The Croquant Revolt

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the greatest peasant revolt of the sixteenth century, the Croquants of Tard-Avisés was the third wave of the peasant revolts during the wars of religions which swamped many regions including Périgord, Limousin, Saintonge, Angoumois, Poitou, Agenais, Marche and Quercy and whole Guyenne. The Croquants was the first mass uprising of the sixteenth century with anti-noble and then anti-fiscal elements. Unlike the Pituats , the hostility towards the nobility was dominant to the anti-fiscal demands. Both Salmon and Heller perceived the Croquants upheavals as a class hostility rooted in the behaviors of the nobility during the religious war. On the other level, it’s possible, as have been seen by Tait, to understand the Croquants as hostility …show more content…

The first part of Croquants broke out in the woods of the Limousin, in the viscounty of Turenne where the first assembly was held. The local peasants were gathered to wage war against the brigands. Traditionally they should wait for the permission of their feudal overlords, but they decided to assemble without permission of anybody. They wanted to defend themselves against the brigands and soldiers who roamed their lands. Eventually, many villagers of …show more content…

Near the town of Dognon, at the third and biggest assembly, 12000 armed-peasants decided to send two representatives to present their grievances to the king. The movement very soon penetrated into Périgord Noir where was covered by the isolated hamlets in wooded lands to the southern Dordogne. At assembly in the forest of Abzac near Limeuil on 23 April, two different thoughts expressed by the leaders of the movement. First was a radical militant attitude by a certain, Papus or Paulliac , which targeted the corrupted tax-collectors and mismanagement of the nobility, in his speech “cattle-thieves”. He proposed a syndic for all plat-pays, the destruction of all manors and keeping the Croquant army in the name of the king. The second approach was a moderate attitude by Porquéry who asked for sending deputies to the king and sénéchal in order to represent the peasant grievances. On 22 May, before the Conseil d’Etat, Porquéry as the representative of the peasants asked for the elimination of the corruption of the tax-collectors, the prosecution of those nobles who had killed peasants, the suppression of unnecessary offices and the reduction of the taille. He also asked for an

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