La jacquerie would have been Lalo's third opera (following Fiesque (1868) and Le roi d'Ys (1888)).

Coquard, a pupil of César Franck, was requested by the director of the Monte-Carlo Opera, Raoul Gunsbourg, to compose the rest.

Alexandre Dratwicki notes that the opera bears traces both of Richard Wagner and of Giacomo Meyerbeer (in particular the latter's Les Huguenots.

The opera is set in 1358, during the Jacquerie uprisings, in the village of Saint-Len de Cérent.

[5] After its premiere in Monaco the opera was performed at Aix-les-bains in September and at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in December 1895.