Étienne Marcel

Étienne Marcel (born c. 1316—died July 31, 1358, Paris) was a bourgeois leader, a clothier and provost of the merchants of Paris, who played a major part in the Paris revolution of 1355–58 and was for a time able to coerce the government into considering reforms.

Marcel came of a family of cloth merchants, his grandfather having been the wealthy Pierre Marcel (d. 1305), whose commercial enterprises covered all Europe. After the death of his father, Simon (c. 1333), Marcel himself entered the family trade and, by 1350, had become provost of the Grande-Confrérie of Notre Dame and, by 1354, provost of all the Parisian merchants.

In November 1355, after King John II of France had called the Estates General to collect money for the continuing war against the English (the Hundred Years’ War, 1337–1453), Marcel counteracted the King by proposing that the assembly administer the tax money. After John was captured at Poitiers (September 1356), Marcel in early 1357 led a hostile assembly that wanted to remove John’s corrupt officials and that desired to have John’s son, the Dauphin (later Charles V), placed under its tutelage. Later Charles was able to check some of the revolutionary furor, but he still needed money that the assembly controlled.

In November 1357, after helping Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, escape from imprisonment in the castle of Arleux, Marcel realized that with Charles the Bad’s support he could force the Dauphin to submit. Marcel assassinated two of the Dauphin’s marshals, frightening the Dauphin into believing that Marcel was the true head of government. After the Dauphin left Paris, Marcel began a defense of the city. In May 1358 he acted in concert with the Jacquerie (q.v.), who were revolting against the nobles; but when the revolt was put down in June, Marcel’s popularity and power collapsed. In desperation he sought aid from the Flemish and even the English before he was assassinated that July.

His last objectives were far from the idealism of his early reforms: he desired to make himself king and to aid the interests of the King of Navarre. Marcel failed because he lacked a following outside Paris and could not make a moderate compromise that would have given him a wider base of support.