Justine Firnhaber-Baker is a professor of history at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of The Jacquerie of 1358: A French Peasants’ Revolt (2021) and Violence and the State in Languedoc, 1250–1400 (2014).
Four centuries before the storming of the Bastille, the French peasantry rose up in a great revolt known as the Jacquerie. France’s ruling class drowned the revolt in blood and demonized all those who took part in it.
In the 14th century, France experienced the biggest popular revolt in its history before 1789. Historians have often denounced or derided the rebels, but they mounted a sophisticated, well-organized challenge to noble power that was brutally repressed.