Timoteus Elmo

Guillaume Cale Timoteus Elmo

Publisher Marketing: Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Guillaume Cale (sometimes anglicised to William Kale, also known as Guillaume Caillet, popularly known as Jacques Bonhomme ("Jack Goodfellow") or Callet.) was a wealthy peasant from the town of Mello in the Beauvais north of Paris, who rose to fame as the leader of the Peasant Jacquerie which exploded into violence in May 1358 and rampaged for a month unchecked until the Battle of Mello on the 10 June. Cale's origins are unknown, it is not clear how old he was at the time of the uprising, nor is anything known about his family and business ties, except that he was a reasonably well-off farmer. In 1358 the Beauvais was perhaps the only region of France not utterly ravaged by twenty years of warfare with England. It was still remarkably prosperous despite the attentions of the Black Death, and maintained its wealth under the protection of the household troops of the French king and the other nobles who lived in and around Paris and depended on the region for their food and for taxation. However, in 1356, King John II was captured by the English at the battle of Poitiers. His exorbitant ransom began to drain the already depleted French treasury and the noble protection began to slip.