The Battle of Mello was the decisive and largest engagement of the Peasant Jacquerie

Jacquerie

The Jacquerie was a popular revolt in late medieval Europe by peasants that took place in northern France in the summer of 1358, during the Hundred Years' War. The revolt, which was violently suppressed after a few weeks of violence, centered in the Oise valley north of Paris...

 of 1358, a rebellion of peasants in the Beauvais

Beauvais

Beauvais is a city approximately by highway north of central Paris, in the northern French region of Picardie. It currently has a population of over 60,000 inhabitants.- History :...

 region of France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, which caused an enormous amount of damage to this wealthy region at the height of the Hundred Years War with England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The battle was in fact two separate engagements, a major battle at Mello

Mello, Oise

Mello is a small village in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise....

 and a smaller one at the nearby town of Meaux

Meaux

Meaux is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located east-northeast from the center of Paris. Meaux is a sub-prefecture of the department and the seat of an arondissement...

, which the battle is also sometimes named after.

The Road to Battle

The rebellion in the Beauvais was a major part of the Peasant Jacquerie which exploded into life in the spring and summer of 1358. Although the head of the rebellion was centred on Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, the body was focused in the region to the north-east, and there peasants, frustrated by the failures of the nobility to protect them from English raiders and heavy taxation had risen up, forming village councils to rule regions and small armed forces of young men to maintain order. These peasant bands also attacked surrounding noble houses, many of which were only occupied by women and children, the men being with the armies fighting the English. The occupants were frequently massacred, the houses looted and burnt in an orgy of violence which shocked France and ravaged this once prosperous region.

The nobles’ response was furious. Aristocracy from across France united together and formed an army in Normandy

Normandy

Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...

 which was joined by English and foreign mercenaries, sensing payment and a chance to loot the defeated peasants. This army moved into the Beauvais, preparing to strike at the peasants who had set up camp at the plateau above Mello near Silly

Silly

Silly may refer to:* Silly, Belgium, a town in Belgium* Silly Department, a department or commune of Sissili Province in southern Burkina Faso* Silly , an East German rock group from the 1970s...

-le-Long. The peasants had arrived there three days before, many ragged bands united under a leader from Paris. Another army, 800-strong under Jean Vaillant and Pierre Gilles, was dispatched to Meaux, where they besieged the castle of Marché which contained Lady Jeanne de Bourbon, the wife of the Dauphin Charles

Charles V of France

Charles V , called the Wise, was King of France from 1364 to his death in 1380 and a member of the House of Valois...

 and his daughter Jeanne, along with a large number of nobles returning from crusading with the Teutonic Knights

Teutonic Knights

The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem , commonly the Teutonic Order , is a German medieval military order, in modern times a purely religious Catholic order...

, including Count Gaston Phoebus and Lord Jean de Grailly.

The armies were composed very differently, the peasant army under the leadership of Guillaume Cale

Guillaume Cale

Guillaume Cale was a wealthy peasant from the town of Mello in the Beauvais north of Paris, who rose to fame as the leader of the Peasant Jacquerie which exploded into violence in May 1358 and rampaged for a month...

 was several thousand Beauvais peasants with a core of 400 Parisians, sent by Etienne Marcel

Étienne Marcel

Etienne Marcel was provost of the merchants of Paris under King John II, called John the Good .Etienne Marcel was born into the wealthy Parisian bourgeoisie, being the son of the clothier Simon Marcel and his wife Isabelle Barbou...

, the leader of the Paris commune following a simultaneous uprising in the city. The force was poorly armed, untrained, and lacking in even the basics of tactical nous. Opposed to them was a smaller force of French nobles eked out by English mercenaries, routiers

Routiers

The routiers were mercenaries associated with free companies who terrorized the French countryside during the Hundred Years War. The word routier is French for "road-man", referring to their travelling nature. -Background:Routiers were a product of their time...

 and a few Royal troops. They were led by a pretender to the throne of France, King Charles II of Navarre

Charles II of Navarre

Charles II , called "Charles the Bad", was King of Navarre 1349-1387 and Count of Évreux 1343-1387....

, who brought a substantial body of his own men with him. The noble army was between 1,500 and 2,500 strong, the peasants probably double this size.

The battle

On the morning of the 10 June 1358, the peasant army was lined up on the hillside near Mello, archers in the front rank, infantry behind them and cavalry forming an emergency reserve. The position was a strong one and the force of nobles, being weaker in numbers than their opponents, would have had difficulties in breaking through the peasant army's lines had the situation remained the same. However, Charles of Navarre had a plan to deal with the peasant leader Guillaume Cale before hostilities began, thus cutting the head off his opponent's army. A message was dispatched inviting Cale for treaty talks with the leader of the noble army, inviting the rebels to disperse unharmed. Cale was offered safe-passage through the noble army for the talks and foolishly agreed. Once he entered the noble lines he was seized and thrown in irons. That evening he was tortured to death along with the remnants of his army. The medieval codes of chivalry

Chivalry

Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...

 did not apparently apply to peasant leaders.

With their leader gone, the peasant army’s morale plummeted, their line shaking apart and allowing a cavalry charge to tear through their centre, causing them to break into a shapeless mass. This mass was then systematically exterminated, the charge led by Charles of Navarre. Significantly, even against such inferior opposition, the main body of the French noble army fought on foot demonstrating that they had learnt the lesson of the ineffectiveness of cavalry against archers in a secure position taught at the Battle of Crécy

Battle of Crécy

The Battle of Crécy took place on 26 August 1346 near Crécy in northern France, and was one of the most important battles of the Hundred Years' War...

twelve years before. All of the peasants were hunted down and killed on the spot, or later in great mass executions by beheading, hanging or even more violent deaths.

Battle of Meaux

The second engagement of the battle was fought simultaneously in the nearby town of Meaux, where the garrison of the castle of Marché was preparing for an assault. Realising that the peasant army was not prepared for a straight battle in the streets of the town, the two dozen soldiers in the keep sallied out on horseback. The peasant army had been feasting with the sympathetic townsfolk the night before, and were still hazy from their excesses when the cavalry hit their packed ranks. The Parisian forces fought hardest before breaking, but within minutes the entire army was nothing but a panicked rabble blocking every street away from the castle. They were joined by the town’s populace, who also feared vengeance for their support of the peasants, and the cavalry simply hacked their way through the masses, killing dozens if not hundreds of people for the loss of just one of their own. When the peasants had been driven out the entire town was razed to the ground as punishment for disloyalty.

Aftermath

Refugees spread out across the countryside where they were exterminated along with thousands of other peasants, many innocent of any involvement in the rebellion, by the vengeful nobles and their mercenary allies. Villages were burnt, crops destroyed and families executed, reducing a valuable farming area into a wasteland as revenge for the peasant’s attempt to reverse the social order. The Beauvais and many unaffected surrounding areas were thus blighted for decades to come. The Paris Jacquerie collapsed without the support of the food producing peasants in the countryside, and the entire area was within noble control again by the end of the year.