The Ancient Regime

lectual

acity.-How ideas a

ous st

s and tear to pieces the venerable magistrate who was nourishing them at that very moment, and who had just dictated his testament in their favor. Take the still rude brain of a contemporary peasant and deprive it of the ideas which, for eighty years past, have entered it by so many channels, through the primary school of each village, through the return home of the conscript after seven years' service, through the prodigious multiplication of books, newspapers, roads, railroads, foreign travel and every other species of communication.5301 Try to imagine the peasant of the eighteenth century, penned and shut up from

. Here they are ignorant of the striking occurrences that most impressed us at Paris. . . .The inhabitants of the country side are merely poverty-stricken sla

ndred men assemble together to demolish his dwelling. Their religious belief is on the same level.5306 "Their priests drink with them and sell them absolution. On Sundays, at the sermon, they put up lieutenancies and sub-lieutenancies (among the saints) for sale: so much for a lieutenant's place under St. Peter!-If the peasant hesitates in his bid, an eulogy of St. Peter at once begins, and then our peasants run it up fast enough."-To intellects in a primitive state, barren of ideas and crowded with images, idols on earth are as essential as idols in heaven. "No doubt whatever existed in my mind," says Rétit de la Bretonne,5307

ied through their maternal instincts, join in the riot; a policeman is seized and knocked down, and, on his demanding a confessor, a woman in the crowd, picking up a stone, cries out that he must not have time to go to heaven, and smashes his head with it, believing that she is performing an act of justice5310. Under Louis XVI evidence is presented to the people that there is no scarcity: in 1789, 5311 an officer, listening to the conversation of his soldiers, hears them state "with full belief that the princes and courtiers, with a view to starve Paris out, are throwing flour into the Seine." Turning to a quarter-master he asks him how he can possibly believe such an absurd story. "Lieutenant," he replies, "'tis time-the bags were tied with blue strings (cordons b

tical in

ty.-Interpretation

overnmen

their conceptions are formed in a lump; both object and fancy appear together and are united in one single perception. At the moment of electing deputies the report is current in Province5314 that "the best of kings desires perfect equality, that there are to be no more bishops, nor seigniors, nor tithes, nor seigniorial dues, no more tithes or distinctions, no more hunting or fishing rights,. . . that the people are to be wholly relieved of taxation, and that the first two orders alone are to provide the expenses of the government." Whereupon forty or fifty riots take place in one day. "Several communities refuse to make any payments to their treasurer outside of royal requisitions." Others do better: "on pillaging the strong-box of the receiver of the tax on leather at Brignolles, they shout out Vive le Roi!" "The peasant constantly asserts his pillage and destruction to be in conformity with the king's will." A little later, in Auvergne, the peasants who burn castles are to display "much repugnance" in thus maltreating "such kind seigniors," but they allege "imperative orders, having been advised that the king wished it."5315 At Lyons, when the tapsters of the t

tructive

es.-The object of

-Suspicion of them

n of the pe

sants in the environment of Paris; Madame Vigée-Lebrun,5319 on going to Romainville to visit Marshal de Ségur, remarks: "Not only do they not remove their hats but they regard us insolently; some of them even threatened us with clubs." In March and April following this, her guests arrive at her concert in consternation. "In the morning, at the promenade of Longchamps, the populace, assembled at the barrier of l'Etoile, insulted the people passing by in carriages in the grossest manner; some of the wretches on the footsteps exclaiming: 'Next year you shall be behind the carriage and we inside.'" At the close of the year 1788, the stream becomes a torrent and the torrent a cataract. An intendant5320 writes that, in his province, the government must decide, and in the popular sense, to separate from privileged classes, abandon old forms and give the Third-Estate a double vote. The clergy and the nobles are detested, and their supremacy is a yoke. "Last July," he says, "the old States-General would have been received with pleasure and there would have been few obstacles to its formation. During the past five mon

ionary leader

ders and recruits.-

ntraband salt.-Ba

of brigands.-The

ixty, all fully armed and acting as if on regular foraging campaigns, with the infantry at the center and the cavalry on the wings. . . . They live in the forests where they have created a fortified and guarded area and paying exactly for what they take to live on." In 17775322, at Sens in Burgundy, the public attorney, M. Terray, hunting on his own property with two officers, meets a gang of poachers who fire on the game under their eyes, and soon afterwards fire on them. Terray is wounded and one of the officers has his coat pierced; guards arr

ir own districts, who, after a year's registered stay, may enjoy the privileges of the Bretons: their occupation is limited to collecting piles of salt to re-sell to the contraband dealers." We might imagine them, as in a flash of lightening, as a long line of restless nomads, nocturnal and pursued, an entire tribe, male and female, of unsociable prowlers, familiar with to underhand tricks, toughened by hard weather, ragged, "nearly all infected by persistent scabies," and I find similar bodies in the vicinity of Morlaix, Lorient, and other ports on the frontiers of other provinces and on the frontiers of the kingdom. From 1783 to 1787, in Quercy, two allied bands of smugglers, sixty and eighty each, defraud the revenue of 40,000 of tobacco, kill two customs officers, and, with their guns, defend their stores in the mountains; to suppress them soldiers are needed, which their military commander will not furnish. In 1789,5327 a large troop of smugglers carry on operations permanently on the frontiers of Maine and Anjou; the military commander writes that "their chief is an intelligent and formidable bandit, who already has under him fifty-five men, he will, due to misery and rebellion soon have a corps;" it would, as we are unable to take him by force, be best, if some of his men could be turned and made to hand him over to us. These are the means resorted to in regions where brigandage is endemic.-Here, indeed, as in Calabria, the people are on the side of the brigands against the gendarmes. The exploits of Mandrin in 1754,5328 may be remembered: his company of sixty men who bring in contraband goods and ransom only the clerks, his expedition, lasting near

ains a living as it pleases, levying veritable contributions. . . . They are constantly roving around the country, examining the approaches to houses, and informing themselves about their inmates and of their habits.-Woe to those supposed to have money!. . . What numbers of highway robberies and what burglaries! What numbers of travelers assassinated, and houses and doors broken into! What assassin

ng no occupation or means of subsistence, can procure no persons worthy of confidence to attest and verify their habits and mode of life. . . . The intent of His Majest

ed out with occasional intermissions: in Languedoc, in 1768, arrests were still made of 433 in six months, and, in 1785, 205 in four months5333. A little before this time 300 were confined in the depot of Besan?on, 500 in that of Rennes and 650 in that of Saint Denis. It cost the king a million a year to support them, and God knows how they were bedded and fed! Water, straw, bread, and two ounces of salted grease, the whole at an expense of five sous a day; and, as the price of provisions for twenty years back had increased more than a third, the keeper who had them in charge was obliged to make them fast or ruin himself.-With respect to the mode of filling the depots, the police are Turks in their treatment of the lower class; they strike into the heap, their broom bruising as many as they sweep out. According to the ordinance of 1778, writes an intendant,5334 "the police must arrest not only beggars and vagabonds whom they encounter but, again, those denounced as suc

ithout a penny, beggars through the action of a law which proscribes mendicity and which adds to the

e prisons found along the road, where they remain until the number increases sufficiently to form a convoy. Men and women are confined in the same prison, the result of which is, the females not pregnant on entering it are always so on their arrival at the depot. The prisons are gen

rigors the law does

only increase it."-"The principal highways," writes the intendant, "are infested with dangerous vagabonds and vagrants, actual begga

o live on alms from demanding alms? The effect, undoubtedly, is lamentable but inevitable. Poverty, to a certain extent, is a slow gangrene in

of smugglers and vagrants, that large body of men who have become robbers and assassins, solely because they lack bread. This gives but a faint idea of the disorders I have seen with my own eyes5336. The

r 400 poor people, independent of that for the aged and the sick, which is more numerously attended." At Lyons, in 1787, "30,000 workmen depend on public charity for subsistence;" at Rennes, in 1788, after an inundation, "two-thirds of the inhabitants are in a state of destitution;"5342 at Paris, out of 650,000 inhabitants, the census of 1791 counts 118,784 as indigent.5343-Let frost or hail come, as in 1788, let a crop fail, let bread cost four sous a pound, and let a workman in the charity-workshops earn only twelve sous a day,5344 can one imagine that people will resign themselves to death by starvation? Around Rouen, during the winter of 1788, the forests are pillaged in open day, the woods at Baguères are wholly cut away, the fallen trees are publicly sold by the marauders5345. Both the famished and the marauders go together, necessity making itself the accomplice of crime. From province to province we can follow up their tracks: four months later, in the vicinity of Etampes, fifteen brigands break into four farmhouses during the night, while the farmers, threatened by incendiaries, are obliged to give, one

ing them in the streets. . . There is no convenience for pedestrians, no side-walks. Hundred victims die annually under the carriage wheels." "I saw," says Arthur Young, "a poor child run over and probably killed, and have been myself several times been cov

y in the face of th

rsons with no property intrinsically wort

first greatly excited, but melting away in the twinkling of an eye, after the soldiery have distributed a few blows and handcuffed two or three of the ringleaders."-Nevertheless, "were the people of Paris abandoned to their true inclinations, did they not feel the horse and foot guards behind them, the commissary and policeman, there would be no limits to their disorder. The populace, delivered from its customary restraint, would give itself up to violence of so cruel a stamp as

(re

ters or parsonages."-In 1778, the post between Paris and Toulouse runs only three times a week; that of Toulouse by way of Alby, Rodez, etc., twice a week; for Beaumont, Saint-Girons, etc.,

(re

quis de Mirabeau

(re

letter of an excise director

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VI. 425 (Jun

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osier, I.

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de Montau

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r Nicolas

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Schmidt, II. 7 (report by the agen

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rris, II. 69, A

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ableau de Par

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aublan

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er who, after 1750, was active over an enormous territory with the support of the population

(re

3 (Aug. 13, 1789); I.

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l 12, 1789); M. d'Eymar de Montmegran (April 2); M. de la Tour (March 30). "The soverei

(re

ales," 495. (Letter of Aug. 3, 1

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53. (Letter of Aug. 3, 1789,

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ll prevails throughout the rural districts. . . Your first orders for

(re

de Paris,

(re

un, I. 158, (1788

(re

etter of M. de Caumartin, intend

(re

on, March

(re

Métra, V, 179 (No

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e bands composed of the patriots of Montigny, smugglers and outcasts of the neighb

(re

ss. des notables," No. 8.-Necker, "De l

(re

'Administration d

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13, 1781, Sept. 15, 1782). H, 614. (Letter of M. de Coetlosquet, Apr

(re

1453. Letter of the Baron

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. Major Fisher, who attacks and disperses the gang, writes that the affair is urgent since, "higher to the North

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ier, X

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ve, book

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ibid. (177

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gust 4 1764; a circular of instructions of July 20, 1767; a l

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e jailers of Carcassonne (June 22, 1789); of Béziers (July 19, 1786);

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Letter of M. de Bertrand, intend

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nstrances, Feb. 1783).-H, 554. (Lett

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by René de Hauteville, parliamentary

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l'ass. Prov. de Soisso

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A letter of M. De Boves, intend

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spierre," 301. (Doléances des

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(1789).-Boivin-Champeaux, "Notice hist. sur la Révol

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7. (Letter of the prior of

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F4, 2073. Memorandum of Jan. 24, 1788. "Charitable assistance is very limit

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-In 1862, the population being almost tripl

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royes," I. 91. (Letter of th

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et, VII

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453. (Letter of M. de Saint

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Young,

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y M. de Lescure, II. 351 (May 8, 1789). Cf. C. Desmoulins, "La

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rise de la Bastille," 352.-Marmontel, II, ch

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; X. 179; XI. 59; XII. 8

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d, made in a village of this name near P

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ent, no misfortune will happen to the administration. The great conspire and rebel; the bourgeois