27. Oppressed Peasants Were So Mad at Their Oppressors, That They Forced Them to Eat Each Other
Eventually, the downtrodden French peasants had had enough. On May 21st, 1358, matters came to a head when peasants from a village near the Oise river killed a knight. They then roasted their victim on a spit, and forced his children to eat his flesh. The revolt spread quickly, as peasants razed local castles and slaughtered their inhabitants. Before long, the disparate rebel bands in the countryside began coalescing under the leadership of Guillaume Cale, who then joined forces with Parisian rebels under Etienne Marcel.
The revolt burned hot, but it also burned out quickly, and the undisciplined and untrained rebels were soon routed once the militarily trained and better-armed aristocrats organized and set out to suppress the revolt. The Paris uprising collapsed after its leader was assassinated, while Guillaume Cale, with his peasant army, assembled to meet that of the nobles, unwisely accepted an invitation for truce talks with the armed nobles’ leader, Charles the Bad of Navarre. Cale was treacherously seized when he showed up, and was then tortured and beheaded. The now-leaderless peasant army was then ridden down by knights and routed, after which the peasants were subjected to massive collective reprisals and a reign of terror in which roughly 20,000 were killed.
Also Read: 12 of History’s Greatest Peasant Revolts.
