Chronicles

Froissart is more sympathetic to the Flemish revolts against the Count of Flanders than he is to the Jacquerie or the English peasant revolts. This is another example of his sympathies toward the burgher class in his writings on Nobility, Burghers, and Peasants. Philip van Artevelde is presented as a heroic person, who says he is “ready to die for the people of Ghent” (232).

Nonetheless, whatever his sympathies, Froissart still opposes any major disturbance to the traditional medieval social and political hierarchy that kept the nobility at the top. He writes of the French victory over Artevelde’s forces as an event that benefited all of Europe. “After that victory, which was greatly to the honor and advantage of all Christendom and of all the gentry and nobility—for if the villeins had achieved their purpose, unexampled ravages and atrocities would have been committed by the commons in rebellion everywhere against the nobly born” (249-250). Despite the personal qualities of Philip van Artevelde and his supporters, their movement represented a threat to the fundamental social order in Froissart’s eyes. As Brereton notes, “He writes with a fuller understanding and warmth of the citizen-led revolts in the Netherlands than a purely aristocratic chronicler would have done, though generally careful to show that ultimately he is not on that side” (22).