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sympathetic acts which put on the appearance of organized 

 combination, and for a few days emulated the atrocious 

 cruelty of which they had been so long the victims. The 

 insurrection was crushed, with all the circumstances which 

 would occur when fear, hatred, and revenge gain the victory 

 over unexpected resistance; and the French peasantry sunk 

 back into a servitude still more abject, and into a still more 

 settled despair. Every man's hand was against them: both 

 parties, English and French. The Captal de Buche and the 

 Count of Foix made truce for purposes of vengeance. Seventy 

 knights, we are told by Froissart, charged an unarmed mob, slew 

 seven thousand on the spot, burnt the town of Meaux with all 

 the Jacquerie, men, women, and children in it, and left Ingram 

 de Coucy to hunt down such fugitives as were scattered in the 

 woods. Even Froissart, who rarely enlarges his sympathies 

 beyond the chivalry of his age, is constrained to pity the 

 sufferings of the peasantry. 



None of the circumstances which attended or provoked the 

 outbreak of the Jacquerie accompanied the insurrection of 

 Tyler and his associates. In the first place, the times were, 

 all things considered, of unexampled prosperity. The rate of 

 wages had steadily progressed. Corn was exceedingly cheap, 

 wheat having been below the average for four out of the five 

 years preceding the insurrection ; and there is no better index 

 of the material prosperity of a people than a low price of corn. 

 Wool, the staple produce of this country, bore a high price. 

 Cattle had considerably increased in value, and as a rule high 

 prices of meat, when concurrent with low prices of corn, indi- 

 cate such a power of general consumption as implies that this 

 second necessary of life is brought within the means of a larger 

 number of persons. Compared with the period which followed 

 on the Plague, and continued to the death of Edward the Third, 

 during which wheat fell rarely below the average, and was 

 sometimes greatly above it, the time was one of singular 

 plenty, and, as is clear, the general community fully shared 

 in the abundance which prevailed. The war with France, to 



