Abstract: This article uses the case of the village of Sérignan (Hérault) to shed light on the workings of village government and its transformation in the face of war in Languedoc in the fourteenth century. Beginning in the middle of that century, faced with fiscal and financial difficulties, the people tried to set up a “counter-oligarchy” where they challenged and monitored the elites, which was likely to have tilted the workings of the oligarchic municipal government in favor of poor taxpayers.
