The Ancient Regime

riva

-Under Louis XV.

, just a century

bornness. They seem capable of speech, and, when they stand erect, they display a human face. They are, in fact, men. They retire at night into their dens where they live o

h with hunger and of destitution. This description is, in respect of the first quarter of the century preceding the Revolution, far from being too vivid, it is rather too we

e on the grass of the fields. The first king in Europe could not be a great king if it was not for all the

ne on account of the excise and his bread on account of the taille," convinced "that he is a lost m

of bread, and placed it on the table before the king 'Sire,' said he, 'there is the bread on which your subjects now feed themselves.'" "In my own canton of Touraine men have been eating herbage more than a year." Misery finds company on all sid

bishop of Clermont-Fer

years past. . . .Flanders, especially, is greatly embarrassed; there is nothing to live on until the harvesting, which will not take place for two months. The provinces the best off are not able to help the others. Each bourgeois in each town is obliged to feed one or two poor persons and provide them with fourteen pounds of bread per week. In the little town of Chatellerault, (of 4,000 inhabitants), 1800 poor, this winter, are in that situation. . . . The poor outnumber those able to live without begging. . . while prosecutions for unpaid dues are carried on with unexampled rigor. The clothes of the poor, their last measure of flour and the latches on their doors are seized, etc. .. . The abbess of Jouarre told me yesterday that, in her canton, in Brie, most of the land had not been planted." It is not surprising that the famine spreads even to Paris. "Fears are entertained of next Wednesd

er the evil i

what?. . . I see poor people dying of destitution. They are paid fifteen sous a day, equal to a crown, for their load. Whole villages are either ruined or broken up, and none of the households recover. . . . Judging by what my neighbors tell me the inhabitants have diminished one-third. . . . The daily laborers are all leaving and taking refuge in the small towns. In many villages everybody leaves. I have several parishes in which the taille for three years is due, the proceedings for its collection always going on. . . . The receivers of the taille and of the taxes add one-half each year in expenses above the tax. . . . An assessor, on coming to the village where I have my country-house, states that the taille this year will be much increased; he noticed that the peasants here were fatter than elsewhere; that they had chicken feathers before their doors, and that the living here must be good, everybody doing well, etc.-This is the cause of the peasant's discouragement, and likewise the cause of misfortune t

are able t

he streets swarm with beggars. One cannot stop before a door without a dozen mendicants besetting him with their importunities. They are said to be people from the country who, unable to endure the persecutions they have to undergo, take refuge in the cities. . . preferring begging to labor."-And yet the people of the cities are not much better off. "An officer of a company in garrison at Mezieres tells me that the poverty of that place is so great that, after the officers had dined in the inns, the people rush in and pillage the remnants."-"There are more than 12,000 begging workmen in Rouen, quite as many in Tours, etc. More than 20,000 of these workmen are estimated as having left the kingdom in three months for Spain, Germany, etc. At Lyons 20,000 workers in silk are watched and kept in sight for fear of their

n every market-day." In 1750, from 6 to 7,000 men gather in Bearn behind a river to resist the clerks; two companies of the Artois regiment fire on the rebels and kill a dozen of them. In 1752, a sedition at Rouen and in its neighborhood lasts three days; in Dauphiny and in Auvergne riotous villagers force open the grain ware

life, hunger compels them to resort to the food of brutes. . . . Two days

jon, at Versailles, at St. Germain, at Pontoise and at Paris, in 1772 at Poitiers, in 1785 at Aix in Provence, in 1788 and 1789 in Paris and throughout France, similar eruptions are visible.5114-Undoubtedly the government under Louis XVI is mild

to sell their effects and household goods, die of the cold; insufficient and unhealthy food generates sickness, while, in two districts, 35,000 persons are stated to be living on alms5117. In a remote canton the peasants cut the grain still green and dry it in the oven, because they are too hungry to wait. The intendant of Poitiers writes that "as soon as the workhouses open, a prodigious number of the poor rush to them, in spite of the reduction of wages and of the restrictions imposed on them in behalf of the most needy." The intendant of Bourges notices that a great many tenant farmers have sold off their furniture, and that "entire families pass two days without eating," and that in many parishes the famished stay in bed most o

o thirds, leaving nothing for the unfortunate cultivators, who would have abandoned their fields, had not two S

f the villages have lost, since the beginning of the

wn-trodden people," says the provincial assembly in 1787, "Auver

, certain communities threaten to abandon their

ain to this painful proceeding in their recourse to the administration? Only a few years ago an abandonment of the community of Boisse took place through the combined action of the inhabitants, the seignior and the décimateur of that community;" and the desertion would be still greater if the law did not forbid persons liable to the taille a

d of soaked bran, this nourishment causing many deaths among infants."5124 People evidently live from day to day; whenever the crop proves poor they lack bread. Let a frost come, a hailstorm, an inundation, and an entire province is incapable of supporting itself until the coming year; in many places even an ordinary winter suffices to bring on distress. On all sides hands are seen outstretched to the king, who is the universal almoner. The people may be said

he Pe

peasant during the

.-His precarious s

ltivated farms.-P

wages.-Lack

s "one-quarter of the soil is absolutely lying waste. . . . Hundreds and hundreds of arpents of heath and moor form extensive deserts."5126 Let a person traverse Anjou, Maine, Brittany, Poitou, Limousin, la Marche, Berry, Nivernais, Bourbonnais and Auvergne, and he finds one-half of these provinces in heaths, forming immense plains, all of which might be cultivated." In Touraine, in Poit

at their ease, are all now occupied by poor tenant herdsmen whose scanty labor hardly suffices for their subsisten

ctive tenant-farm; "the traces of the furrows once made by the plow-iron being still visible on the surrounding heaths." Sologne, once flourishing,5127 becomes a marsh and a forest; a hundred years earlier it produced three times the quantity of grain; two-thirds of

e no plows made of iron; in many places the plow of Virgil's time is still in use. Cart-axles and wheel-tires are made of wood, while a harrow often consists of the trestle of a cart. There are few animals and but little manure; the capital bestowed on cultivation is three times less than that of the present day. The yield is slight: "our ordinary farms," says a good observer, "taking one with another return about six times the seed sown."5131 In 1778, on the rich soil around Toulouse, wheat returns about five for one, while at the present day it yields eight to one and more. Arthur Young estimates that, in his day, the English acre produces twenty-eight bushels of grain, and the French acre eighteen bushels, and that the value of the total product of the same area for a given length of time is thirty-six pounds sterling in England and only twenty-five in France. As the parish roads are frightful, and tra

is well-being, accordingly, has advanced ninety-three per cent., which suffices to show to what extent his predecessors suffered privations. And these privations are peculiar to France. Through analogous observations and estimates Arthur Young shows that in France those who lived on field labor, and they constituted the great majority, are seventy-six per cent. less comfortable than the same laborers in England, while they are seventy-six per cent. less well fed and well clothed, besides being worse treated in sickness and in health. The result is that in seven-eighths of the kingdom, there are no farmers, but simply métayers (a kind of poor tenants)5134. The

ject, they have no more than from twenty-five to thirty livres each person per annum to spend; and not in money, it must be stated, but counting whatever they consume in kind out of the crops they produce. Frequently they have less, and when they cannot possibly make a living the master is obliged to support them. . . . The métayer is always reduc

d rye; in Berry, a mixture of barley and oats. There is no wheat bread; the peasant consumes inferior flour only because he is unable to pay two sous a pound for his bread. There is no butcher's meat; at best he kills one pig a year. His dwelling is built of clay (pise), roofed with thatch, without windows, and the floor is the beaten ground. Even when the soil furnishes good building materials, stone, slate and tile, the windows have no sashes. In a parish in Normandy,5138 in 1789, "most of the dwellings consist of four posts." They are often mere stables or barns "to which a chimney has been added made of four p

e Count

country and o

the figure made by infinitely the greater part of the countrywomen in France." Arthur Young, who stops to talk with one of these in Champagne, says that "this woman, at no great distance, might have been taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent and her face so hardened and furrowed by labor,-but she said she was only twenty-eight." This woman, her husband and her household, afford a sufficiently accurate example of the condition of the small proprietary husb

I assure you that I have seen but four men on the road, and, between Montmorillon and my own house, which is four leagues, but three; and then only at a distance, not having met one on the road. You need not be surprised at this in such a country. . . Marriage takes place as early as with the grand seigniors," doubtless for fear of the militia. "But the population of the country is no greater because almost every infant dies. Mothers having scarcely any milk, their infants eat the bread of which I spoke, the stomach of a girl of four year

species of being. . . . The proprietor gets all he can out of him; in any event, looking upon him and his oxen as domestic animals, he puts them into harness and employs them in all weathers for every kind of journey, and for every species of carting and transport. On the other hand, this métayer thinks of living with as little labor as possible, converting as much ground as he can into pasturage, for the reaso

resource, had thus been slain, and another, with one goat slain in the same way, and who begs along with her boy, present themselves at the gate of the chateau; one receives twelve livres, while the other is admitted as a domestic, and henceforth, '' this village is all bows and smiling faces.''-In short, they are

elles is "one of the worst in France." That of Aubenas, says Young, "would be a purgatory for one of my pigs." The senses, in short, are paralyzed. The primitive man is content so long as he can sleep and get something to eat. He gets something to eat, but what kind of food? To put up with the indigestible mess a peasant here requires a still tougher sto

s covered with coats of coarse wool, wearing wide leather belts pierced with copper nails, gigantic in stature, which is increased by high wooden shoes, and making themselves still taller by standing on tiptoe to see the battle, stamping with their feet as it progresses and rubbing each other's flanks with their elbows, their faces haggard and covered with long matted hair, the upper portion pallid, and the lower distended, indicative of cruel delight and a sort of ferocious i

the evil of the remedy! Enlightened by his feudal and rural instincts, the old man at on

sant Become

omes a proprietor.-

-He is the "mule" o

than elsewhere, the search of the clerks. Dressed in rags, going barefoot, eating nothing but coarse black bread, but cherishing the little treasure in his breast on which he builds so many hopes, he watches for the opportunity which never fails to come. "In spite of privileges," writes a gentleman in 1755,5146 "the nobles are daily being ruined and reduced, the Third-Estate making all the fortunes." A number of domains, through forced or voluntary sales, thus pass into the hands of financiers, of men of the quill, of merchants, and of the well-to-do bourgeois. Before undergoing this total dispossession, however, the seignior, involved in debt, is evidently resigned to partial alienation of his property. The peasant who has bribed the steward is at hand with his hoard. "It is poor property, my lord, and it costs you more than you get from it." This may refer to an isolated patch, one end of a field or meadow, sometimes a farm whose farmer pays n

or the amount of the taille. Towards 1760, one-quarter of the soil is said to have already passed into the hands of farmers. In 1772, in relation to the vingtième, which is levied on the net revenue of real property, the intendant of Caen, having completed the statement of his quota, estimates that out of 150,000 "there are perhaps 50,000 whose liabilities did not exceed five sous, and perhaps still as many more not exceeding twenty sous."5149 Contemporary observers authenticate this passion of the peasant for land. "The savings of the lower classes

essions. The collectors, peasants like himself, and jealous, by virtue of being his neighbors, know how much his property, exposed to view, brings in; hence they take all they can lay their hands on. Vainly has he labored with renewed energy; his hands remain as empty, and, at the end of the year, he discovers that his field has produced him nothing. The

actice, through necessity and routine, he is treated according to Cardinal Richelieu's precept, as a beast of burden to which oats is sparingly ra

(re

stailleurs, II, 97. Additi

(re

-généraux from 1683 to 1698," published by M. de Boislisle). According to the reports of intendants, (Vauban, "Dime Royale," ch. VII. § 2.), the population of France in 1698 amounted to 19,994,146 inhabitants. From 1698 to 1715 it decreases. According to Forbonnais, there were but 16 or 17 millions under the Regency. After this epoch the popu

(re

e du Parlement de N

(re

essions," 1st par

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and 24th May, July

(re

vergne par un Auvergnat"

(re

and 21, September 19 and

(re

1749; May 20, Sept. 12,

(re

y 22, 1750; March 19, 1751; Feb

(re

(April, 1752, an address to

(re

vember 26, 1751:

(re

V. 124; VI. 165

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, ibid. V

(re

38, 341.-Hippeau, "Le Gouvernement

(re

emblée provinciale de Bass

(re

Condition of the directory of I

(re

ay 9, 1784); of M. de Villeneuve, intendant of Bourges (March 28, 1784); of M. de Cypierre, intendant of Orleans (May 28

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0 (A memorandum by M. Amelot

(re

ent les gens du Tiers-Etat," etc. (1789), p. 188.-"Procès-ve

(re

iculture et les chores rural

(re

mblée provinciale de la H

(re

iale du Soissonais" (1787), p. 457; "de

(re

hiers," by Prudh

(re

43 (grievances drawn up by

(re

s et Grains," in the Encyc

(re

des du citoyen," III. 190 (1766); IX.

(re

provinciale de l'Orléanais" (1787

(re

d even though one-half, or one-quarter of the arabl

(re

ffects of frost. "The ground this year will remain uncultivated, there being already much

(re

112, 115.-Théron d

(re

abeau, "Traité de la

(re

e des blés." (1770), p. 193. Wheat brea

(re

1, 260-265.-Théron de Monta

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ire the land without ability to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide

(re

oyen," VI. 81-94 (176

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ions des économist

(re

eau, "Traité de la

(re

eau, V

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cription de l'A

(re

Young,

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XX. 146, a letter of the M

(re

ny, "Memoires de

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ung, I. 280

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e "Mémoire

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, ibid. (a letter o

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cquevil

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emblée provinciale de Bass

(re

et (see note 2 at the end of the volume), twenty-two parcels are alienated in 1760.-Arthur Young, I. 308 (the domain o

(re

xes, and more, and possessing on the average 260 hectares of land, and 160,000 families paying from 230 to 500 francs taxes and possessing on the average 75 hectares.) These 183,000 families possessed 18,000,000 hectares.-There are besides 700,000 medium sized estates (paying from 50 to 250 francs tax), and comprising 15,000,000 hectares.-And finally 3,900,000 small properties comprising 15,000,000 hectare

(re

ly to the countries of election; in the provinces, with assemblies, the increase is no less great). Archives nationales, H2, 1610 (the parish of Bourget, in A