The Collaborative International Dictionary
Jacquerie \Jacque`rie"\, n. [F.] The name given to a revolt of French peasants against the nobles in 1358, the leader assuming the contemptuous title, Jacques Bonhomme, given by the nobles to the peasantry. Hence, any revolt of peasants.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1520s, from Middle French jacquerie "peasants or villeins collectively," from Jacques, the proper name, which is used as Jack is used in English, in the sense of "any common fellow." So, also, "the rising of the northern French peasants against the nobles, 1357-8," from a French usage. Etymologically, Jacques is from Late Latin Iacobus (see Jacob).
Wiktionary
n. A violent revolt by peasants.
Wikipedia
The Jacquerie was a popular revolt by peasants that took place in northern France in the early summer of 1358 during the Hundred Years' War. The revolt was centered in the valley of the Oise north of Paris and was suppressed after a few weeks of violence. This rebellion became known as "the Jacquerie" because the nobles derided peasants as "Jacques" or "Jacques Bonhomme" for their padded surplice, called a " jacque". The aristocratic chronicler Jean Froissart and his source, the chronicle of Jean le Bel, referred to the leader of the revolt as Jacque Bonhomme ("Jack Goodfellow"), though in fact the Jacquerie 'great captain' was named Guillaume Cale. The word jacquerie became a synonym of peasant uprisings in general in both English and French.
Usage examples of "jacquerie".
To secure a new outbreak of jacqueries, it is only necessary that central control, already thrown into disorder, should be withdrawn.
At Auxon,[59] on an estate spared by the great jacquerie of July, 1789, the woods are ravaged, and the peasants, enraged at being denounced by the keepers, march to the chateau, which is occupied by an old man and a child.
A few months later the Assembly will oblige the King to declare that the proceedings begun against the jacquerie of Brittany shall be regarded as null and void, and that the arrested insurgents shall be set free.
The jacquerie subsides, and it seems as if the newly restored order would be maintained.
In fact, it is a Jacobin and plebeian invasion, and, consequently, conquest, dispossession, and extermination, - in Gard, a swarm of National Guards copy the jacquerie: the dregs of the Comtat come to the surface and cover Vaucluse with its scum.
The seventh jacquerie is drawing near, this one universal and final - at first brutal, and then legal and systematic, undertaken and carried out on the strength of abstract principles by leaders worthy of the means they employ.
Robespierre from the rostrum[7] excuses jacqueries, refuses to call castle-burners brigands, and justifies the insurgents of Soissons, Nancy, Avignon, and the colonies.
From the first, they organize street riots and jacqueries in the rural districts, they let loose on society prostitutes and ruffians, vile and savage beasts.
In ten of the departments the seventh jacquerie continues the sixth without a break.
This department is one of those in which the seventh jacquerie is merely a prolongation of the sixth.