Étienne Marcel
Étienne Marcel (* between 1302 and 1310; † July 31, 1358 in Paris) was a leading merchant and head of the citizenship of Paris . He led the first bourgeois revolt in French history against royal authority in the Middle Ages and has therefore been considered a national hero since the French Revolution .
Origin and office
Marcel came from an established merchant family from the Parisian bourgeoisie, the son of the cloth merchant Simon Marcel and Isabelle Barbou. He was married twice, first to Jeanne de Dammartin and then to Marguerite des Essars, who survived him. Especially through the brother of his second wife, Philippe des Essars, he came into contact with circles of the royal financial administration. In 1350 Marcel was first mentioned as Grande-Confrérie de Notre Dame ("Head of the Brotherhood of Notre-Dame"), in 1354 he was named Prévôt des marchands de Paris ("Vogt of the merchants in Paris") as the successor to Jean de Pacy. elected.
The latter was the most important office given by the bourgeoisie of medieval Paris independently of the royal will. The Prévôt des marchands was elected every two years by representatives of all bourgeois classes from among the ranks of the Seine river traders. He was chairman of a civil tribunal that exercised feudal jurisdiction over the streets and districts of the city owned by the River Merchants' Guild. He was responsible for the protection of Hanseatic privileges as well as jurisdiction in matters relating to the river traders' trade. Furthermore, he had judicial power over the dimensions , wine export and the oak. With the vigilante guard (called "Sitzwache") placed at his side, he also exercised police powers at the posts assigned to river traders such as the port, the quays or the city fountain. The prominent position of the river traders in the office of prévôt des marchands was due to their economic importance for the city, because they had the sole monopoly on the transport of goods on the Seine within Paris to the bridge of Mantes . The historical significance of the river traders for the city is still immortalized today in the city arms of Paris.
The Estates General 1355
By the middle of the 14th century, France found itself in a deep political, social and economic crisis. The defining event of that time was the Hundred Years War against England, which had a negative effect on the economic foundations of the simple rural population in France , especially in raids and raids ( chevauchée ) by English soldiers. Several waves of plague , which broke in all regions of the country since 1347, contributed the rest to this situation. The inability of the nobility to protect the common people from the ravages of war favored a political emancipation of the urban bourgeoisie against the feudal tutelage of the privileged class. The Italian city republics, which were emerging at the same time and were in close economic contact with France, and the cities of Flanders, which in the first half of the 14th century had fought for extensive autonomy from any sovereign power, served as a model.
In 1355, the French cities took the first step in gaining lasting influence over royal politics. This year the crown was insolvent, whereupon King John II. The Estates General convened in Paris. The king asked the cities of northern France, represented in the third estate , for a special levy with which he could at least pay his soldiers for the war against England. Here Étienne Marcel appeared for the first time as spokesman for the third estate and achieved a restriction of monarchical power. Because as a condition for the consent of the king's demands, he had to guarantee the bourgeoisie participation in the royal financial policy.
In the summer of 1356 the Black Prince led a raid through the south of France to the north as far as the Loire . King John II marched against him with an army of knights and soldiers, but in the Battle of Maupertuis on September 19, 1356 he was defeated by the Black Prince and was taken prisoner by the English.
The reform 1356-1357
On September 29, 1356 the eldest son of the king, the Dauphin Karl (later King Charles V), moved into Paris, appointed himself the king's deputy ( lieutenant du roi ) and took over the business of government. The Dauphin was not very popular, especially since he had no previous government experience. He convened the estates of northern France in October of that year, where the first clergy under the Bishop of Laon, Robert le Coq , in particular , expressed his displeasure with the royal government. The bishop was primarily pursuing personal goals by openly demanding his patron, the imprisoned King Charles II of Navarre (called "the bad one"), who was a cousin of the Dauphin, as ruler of the country. At the same time, however, together with the bishop, Étienne Marcel appeared again as spokesman for the citizenship, who this time presented a comprehensive reform concept for a fundamental restructuring of the state.
This reform aimed to put the royal government under the supervision of a council body appointed by the Estates-General. The underlying motive was to achieve constant control over the royal finances, which could also ensure an influence on the entire government of the country. To this end, 22 royal civil servants were to be dismissed and replaced by 50 MPs from all three estates. Furthermore, commissioners appointed by the estates were to be sent to all provinces of the kingdom to represent the state authority there. In addition, the Dauphin should include 28 members of the estates in his personal council ( curia regis ). In order to accommodate the Dauphin, Marcel and the citizens guaranteed him fees for the formation of a 30,000-strong army with which the war was to be won.
The Dauphin declared himself ready to reconsider this reform until a meeting was held soon, and in the spring of 1357 traveled to Metz to meet with Emperor Charles IV , whom he asked in vain for support in the war against England. During his absence, the Dauphin had appointed his brother, Count Ludwig von Anjou , to be his deputy in Paris and commissioned him to reform the circulation of coins. But this led to the first violent uprising of the citizenry, which forced the Dauphin to return quickly to Paris. In a new meeting of the estates called in February 1357, the Dauphin accepted Marcel's reform program and confirmed it in March of that year in a great ordinance . For the first time in its history, the French state adopted a class-democratic constitution ( constitutionalism ) based on the example of England.
However, King John II refused to recognize his son's orderly due to his imprisonment in England and thus regarded it as invalid. The Dauphin, however, indicated to the estates that he did not feel bound by his father's instructions and thus prevented an open conflict with the estates for the time being.
The uprising and the Jacquerie 1358
In November 1357, the King of Navarre, Charles the Evil, managed to escape from his prison in Normandy . Above all, the Norman and Breton nobility, who insisted on more autonomy, and the old opponents of the Valois family gathered around him . Marcel's position was strengthened in relation to the Dauphin, who now had to fear that the estates in Karl might find an alternative to him as regent of France if he did not meet them. Marcel was thus at the height of his power, which he also demonstrated to the Dauphin when he barricaded him to prevent him from leaving Paris to fight marauding mercenary gangs. In February 1358 he forced the Dauphin to convene a further meeting of the estates, at which he demanded the ban on all provincial days in favor of a uniform representation of the estates for northern France. This was primarily intended to deprive the Dauphin of the support of the broad rural population, who traditionally were suspicious of the urban bourgeoisie. This time the Dauphin with the backing of the nobility refused to agree to these wishes, which led to a break between him and Marcel as well as the bourgeoisie and the nobility.
The situation escalated after the citizen Perrin murdered the treasurer des Dauphins, who then entrusted his marshals of Champagne (Jean de Conflans) and Normandy (Robert de Clermont) with the prosecution. They forcibly pulled the killer from his sanctuary and hanged him in a public square. On February 22, 1358, the Parisian bourgeoisie responded by storming the Palais de la Cité with 3,000 men, led by Marcel, and killing the marshals with axes in front of the Dauphin. She compelled the Dauphin to approve of this act by letting him put on the red and blue citizen cap that Marcel had introduced a few days earlier as a mark of recognition for his supporters. The bodies of the marshals were put on public display, which Marcel described as two aristocrats who "wanted to murder the nation". The Dauphin had to be formally legitimized as regent of the kingdom by the citizenship, as well as accept four of its members, including Marcel, in his State Council and appoint Bishop Robert le Coq as principal minister (prime minister).
But soon afterwards Marcel made the mistake of letting the Dauphin move out of town. The Dauphin gave as an excuse to want to reconcile the nobility with the Parisian bourgeoisie, but as soon as he had left the city, he moved to Compiègne , where he convened a new meeting of estates on May 4th, which expressed their loyalty to him. In doing so, however, he put Marcel and his demands above all in the guise of illegality, as a movement directed against the existing order.
Encouraged by the revolt in Paris, an uprising of the rural population against their noble landlords broke out with extreme severity on May 28th in Beauvaisis, which quickly spread over the northern Île de France , all of Picardy and Champagne . After the nickname Jacques Bonhomme , this uprising became known as Jacquerie . Marcel was in close contact with the military leaders of the Jacquerie, through whom he wanted to expand his political influence on the Parisian region while at the same time fighting the nobility. However, this uprising was not directed against the institution of kingship per se; in fact, the rebels viewed themselves as executors of a royal will by carrying the lily banner before them. With the Paris city militia, Marcel took an active part in the fighting and found support in several cities in the Île de France such as Senlis , Amiens , Laon and Clermont-en-Beauvaisis . But this was the first time that Marcel aroused suspicion directed against him among his supporters from the bourgeoisie and craftsmen, as the majority of them were opposed to the peasant uprising.
The downfall
Faced with the threat posed by the Jacquerie and exasperated by the murders of the marshals that had not been punished by the Dauphin, the nobility rallied around Charles the Evil. Within a few weeks he managed to put down the uprising with merciless severity. In order to maintain his power, Marcel was now forced to approach the King of Navarre and granted him and his English soldiers entry into Paris on June 14, 1358. Charles the Evil was himself of Capetian descent and believed that, with the help of the nobility, but also of the urban bourgeoisie, he could dare to reach for the French crown. Marcel obtained the appointment of Charlemagne as city captain by acclamation , who in return recognized the previous reforms. However, this did not find support from the nobility, who had hoped for the subjugation of the cities from the king of Navarre after the suppression of the rural uprising. The nobility therefore defected to the Dauphin's side, while Marcel called on the cities of the Île de France to recognize Charles of Navarre as regent. When the Dauphin's army disbanded at Charenton in early July 1358 , Marcel seemed to have prevailed with his line.
However, an opposition group around the citizen Jean Maillard against Marcel had now come together within the Paris citizenship . Among them, the English support for Charles of Navarre in particular had aroused suspicion, when England was France's main enemy. At the same time, they saw in the Dauphin a possible alternative to the King of Navarre, since the Dauphin rejected the London treaty negotiated by his father in May with England, which included an exorbitant ransom and the cession of large areas to England. When it came to violent clashes between the English mercenaries and the assembled crowd on July 31, 1358, Étienne Marcel was overwhelmed by the group around Jean Maillard and together with most of his while trying to calm the situation at the gate of Saint-Martin Followers killed. After Jacob van Artevelde in 1345 and Cola di Rienzo in 1354, he was the third citizen leader to be overthrown by his own supporters.
On August 2nd, the Dauphin was able to move back into Paris and restore the traditional monarchical order.
Conclusion
With Marcel's reform work of 1356/57 but also the open revolt of 1358, the Parisian bourgeoisie and large circles of the clergy opposed the claim to sole rule of the French kingship for the first time. The changes formulated by Marcel were not directed against the existence of the kingship per se, but in the end aimed at the participation of the estates in the political decision-making processes of the king, following the example of the English parliamentarism developing at this time . Ultimately, this development failed because of the lack of, but necessary, cohesion between the classes, especially because of the different economic and social interests between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, but also because of the rapidly changing political circumstances caused by the war with England. In view of the constant threat from the war opponent, the estates finally preferred to gather under royalty as a protective roof, while at the same time renouncing political participation. After the end of the Hundred Years War in the middle of the 15th century, this resulted in a strengthened kingship, which in modern times led to monarchical absolutism . Only the French Revolution was able to bring about an end to the old order ( Ancien Régime ).
A few years after the uprising of 1358, the Dauphin Charles had the Bastille built in order to prevent future popular uprisings in the city.
In 1356, Marcel had started building a new city wall for Paris , which was only completed at the beginning of the 15th century. The following year he acquired the Maison aux Piliers on Place de Grève for the river traders' guild (cost: 2,880 livres) and established the permanent official residence of the Prévôt des marchands there . In the 16th century, this building was demolished because of its dilapidation and replaced by a Renaissance palace , which became the Hôtel de Ville (town hall) in the course of the city's history .
In post-revolutionary France, a comprehensive commemoration of Étienne Marcel began, whose revolt showed several parallels to the upheavals of 1792. In Paris, in addition to a monument, a street ( Rue Étienne Marcel ) and a Métro station named after this ( Étienne Marcel (Métro Paris) ) on line 4 are dedicated to him.
literature
- Joachim Ehlers : History of France in the Middle Ages . Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-17-009801-2 .
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ The office of Prévôt des marchands probably existed since the reign of King Philip II August , although the first Prévôt was not mentioned by name until 1263 with Evrouin de Valenciennes.
- ↑ The Office of the Prévôt des marchands should not be confused with that of the Prévôt de Paris . The latter was appointed directly by the King and held the function of a Bailli (royal governor) for the entire area of the Vice- County of Paris. The Prévôt de Paris was able to revise the resolutions of the Prévôt des marchands .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Marcel, Etienne |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | rich cloth merchant and head of the Seine merchants in Paris |
| DATE OF BIRTH | between 1302 and 1310 |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 31, 1358 |
| Place of death | Paris |