The Eve of the French Revolution

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The advances of the last hundred years are many and great, but it is not
necessary therefore to believe that in three generations a great nation
has emerged from savagery. Let us see what part of La Bruyere's
description may be set down to rhetoric, and to the astonishment of the
scholar who looks hard at a countryman for the first time. Undoubtedly
the peasant is sunburnt; unquestionably he is dirty. His speech falls
roughly on a town-bred ear; his features have been made coarse by
exposure. His hut is far less comfortable than a city house. His food is
coarse, and not always plentiful. All these things may be true, and yet
the peasant may be intelligent and civilized. He may be as happy as most
of the toilers upon earth. He may have his days of comfort, his hours of
enjoyment.

While the French writers of the eighteenth century find fault with many
things in the condition of the peasant, their general opinion of his lot
is not unfavorable. Voltaire thinks him well off on the whole. Rousseau
is constantly vaunting not only the morality but the happiness of rural
life. Mirabeau the elder says that gayety is disappearing, perhaps
because the people are too rich, and argues that France is not decrepit
but vigorous.[Footnote: La Bruyere, _Caracteres_, ii. 61 (_de
l'homme_). Voltaire, _passim_, xxxi. 481, _Dict. philos.
(Population)_. Mirabeau, _L'ami des hommes_, 316, 325, 328.]

"The general appearance of the people is different to what I expected,"
writes an English traveler, to his family, in 1789; "they are strong and
well made. We saw many most agreeable scenes as we passed along in the
evening before we came to Lisle: little parties sitting at their doors;
some of the men smoking, some playing at cards in the open air, and
others spinning cotton. Everything we see bears the mark of industry,
and all the people look happy. We have indeed seen few signs of opulence
in individuals, for we do not see so many gentlemen's seats as in
England, but we have seen few of the lower classes in rags, idleness,
and misery. What strange prejudices we are apt to take concerning
foreigners! I will own that I used to think that the French were a
trifling, insignificant people, that they were meagre in their
appearance, and lived in a state of wretchedness from being oppressed by
their superiors. What we have already seen contradicts this;[Footnote:
Observe that this was written in French Flanders. Note by Dr. Rigby.]
the men are strong and athletic, and the face of the country shows that
industry is not discouraged. The women, too,--I speak of the lower
class, which in all countries is the largest and the most useful,--are
strong and well made, and seem to do a great deal of labor, especially
in the country. They carry great loads and seem to be employed to go to
market with the produce of the fields and gardens on their backs. An
Englishwoman would, perhaps, think this hard, but the cottagers in
England are certainly not so well off; I am sure they do not look so
happy. These women with large and heavy baskets on their backs have all
very good caps on, their hair powdered, earrings, necklaces, and
crosses. We have not yet seen one with a hat on. What strikes me most in
what I have seen is the wonderful difference between this country and
England. I don't know what we may think by and by, but at present the
difference seems to be in favor of the former; if they are not happy
they look at least very like it."

"We have now traveled between four and five hundred miles in France,"
says the same traveler in another place, "and have hardly seen an acre
uncultivated, except two forests and parks, the one belonging to the
Prince of Conde, as I mentioned in a former letter, the other to the
king of France at Fontainebleau, and these are covered with woods. In
every place almost every inch has been ploughed or dug, and at this time
appears to be pressed with the weight of the incumbent crop. On the
roads, to the very edge where the travelers' wheels pass, and on the
hills to the very summit, may be seen the effects of human industry.
Since we left Paris we have come through a country where the vine is
cultivated. This grows on the sides and even on the tops of the highest
hills. It will also flourish where the soil is too poor to bear corn,
and on the sides of precipices where no animal could draw the plough."
[Footnote: Dr. Rigby, 11, 96. See also Sir George Collier, 21.]

Let us now turn to the other end of France, and hear another traveler,
one generally less enthusiastic than the last. "The vintage itself,"
says Arthur Young, "can hardly be such a scene of activity and
animation, as this universal one of treading out the corn, with which
all the towns and villages in Languedoc are now alive. The corn is all
roughly stacked around a dry, firm spot, where great numbers of mules
and horses are driven on a trot round a centre, a woman holding the
reins, and another, or a girl or two, with whips drive; the men supply
and clear the floor; other parties are dressing, by throwing the corn
into the air for the wind to blow away the chaff. Every soul is
employed, and with such an air of cheerfulness, that the people seem as
well pleased with their labor, as the farmer himself with his great
heaps of wheat. The scene is uncommonly animated and joyous. I stopped
and alighted often to see their method; I was always very civilly
treated, and my wishes for a good price for the farmer, and not too good
a one for the poor, well received."[Footnote: Arthur Young, i. 45 (July
24, 1787).]

These descriptions would give too favorable an idea if they were taken
for the whole of France. All peasant women did not powder their hair
and wear earrings. Those of France did much more field-work than those
of England. Their figures became bent, their general appearance worn;
an English observer, accustomed to the more ruddy faces of his
countrywomen, might set them down for twice their age. They often went
barefoot, and on their way to market carried their shoes on a stick
until they drew near the town. They had to be thrifty, and might be
seen picking weeds on the wayside into their aprons, to feed their
cows. All provinces were not so rich as Flanders. There were vast
stretches of waste land in France, given up to broom and heath. Wolves
and bears were still a terror to remote farms. There were, moreover,
times of famine, which the foolish regulations of the government
aggravated, by preventing the free movement of provisions within the
country. In some provinces these seasons of famine were often
repeated. Then the wretched inhabitants sank into despair. Young
people would refuse to marry, saying that it was not worth while to
bring unfortunate children into the world. But in general the country
people were laborious and happy, with enough for their daily needs,
and often merry,--resembling in that respect the English before the
Puritan revival rather than the Anglo-Saxons of more modern
times.[Footnote: A. Young, i. 6 (May 22, 1787). Ibid., i. 45 (July
24, 1787), i. 18, (June 10, 1787), i. 28 (June 28, 1787). D'Argenson,
vi. 49 (Oct. 4, 1749), vi. 322 (Dec. 28, 1850), vii. 55 (Dec. 22,
1751), viii. 8, 35, 233, ix. 160. Turgot (iv. 274) reckons that in
Limonsin, 1766, the laborers' families did not have more than 25 to 30
livres per person per annum for their support, counting all they
got. This is but 1 64/100 sou a day, and bread cost 2 1/2 sous per lb.
A. Young, i. 439. This does not seem possible. The people lived partly
on chestnuts.]

In the country, as in the towns, prosperity and material well-being were
slowly increasing. The latter years of King Louis XIV. had been years of
depression and misery. External wars, and the persecution of the
Protestants at home, heavy taxation and bad government, had reduced the
numbers and the wealth of the French nation. But with the accession of
Louis XV. in 1715, a time of recuperation had begun. During the seventy
years that followed, the population increased from about sixteen to
about twenty-six millions. The rent of land rose also. The natural
excellence of the soil, the natural intelligence of the people, were
bringing about a slow and uneven improvement.[Footnote: Clamageran,
iii. 464. Bois-Guillebert, 179, and _passim_. Horn, 1. The
improvement was not universal. Lorraine is said to have lost prosperity
from the time of its union with France in 1737. Mathieu, 316.]

One third of the soil was covered with small farms, which at the death
of every proprietor were subdivided among his children. By a curious
custom (arising in I know not what form of jealousy or caprice), the
subdivision was wantonly made more disastrous. It was usual to divide
not only the whole estate, but every part of it among the heirs. Thus,
if a peasant died possessed of six fields and left three children, it
was not the custom that each child should take two fields, and that he
who got the best should make up the difference in money to his brethren.
Perhaps cash was too scarce for that. But every one of the six fields
would be divided into three parts, one of which was given to each child,
so that instead of six separate plots of ground, there were now
eighteen. This process had been repeated until a farm might almost be
shaded by a single cherry-tree.[Footnote: Sybel, i. 22. Cherest, ii.
532. Turgot, iv. 260. English writers, from Arthur Young to Lady Verney,
wax eloquent over the evils of small holdings.]

The class of middling proprietors was very small. The incidents to the
holding of land by all who were not noble drove rising families to the
towns. The great change that has come over the French country during the
last hundred years consists, in a measure, in the formation of a class
of men owning farms of moderate size.

A large part of the soil belonged to the nobles and the clergy. The
exact proportion cannot be ascertained. It has been stated as high as
two thirds; but this is probably an exaggeration. These proprietors of
the privileged classes seldom cultivated any very large part of their
land themselves, by hired workmen, although certain privileges and
exemptions were allowed to such as chose to keep their farms in their
own hands. A few of them let their lands for a fixed rent in money.
But the greater part of the cultivated soil which was owned by the
nobility and clergy was in the hands of _metayers_, lessees who paid
their rent in the shape of a proportionate part of the crops.
Sometimes the landlord made himself responsible for a portion of the
taxes; sometimes he furnished cattle or farming implements. His share
of the gross crop was usually one half. The system, which is still
common in some parts of France, is considered a good one neither for
the landlord nor for the tenant, but is devised principally to meet
the want of capital on the part of the latter.[Footnote: Young reckons
that the price of arable land and its rent are about the same in
France as in England. The net revenue is larger in France, because
there are no poor-rates and the tithe is more moderate in that
country. The price of arable land he calculates to be on an average
20 Pounds per acre; rent 15 shillings 7d. per acre = 3 9/10 per
cent. of the salable value. From this deduct the two vingtiemes and 4
sous per livre (taxes paid by the landlord) and other expenses, and
the net revenue remains between 3 and 3 1/4 per cent. The product of
wheat in France is, however, much worse than in England, so that the
proportion obtained by the landlord is greater and that of the tenant
less. In France the landlord gets one half of the crop; in England,
one fourth to one sixth, sometimes only one tenth. A. Young, i. 353.]

We may imagine the country-houses of the nobles scattered over the face
of the country so that the traveler would come upon one of them once in
two or three miles. Sometimes the seat of the lord was an ancient
castle, with walls eight feet thick, rising above the surrounding forest
from the top of a steep hill, dark and threatening, but no longer
formidable. Within, the great hall was stone-paved. Its walls were hung
with dusky portraits and rusty armor. From the hall would open a
spacious bedroom, with tapestried walls and a monumental bedstead.
Curtains and coverlets showed the delicate embroidery of some
ancestress, long since laid to rest in the family chapel. The very
sheets had perhaps been woven by her shuttle. This bedroom, according to
old custom, was still the living-room of the family. Sometimes the
lord's house was modern, elegant, and symmetrical; it was flanked with
pavilions and in front of it was a stone terrace, with a balustrade, on
which stood vases for growing plants. Inside the house were high-studded
rooms with white walls and gilded mouldings. High-backed, crooked-legged
chairs, in the style of the last reign, were ranged against the walls;
and near the middle of the dark, slippery, well-waxed floor, were
lighter seats and stools. The grandmother's armchair with its footstool
stood at the chimney corner, where the fire was religiously lighted on
All Saints and put out at Easter, regardless of weather. Through the
tall windows that opened down to the ground might be seen the long
straight garden-walks, none too well kept, and clipped shrubs, with here
and them a marble nymph, moss-grown and broken, or a fountain out of
repair. The family did not spend much money in the place. There was
little to do except in the season for shooting.[Footnote: Taine,
_L'ancien regime_, 17. Mme. de Montagu, 59.]

In order that this last occupation may be left to the lord and his
friends, game is strictly preserved, to the great detriment of the
crops. Poachers are sharply dealt with, and the peasant may not have a
gun to protect him from wolves. There are laws enough against the
wrongs wrought by landlords and gamekeepers, against the trampling
down of young wheat, against vexatious complaints and fines, but the
country people say that such laws are not fairly enforced. Especially
is the case hard of those who live near the _capitaineries_ or royal
hunting-grounds. Here rural proprietors may not raise a new wall
without permission, lest the hares be restrained of their liberty of
eating cabbages. No crops can be cut until the appointed day, that the
young partridges be not disturbed. Deer and rabbits live at free
quarters in the cultivated fields. They are the peasants' personal
enemies, and among the first unlawful acts of the Revolution will be
their wholesale destruction.[Footnote: Olivier, 78, mentions the laws
protecting the crops. The universal complaint of the _cahiers_ proves
the grievance. See the chapter on the _cahiers_. The _capitainerie_ of
Chantilly was said to be over 100 miles in circumference. A. Young,
i. 8 (May 25, 1787).]

In every village there is a church, sometimes even in small places a
beautiful gothic building, oftener modest in size and of plain
architecture. Once or twice in a day's ride the red roofs and high
walls of a convent come in sight, not very different in appearance
from a group of farm buildings,--were it not for the chapel and its
belfry;--for here in France the farms are surrounded by high
walls. The interminable straight roads, fine pieces of engineering,
but little traveled, stretch out between the ploughed fields, with
rows of Lombardy poplars on either hand, that tantalize the sun-baked
traveler with a suggestion of shade.

The peasants live in villages oftener than in detached farms, and the
village itself is apt to have a rudely fortified appearance. The fields
that stretch about it belong to the peasants, but with a modified
ownership. Over them the lords exercise their feudal rights. There is
the _cens_, a fixed rent, annual, perpetual, inseparably attached
to the soil. It is paid sometimes in money, sometimes in grain, fruits,
or chickens, according to deed, or to long established custom. There is
the _champart_, a rent proportional to the crop, also payable to
the lord; and there is the tithe which must be given to the clergy.
Should the peasant wish to sell his holding, a fine called _lods et
ventes_, amounting in some cases to one sixth of the price, must be
paid to the lord by the purchaser, and on some estates the lord has also
the right to refuse to accept the new tenant, and to take the bargain on
his own account.[Footnote: Prudhomme, 37, 137, 515.]

These are the common incidents of feudal tenure. Rights analogous to
them may be found in England or in Germany, wherever that system has
existed. And the vestiges of a state of things far older than feudalism
have not entirely disappeared. The commons of wood and of pasturage yet
recall the time when agricultural lands were held by a common tenure.
Even that tenure itself, with its annual redistribution of the fields,
may be found in Lorraine.[Footnote: Mathieu, 322.]

There were, moreover, many irksome restrictions on the peasant. In the
lord's mill he must grind his corn; in the lord's oven he must bake his
bread; to the lord's bull his cow must be taken. Days of labor on the
lord's land might be demanded of him. Ridiculous customs, offensive to
his dignity or his vanity, might be enforced. Newly married couples were
in some parishes made to jump over the churchyard wall. In other places,
on certain nights in the year, the peasants were obliged to beat the
water in the castle ditch to keep the frogs quiet. These customs have
been considered very grievous by democratic writers, nor were they so
indifferent to the peasants themselves as the lovers of the good old
times would have us believe.[Footnote: See the rural _cahiers,
passim_. Mathieu gives the text of a customary right of
_banalite_. The fee of the _four banal_ was 1/24 of the bread
by weight; the _moulin banal_, 1/12 of the flour; the _pressoir
banal_, 1/10 to 1/12 of the wine; but the fees varied in different
places even in one province. It was complained that presses enough for
the work were not furnished, and that grapes spoiled in consequence.
Mathieu, 285.]

It was not always the lord of the soil who enjoyed and exercised the
feudal rights. He had sometimes sold them to strangers, in whose hands
they were merely revenue, and who demanded them harshly.

The origin of these customs lay in a form of civilization that had long
passed away. To understand the conditions on which the French peasants
held their lands little more than a hundred years ago, we must glance
back over many centuries. Feudalism began in military conquest. When the
barbarians overran the Roman Empire, the victorious chiefs divided the
land among their principal followers; and the titles thus conferred,
although personal at first, soon became hereditary. The man who received
or inherited land was expected to appear in the field with his followers
at the call of his chief. The tenant, in his turn, distributed the land
among his friends on conditions similar to those on which he had himself
received it; and the process might be indefinitely repeated. Thus there
came to be a hierarchy in the state, in which every member was
responsible to his immediate superiors and obliged within certain limits
to obey the man next above him, rather than the king who was supposed to
rule them all. The obligations were various, according to the conditions
on which the lands had been granted, but they always involved military
service on the part of the grantee, and protection on the part of the
grantor. The services being mutual, and the tenure the usual, or
fashionable one, most persons who held land in any other way saw fit to
conform to the feudal method; and absolute, or allodial owners, where
the tide of conquest had left any, generally, in the course of time,
surrendered their lands to some neighboring lord, and received them back
again on feudal conditions.

But the tenure here described existed only among the comparatively rich
and great. When the last feudal division had been accomplished, when the
chief had made his last grant to his captains and the soil was divided
among them, there still remained by far the larger part of the
population which owed no feudal duty and held no feudal estate. The
common soldiers of the invading army, the native people of the conquered
country and their descendants, inextricably mixed together, remained
upon the soil and cultivated it as free tenants, or as serfs. They paid
for the use of the land on which they lived in money or in a share of
the crops, or in services. They acknowledged the title of the feudal
lords over them, and while struggling to make good bargains with their
masters, they seldom set up a claim to equality, or to independence. The
peasants came to think it the natural and divinely appointed order of
things that they should obey and serve their lords, with a partial
obedience and a limited service. To ask why they were content so to
serve, would be to open one of the greatest problems of history.
Whatever the reason, over a large part of the world, and through the
greater part of historical time, men have consented to obey other men
whom they have not selected, and have generally preferred the hereditary
principle to any other in determining to whom they would look up as
their rulers.

So the French peasants and their lords went on for centuries, living
side by side, rendering each other mutual services, sometimes quarreling
and sometimes making bargains. The peasants were called on for military
service, but they and their families took refuge in the lord's castle
when the frequent wars swept over the land. The mill, whose rough
machinery was still an improvement on the rude hand-mill, or on the yet
more primitive mortar and pestle; the oven where the peasant could bake
his bread without lighting a fire on his own hearth, after the toil of
the long summer's day; the bull of famous breed in all the country-side,
were the lord's, and all his tenants must use them and pay for them, at
rates fixed by immemorial custom, or perhaps by some long forgotten
bargain, made when these conveniences were first furnished to the
dwellers in the land. The lord led his peasants to battle, he protected
them from the inhabitants of the next valley, he decided their
differences in his court, where the more considerable of his tenants sat
beside him; he governed his people, well or ill, according to his
character, but on the whole to their reasonable satisfaction. His
government, such as it might be, was their only refuge from anarchy. The
lord was governed, not very strictly, by a greater lord, who in his turn
owed duty to a greater than he; until, after one or more steps, came the
king, or overlord of the land.

The long struggle by which the kings of France had transformed this
loose chain of allegiance into the tightened band of almost absolute
monarchy, is not to be told here. From the tenth century to the
seventeenth the combat was waged with varied success. The feudal lords
lost much of their power, but kept much of their wealth and many of
their privileges. The dukes and counts, whose fathers, in their own
domains, had been as powerful as the king himself, retained their
titles, and drew their incomes, but they spent their time in attendance
on their sovereign. The petty lord still held his court of justice, over
which his bailiff usually presided, but its functions had been gradually
usurped by the royal judges. The castle, no longer needed for
protection, was transformed into a country house. But many old customs
and old rights were maintained, although their origin was forgotten. The
peasants still worked for several days in the year on the lands of their
lord, or paid a part of their crops in rent for their farms, although
these had been in the possession of their forefathers for a thousand
years.

This rent, or some rent, the peasants under Louis XVI. believed to be
just, for they did not claim absolute ownership, but they considered the
services onerous and degrading. Their ideas on these subjects were not
very definite, but of late years a general sense of wrong had been
growing in their minds. The long-lived quarrels which ever exist in the
country-side were envenomed by stronger suspicions of injustice. It was
a common complaint that the last survey and apportionment of rent had
been unfair. The lords were no longer so far removed from their poorer
neighbors as to be above envy. They were no longer so useful as to be
considered necessary evils, as a large part of the community everywhere
is prone to think of its governors.

Let us look at the life of the peasant. His cottage is not attractive; a
low thatched building, perhaps without a floor. The barn is close
against it, and the family is not averse to seeking the warmth of the
cattle and of the dunghill. The windows are without glass, and pigs and
chickens wander in and out at the open door. But the house belongs to
the peasant, and is his home. He dares not improve it for fear of
increased taxes. He cares not much to do so. It keeps him warm at night
and dry when it rains; daylight and fine weather will find him out of
doors. If he can hide away a few pieces of silver in an old stocking, he
will more readily bring them out to buy another bit of ground, than
waste them in useless comforts and luxuries of building.

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