GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 79 



" teenth century was in many parts of Europe the age when a 

 " sense of political servitude was most keenly felt. Thus the 

 cc insurrection of the Jacquerie in France about the year 1358, 

 " had the same character and resulted in a great measure from 

 cc the same causes, as that of the English peasants in 1381." 

 Every one must hesitate before he ventures to dissent from 

 the judgment of so acute and philosophical a writer as Mr. 

 Hallam, but I cannot help thinking that these two uprisings 

 have only an external resemblance. 



There can be no doubt that the revolt of the Jacquerie was 

 the desperate effort of excessive suffering. All writers agree 

 that at this time the condition of France was miserable in *~ 

 the extreme. The country had been wasted by a long and 

 destructive war. The French king was in captivity, and his 

 son was exercising the precarious right of a regent for his 

 father. His father's title was disputed, and the success of the 

 English arms had, in an age when victory in war seemed to 

 be the outspoken judgment of Providence on the merits of a 

 quarrel, given great strength to Edward's claim. Such a regent 

 was all but powerless to protect his people. We know that 

 the expenses of the war had wellnigh exhausted the resources 

 of the English monarch, and that the prostration of the French 

 people must have been far more complete. In the intervals of 

 their campaigns both parties disbanded their troops. These 

 soldiers, the companies of that time, were the scourge of 

 the world. Steeled by long habits of rapine, bloodshed, and 

 licence, utterly devoid of pity, wholly insensible to human 

 suffering, these ferocious ruffians wandered at will over France, 

 pillaging the defenceless peasant, and torturing him in order 

 to extort the scanty resources which might save him from 

 absolute starvation. At no time perhaps in the whole history 

 of France was misery so universal and so prodigious. To 

 avenge themselves on the authors of these wrongs, rather than, 

 it seems, with any concerted purpose of freeing themselves 

 permanently from the wretchedness of their condition, the 

 peasantry rose to arms, on the 2ist of May 1358, by one of those 



