Why now ? In 2009 we were in the grip of what should now really be renamed from "the" to "a" financial crisis, and bless little Dan's innocent cotton socks, it must have seemed that that was the perfect moment to tell a tale of a bloodthirsty mob suffering repression from the elite. Oh Dan, my sweet summer child...
Then as now, egalitarianism was in the air. Jones quotes a contemporary French poem from shortly before the revolt, hinting that tensions had been building for years and were not just a British peculiarity. I set it here in prose :
There are three things of such a sort that they produce merciless destruction when they get the upper hand. One is a flood of water, another is a raging fire, and the third is the lesser people, the common multitude, for they will not be stopped by either reason or discipline.
As always with Dan Jones' books, what I like most is his ability to, in his own words, fulfil the "historian's most important duty : to tell, as accurately as possible, a cracking good story" but at the same time deal with things even-handedly and analytically. It would be easy to simplify this to the innocence of the egalitarian peasants and the villainy of the so-called "nobility", but Jones doesn't do this. He makes it clear that while indeed there were powerful economic forces behind the Peasant's Revolt, the way they acted soon became detestable. What began with legitimate grievances ended in an orgy of the most brutal violence for violence's sake, an uncontrolled, anarchic rampage with no goals beyond sheer destruction and bloody murder.
And he also gives a good many details not found in the standard narrative taught to schoolchildren. That version goes something like this : oppressed by the avaricious aristocracy, especially due to the notorious poll tax, the peasants rose in revolt. Led by Wat Tyler, they met King Richard at Smithfield, who promised to help them but immediately betrayed them. After Richard's henchman killed Tyler, everyone got bored and went home, and the peasants had to suffer yet worse oppression forever after.
This is an oversimplification. To start with, the initial poll tax wasn't in itself the main problem. The problem was endemic corruption. The poll tax itself was unfair, because it was being used to fund not just an arguably unavoidable war with France (albeit badly executed with little strategy), but also a wholly pointless private one against Portugal thanks to the nefarious John of Gaunt. And yet while the peasants rightly grumbled about it, the first poll tax wasn't unfordable, amounting to the equivalent of about three days wages for the poorest : hardly likely to win friends, but very much endurable.
Jones also makes it clear why the aristocracy thought this was a good idea. Thanks to the plague, the lower orders had seen massive wage rises while the upper echelons had not. So a one-off tax to defend the country ? Didn't seem like a bad plan at all.
And perhaps it would have worked, provided that had been the end of it. Of course it wasn't, and further, considerably larger taxes were required. Even though these were much more carefully implemented, scaled according to wealth rather than being a flat fee, it was now just too much to bear : it was not only unfair taxation, but the bulk of the tax fell on labourers who "had no voice at all." Taxation without representation indeed.
Thus began the Peasant's Revolt. It was in large part a spontaneous uprising of the commons, a genuine grass roots mass movement against oppression. But it was not entirely so, with from the start gangs of rebels pressing those who would prefer to steer clear into their ranks. This would continue right until the very end of the rebellion.
The demands of the peasants were mixed to say the least. The firebrand John Ball preached true equality for all in language that feels all too modern :
They are clothed in velvet and camlet furred with grise, and we be vestured with poor cloth: they have their wines, spices and good bread... and we have the pain and the travail, rain and wind in the fields, and by that which cometh of our labours they keep and maintain their estates... we be beaten, yet we have no sovereign to whom we may complain, nor that will hear us nor do us right.
Ball inflamed the commons so much that one of their early petitions called directly for the heads of those who they found responsible for their undeniably sorry lot in life. Needless to say, asking the young king to kill his chief advisors had absolutely no chance of success. While the peasants were more politically informed than the stereotype might suggest, clearly this rebellion hadn't been carefully thought through. Yet Jones is careful to note that in some ways the illiterate peasants were quite justified in their suspicion of book-learning, used as it was to oppress them with no chance of giving them access to any kind of academia. Their deliberate burning of records, a "damning funeral pyre of England's legal system", and their insult taken at King Richard's request for a set of written demands, becomes understandable. The two sides weren't speaking the same language.
Yet shortly afterwards, a group of much more moderate rebels met with the king at Mile End. At this point the rebellion was still mainly organised and coherent. The demands they made of Richard were entirely reasonable and restorative, not in the least bit revolutionary. To be sure, the feudal system was inherently unjust and unfair, but like all systems of government, if it's implemented correctly it could be far better on the ground than on paper. After all, if your lord has the right to claim some percentage of your earnings but doesn't actually do this, this is far better a situation than if he does. So the peasants demands were initially entirely moderate :
"It was a request for a countryside charter of justice. They asked him to make them free for ever [serfdom was by this point already uncommon] - themselves, their lands and their heirs. They asked, specifically, for a rent limit of 4d per acre... Finally, they asked that no man should be compelled to work except by employment under a regularly-reviewed contract."
Not exactly "workers of the world unite", let alone "eat the rich". But here the young Richard made a very foolish mistake. Richard acceded to their demands (though surely only as a way to buy time), but then for reasons best known to himself, he went much further. He gave the peasants license to hunt down those they thought responsible for their rotten situation. Granted, he framed it somewhat more moderately than this, telling them to bring the traitors before him for due legal process, but in the heated atmosphere of the times, with enough of the mob eager for blood, it failed spectacularly. The peasants took it, quite literally, as a license to kill. And kill they did.
What followed was a series of atrocities that came close to the utter ruin of the kingdom. Palaces and homes were set ablaze, mob justice settling petty grievances with beheadings. Panic begat panic; defendable positions were surrendered out of sheer fear. Looting and destruction were widespread but the least of the problems. Hats were nailed to heads and heads were stuck on spikes, summary executions were common and men were burned alive. The legal boundaries had become blurred with mob justice, with catastrophic results.
While John Ball had been preaching equality for a while, this proto-Marx had no grasp on political theory whatever, no alternative system of government besides bringing the old one down. I get the impression of a self-serving egomaniac, more interested in himself than his goals. He seem to have been completely undeterred by the death and destruction around him, or perhaps encouraged by it.
The rebels by this point were in such a state of bloodlust that they were hardly in a mood to hear lectures on sociology in any case. Contrary to the so-called "myth" of panic, they were not in any state to be reasoned with. They were unhinged.
This led to the second, more famous meeting with the teenage king, which does seem to have happened basically in accordance with the popular tale (Jones also provides some alternatives in the footnotes based on the different sources, but the usual version is the more likely, and the differences are in any case slight). The only nuance he adds here is that Tyler was drunk on power, making demands which, like those of Ball, were impossible for the king to meet : total equality, all Church property divided amongst the commons, no more outlawry. And now Richard's strategy of complete agreement proved successful :
Tyler's demand... had met with the one response that did not suit him : complete acquiescence. Part of the point of asking for such radical terms of peace had been to maintain the momentum of the revolt... Pursuing these sorts of demands kept the movement vital, idealistic and committed. But without such a central focus, it would inevitably dissolve back into local riots and isolated spates of rural complaint. Royal assent to his ludicrous demands guaranteed Tyler nothing.
This then was a smart move. Tyler wanted to inflame the king to use his refusal for propaganda for more recruits. By simply giving in, the king had at once rendered Tyler politically impotent. All that was needed was the slightest pretext, which was Tyler's rude behaviour, and he was famously cut down. The mob, having absolutely no clue what to do next, collapsed.
The wider rebellion, however, persisted for some weeks afterwards. If Ball had been a demagogue and Tyler an amateur general, then Richard became a truly pantomime tyrant. Jones hates Richard, and it's not hard to see why. The guy was about as bad as a medieval king could be. And yet while he did give the famous "villains you are, and villains you remain" speech, and had hundreds of rebels put to death (including Ball), it's not altogether a story of the establishment successfully crushing an uprising through sheer brutality. Many pardons were issued and respected. Eventually even a general pardon was issued for the commons. And it did nothing to solve the fundamental issues that had led to the rebellion, with king and Parliament almost immediately at odds and Richard going on to be a right little shit for the rest of his life. The rest, of course, is history. Hint : it didn't end well for Richard.
Overall, an outstanding read. It wastes not a single word and blends the analytic and the narrative perfectly. With vivid prose that doesn't fail to discuss the uncertainties of details, this, like Gaskill's The Ruin of All Witches, feels like it could almost be directly lifted from page to a big-budget TV miniseries. Judging this one on its own terms, I find it hard to give it anything less than 9/10.
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