The date problem
There was no English peasants’ revolt in 1328. The great English rising, usually called the Peasants’ Revolt, took place in 1381, during the reign of Richard II. If a source places it in 1328, that is an error, perhaps a slip for 1381.
The year 1328 does mark the end of a real rural uprising, though, in the county of Flanders, in what is now Belgium and northern France. It is sometimes called the Flemish peasant revolt, or the revolt of maritime Flanders, and it ran from about 1323 to 1328. This article covers that event.
Flanders in the early fourteenth century
Flanders was one of the richest regions of Europe. Its towns, including Bruges, Ypres and Ghent, were centers of cloth production and trade, and many of them depended on the wool trade with England. The county was a fief of the French crown, but it had its own count, Louis of Nevers, who was a loyal ally of the French king.
The countryside, especially the coastal area near the North Sea, was different from the great cities. The farmers there were often relatively free, and some were well-off, owning land and cattle on drained marshland. They paid taxes and dues to the count and his officials, and by the 1320s many were angry about how those were collected.
What provoked the rising
Historians point to several overlapping causes, and their relative weight is debated. The count was seen as favoring the French and the town elites. The aftermath of earlier wars with France, including the Flemish victory at Courtrai in 1302 and later defeats, had left heavy payments and reparations hanging over the county. Local officials were accused of corruption and abuse.
The revolt began in 1323 in the coastal districts of the Franc of Bruges and around Veurne. A farmer named Nicolaas Zannekin, from Lampernisse, became one of its best-known leaders. The movement gained support in some towns, with Bruges and Ypres joining at times, so it was not purely a rural rising.
The count captured, France intervenes
By 1325 the rebels were strong enough to seize the count himself. Louis of Nevers was held at Bruges for a time. French pressure forced his release, and a settlement, usually called the Peace of Arques, was agreed in 1326. The terms did not last. The rebels kept up resistance, and the towns and the countryside remained divided. Louis, who had fled to France, asked for help from the French crown.
The new French king, Philip VI, came to the throne in 1328. In the late summer of that year he led an army into Flanders to restore the count. At Cassel, a hill town in French Flanders, a Flemish force under Zannekin was camped on the heights.
The Battle of Cassel
The battle took place on 23 August 1328. Accounts of the fight vary in details, but the standard story is that the Flemings, who were mostly on foot, attacked the French camp while the French nobles were not ready. French cavalry then rallied and counterattacked. Zannekin was killed and the Flemish force was crushed. Numbers of the dead are given in chronicles, but they are not reliable.
The result is often contrasted with Courtrai in 1302, where Flemish militia had beaten French knights. Cassel shows that the success at Courtrai was not a rule: well-led cavalry could still defeat infantry. Even so, the balance between mounted knights and foot soldiers varied from battle to battle and depended heavily on ground and preparation.
The aftermath
After the victory, Louis of Nevers returned and reasserted his authority in Flanders. Punishments fell hard on the rebellious districts and their leaders. Rebels lost property, and fines and confiscations were imposed. The towns that had sided with the rebels were also penalized, and some lost privileges for a time.
Tension between the count, the cities and the countryside did not disappear, and Flanders remained a place of conflict in the following decades. In the 1340s, the Hundred Years War drew Flanders further into the quarrel between England and France, and Louis himself died fighting at the Battle of Crecy in 1346.
Why the Flemish revolt is worth knowing
The Flemish rising shows that rural resistance in medieval Europe was not limited to serfs. Here, many of the rebels were free and prosperous farmers who objected to taxation, officials and political choices made by their lord. It also shows how local conflicts could turn into international ones, because the French crown was willing to send an army to protect a loyal vassal.
For readers looking for the English story, the key dates remain those of 1381. The Flemish events of the 1320s are a separate episode with different causes, different people and a different outcome.