The number of men who had thus risen amounted to five thousand, and the rising extended to the outskirts of Paris.

They had begun it from sheer necessity and love of justice, for their lords oppressed instead of defending them; but before long they proceeded to the most hateful and criminal deeds.

They took and destroyed from top to bottom the strong castle of Ermenonville, where they put to death a multitude of men and dames of noble family who had taken refuge there.

For some time the nobles no longer went about as before; none of them durst set a foot outside the fortified places." Jacquery had taken the form of a fit of demagogic fury, and the Jacks [or Goodfellows] swarming out of their hovels were the terror of the castles.
Had Marcel provoked this bloody insurrection?
There is strong presumption against him; many of his contemporaries say he had; and the dauphin himself wrote on the 30th of August, 1359, to the Count of Savoy, that one of the most heinous acts of Marcel and his partisans was exciting the folks of the open country in France, of Beauvaisis and Champagne, and other districts, against the nobles of the said kingdom; whence so many evils have proceeded as no man should or could conceive." It is quite certain, however, that, the insurrection having once broken out, Marcel hastened to profit by it, and encouraged and even supported it at several points.

Amongst other things he sent from Paris a body of three hundred men to the assistance of the peasants who were besieging the castle of Ermenonville.