Chronicler Froissart Relates the Jacquerie

Battle Illumination

The revolt began when… "certain people of the common villages without any head or ruler, assembled together in the Beauvoison. In the beginning, they passed not a hundred…They gathered together without any council, and without armor, saving with staves and knives, and so went to the house of a knight dwelling thereby, and broke up his house and slew the knight and the lady and all his children, great and small, and burned the house. And then they went to another castle, and took the knight thereof and tied him fast to a stake, and raped his wife and his daughter before his face, and then killed the lady and his daughter and all his other children, and then slew the knight by great torment, and burnt and tore down the castle. And so they did to diverse other castles and good houses; and they multiplied until they were a thousand…These mischievous people thus assembled without captain or armor, robbed, burnt and slew all the gentlemen that they could lay hands on, and forced and ravished ladies and damsels and did such shameful deeds that no human creature ought to think on such, and he that did the most mischief was most praised with them and the greatest master. I dare not write the horrible deeds that they did to ladies and damsels; among others, they slew a knight and [then] put him on a spit and roasted him at the fire in sight of the lady, his wife and children, and after that the lady was forced and raped by ten or twelve of them, and then they made her eat of her husband, and after made her die an evil death with all her children."