Battle of Mello The Battle of Mello was the decisive and largest engagement of the Peasant Jacquerie of 1358 , a rebellion of peasants in the Beauvais region of France , which caused an enormous amount of damage to this wealthy region at the height of the Hundred Years War with England . The battle was in fact two separate engagements , a major battle at Mello and a smaller one at the nearby town of Meaux , which the battle is also sometimes named after . The Road to Battle . The rebellion in the Beauvais was a major part of the Peasant Jacquerie which exploded into life in the spring and summer of 1358 . Although the head of the rebellion was centred on Paris , the body was focused in the region to the north - east , and there peasants , frustrated by the failures of the nobility to protect them from English raiders and heavy taxation had risen up , forming village councils to rule regions and small armed forces of young men to maintain order . These peasant bands also attacked surrounding noble houses , many of which were only occupied by women and children , the men being with the armies fighting the English . The occupants were frequently massacred , the houses looted and burnt in an orgy of violence which shocked France and ravaged this once prosperous region . The nobles ’ response was furious . Aristocracy from across France united together and formed an army in Normandy which was joined by English and foreign mercenaries , sensing payment and a chance to loot the defeated peasants . This army moved into the Beauvais , preparing to strike at the peasants who had set up camp at the plateau above Mello near Silly - le - Long . The peasants had arrived there three days before , many ragged bands united under a leader from Paris . Another army , 800 - strong under Jean Vaillant and Pierre Gilles , was dispatched to Meaux , where they besieged the castle of Marché which contained Lady Jeanne de Bourbon , the wife of the Dauphin Charles and his daughter Jeanne , along with a large number of nobles returning from crusading with the Teutonic Knights , including Count Gaston Phoebus and Lord Jean de Grailly . The armies were composed very differently , the peasant army under the leadership of Guillaume Cale was several thousand Beauvais peasants with a core of 400 Parisians , sent by Etienne Marcel , the leader of the Paris commune following a simultaneous uprising in the city . The force was poorly armed and untrained , though a few mercenaries and members of the lesser nobility provided limited leadership . The motives of the latter for joining the uprising were mixed . Some were subsequently to claim that they acted under duress , while others may have been convinced that the Jacquerie were acting on behalf of the imprisoned king . Opposed to the peasants was a smaller force of French nobles eked out by English mercenaries , routiers and a few Royal troops . They were led by a pretender to the throne of France , King Charles II of Navarre , who brought a substantial body of his own men with him . The noble - led army was between 1 , 500 and 2 , 500 strong , the peasants probably double this size . The battle . On the morning of the 10 June 1358 , the peasant army was lined up on the hillside near Mello , archers in the front rank , infantry behind them and cavalry forming an emergency reserve . The position was a strong one and the force of nobles , being weaker in numbers than their opponents , would have had difficulties in breaking through the peasant army ' s lines had the situation remained the same . However , Charles of Navarre had a plan to deal with the peasant leader Guillaume Cale before hostilities began , thus cutting the head off his opponent ' s army . A message was dispatched inviting Cale for treaty talks with the leader of the noble army , inviting the rebels to disperse unharmed . Cale was offered safe - passage through the noble - led army for the talks and foolishly agreed . Once he entered the noble lines he was seized and thrown in irons . That evening he was tortured to death and the remnants of his army were scattered . The medieval codes of chivalry did not apparently apply to peasant leaders . With their leader gone , the peasant army ’ s morale plummeted and their line fell apart , allowing a cavalry charge to break through their centre . This caused the peasants to break into a shapeless mass . This mass was then systematically exterminated , the charge led by Charles of Navarre . Significantly , even against such inferior opposition , the main body of the French noble army fought on foot demonstrating that they had learnt the lesson of the ineffectiveness of cavalry against archers in a secure position taught at the Battle of Crécy twelve years before . Many of the peasants were hunted down and killed on the spot , or later in great mass executions by beheading , hanging or even more violent deaths . Battle of Meaux . The second engagement of the battle was fought simultaneously in the nearby town of Meaux , where the garrison of the castle of Marché was preparing for an assault . Realising that the peasant army was not prepared for a conventional battle in the streets of the town , the two dozen soldiers in the keep sallied out on horseback . The peasant army had been feasting with the sympathetic townsfolk the night before , and were still hazy from their excesses when the cavalry hit their packed ranks . The Parisian forces fought hardest before breaking , but within minutes the entire army was nothing but a panicked rabble blocking every street away from the castle . They were joined by the town ’ s populace , who also feared vengeance for their support of the peasants , and the cavalry simply hacked their way through the masses , killing dozens if not hundreds of people for the loss of just one of their own . When the peasants had been driven out the entire town was razed to the ground as punishment for disloyalty . Aftermath . Refugees from the Jacquerie army and Meaux spread out across the countryside where they were exterminated along with thousands of other peasants , many innocent of any involvement in the rebellion , by the vengeful nobles and their mercenary allies . Villages were burnt , crops destroyed and families executed , reducing a valuable farming area into a wasteland as revenge for the peasant ’ s attempt to reverse the social order . The Beauvais and many unaffected surrounding areas were thus blighted for decades to come . The Paris Jacquerie collapsed without the support of the food producing peasants in the countryside , and the entire area was within noble control again by the end of the year .