proves the
obscure circumstance of its origin.

The atrocious insurrection, called _La Jacquerie_, was a term which
originated in cruel derision. When John of France was a prisoner in
England, his kingdom appears to have been desolated by its wretched
nobles, who, in the indulgence of their passions, set no limits to their
luxury and their extortion. They despoiled their peasantry without
mercy, and when these complained, and even reproached this tyrannical
nobility with having forsaken their sovereign, they were told that
_Jacque bon homme_ must pay for all. But _Jack good-man_ came forward in
person--a leader appeared under this fatal name, and the peasants
revolting in madness, and being joined by all the cut-throats and
thieves of Paris, at once pronounced condemnation on every gentleman in
France! Froissart has the horrid narrative; twelve thousand of these
_Jacques bon hommes_ expiated their crimes; but the _Jacquerie_, who had
received their first appellation in derision, assumed it as their _nom
de guerre_.

In the spirited Memoirs of the Duke of Guise, written by himself, of his
enterprise against the kingdom of Naples, we find a curious account of
this political art of marking people by odious nicknames. "Gennaro and
Vicenzo," says the duke, "cherished underhand that aversion the
rascality had for the better sort of citizens and civiller people, who,
by the insolencies they suffered from these, not unjustly hated them.
The better class inhabiting the suburbs of the Virgin were called _black
cloaks_, and the ordinary sort of people took the name of _lazars_, both
in French and English an old word for leprous beggar, and hence the
_lazaroni_ of Naples." We can easily conceive the evil eye of a _lazar_
when he encountered a _black cloak_! The Duke adds--"Just as, at the
beginning of the revolution, the revolters in Flanders formerly took
that of _beggars_; those of Guienne, that of _eaters_; those of
Normandy that of _bare-feet_; and of Beausse and Soulogne, of
_wooden-pattens_." In the late French revolution, we observed the
extremes indulged by both parties chiefly concerned in revolution--the
wealthy and the poor! The rich, who, in derision, called their humble
fellow-citizens by the contemptuous term of _sans-culottes_, provoked a
reacting injustice from the populace, who, as a dreadful return for only
a slight, rendered the innocent term of _aristocrate_ a signal for
plunder or slaughter!

It is a curio