Battle of Mello

Part of the Jacquerie of 1358

Date	10 June 1358
Location	Mello and Meaux, Beauvais, north-east of Paris
Result	Decisive noble victory

Belligerents

Noble coalition

Peasant Jacques army

Commanders and leaders

Charles II of Navarre

Guillaume Cale

Strength

1,500-2,500

4,000-5,000

Casualties and losses

light

almost total

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 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.

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