French unions lead nationwide strikes over wages and living costs
French trade unions staged a nationwide day of strikes and marches on Thursday for higher wages and in support of high-school protests, AP and other outlets report, piling pressure on President Emmanuel Macron's government. Around 70,000 police were deployed; unions counted more than 250,000 protesters in dozens of cities by midday, while authorities cited about 270,000 outside Paris. Schools, rail lines and some public services were disrupted after weeks of unrest over living costs, education and budget cuts. Read at The Guardian →
The Jacquerie
What happened then
In late May 1358 peasants in the Beauvaisis rose against the nobility in the revolt remembered as the Jacquerie, named for the nobles' scornful nickname for a peasant, “Jacques Bonhomme.” Castles were stormed, records burned and several nobles killed before the rising spread across parts of northern France.
What caused it
France was deep in the Hundred Years' War. King John II had been captured by the English at Poitiers in 1356, mercenary companies preyed on the countryside, and peasants were pressed for money and labor to rebuild fortified houses while harvests and order failed.
How it was resolved
The dauphin Charles and the nobles regrouped. Near Meaux and elsewhere the poorly armed Jacques were crushed; the nobleman Charles of Navarre and others led bloody reprisals, and the chronicler Jean Froissart described mass killings of peasants.
How it turned out
Within weeks the Jacquerie was over. It left a long French memory of how war, tax and hunger can fuse into revolt — and of how quickly an unorganized rising can be broken when the armed classes close ranks.
What the philosophers say
In Book V of the Politics, Aristotle treats civil strife as something with identifiable causes, not as random anger. “Inequality,” he writes, is a root of revolution, because people rise when they think they have less than their due — of wealth, honor or voice — under the existing order. He also warns that leaders who ignore those grievances, or answer them only with force, pour oil on the fire. Aristotle is no cheerleader for the mob; he wants a constitution stable enough that ordinary people need not take to the streets. The practical lesson travels: when wages, schools and living costs feel unfair for long enough, a polity that shrugs is inviting the very disorder it fears.
Sources: Aristotle, Politics Book V (MIT Internet Classics Archive) · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Aristotle
Sources: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: The Jacquerie (Wikisource) · Wikipedia: Jacquerie
Further reading: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman