells and threats. “If you do not arm as we do,” cried one, “we will kill you right here in your own house!” Then, in “terrible tumult,” the crowd broke into the Hôtel de Ville in the Place de Grève, where they seized 3,000 long-handled mallets normally used by the police. Mounted with cylindrical heads of lead and wielded with both hands, these had been stored by Hugues Aubriot in case of need against the English, and now gave their name to the insurgents as Maillotins.
So armed, they inspired extra terror. While they were absorbed in rampage throughout the right bank, nobles, prelates, and officials, hurriedly filling carts with their valuables, escaped to Vincennes. Belatedly, the Maillotins closed the gates, fastened street chains, and posted guards to block the exodus of the rich, even bringing back some whom they caught. They hunted down notaries, jurists, and everyone connected with taxes, invaded churches to drag tax-collectors from sanctuary, seized one from the altar of St. Jacques, where he was clinging in terror to a statue of the Virgin, and cut his throat. Records everywhere