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The poor, unable to comprehend economic theory, blamed their increasing poverty on the machinations of the great and proposed to better their lot by killing their masters. In France, ravaged by the Hundred Years War, the rebel mood showed itself in town and country. In Paris, the Estates General of 1355, led by the provost of merchants, Etienne Marcel, made revolutionary demands to control the national finances and hence the kingdom. Marcel turned demagogue, courted the mob, invented the famous phrase, “the will of the people,” and also the liberty cap of red and blue. But as happens so often, the rebel defeated his own purposes by his exorbitance. In July 1358, Marcel was assassinated.
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