The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

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"Sire," said M. de la Fare, bishop of Nancy, from his pulpit, May
4th, 1789, "Sire, the people over which you reign has given
unmistakable proofs of its patience. . . . They are martyrs in whom
life seems to have been allowed to remain to enable them to suffer the
longer."

VIII. COMPLAINTS IN THE REGISTERS[72].

"I am miserable because too much is taken from me. Too much is
taken from me because not enough is taken from the privileged. Not
only do the privileged force me to pay in their place, but, again,
they previously deduct from my earnings their ecclesiastic and feudal
dues. When, out of my income of 100 francs, I have parted with fifty-
three francs, and more, to the collector, I am obliged again to give
fourteen francs to the seignior, also more than fourteen for
tithes,[73] and, out of the remaining eighteen or nineteen francs, I
have additionally to satisfy the excise men. I alone, a poor man, pay
two governments, one the old government, local and now absent,
useless, inconvenient and humiliating, and active only through
annoyances, exemptions and taxes; and the other, recent, centralized,
everywhere present, which, taking upon itself all functions, has vast
needs, and makes my meager shoulders support its enormous weight."

These, in precise terms, are the vague ideas beginning to ferment
in the popular brain and encountered on every page of the records of
the States-General.

"Would to God," says a Normandy village,[74] "the monarch might
take into his own hands the defense of the miserable citizen pelted
and oppressed by clerks, seigniors, justiciary and clergy!"

"Sire," writes a village in Champagne,[75] "the only message to us
on your part is a demand for money. We were led to believe that this
might cease, but every year the demand comes for more. We do not hold
you responsible for this because we love you, but those whom you
employ, who better know how to manage their own affairs than yours. We
believed that you were deceived by them and we, in our chagrin, said
to ourselves, If our good king only knew of this! . . . We are crushed
down with every species of taxation; thus far we have given you a part
of our bread, and, should this continue, we shall be in want. . . .
Could you see the miserable tenements in which we live, the poor food
we eat, you would feel for us; this would prove to you better than
words that we can support this no longer and that it must be lessened.
. . . That which grieves us is that those who possess the most, pay
the least. We pay the tailles and for our implements, while the
ecclesiastics and nobles who own the best land pay nothing. Why do the
rich pay the least and the poor the most? Should not each pay
according to his ability? Sire, we entreat that things may be so
arranged, for that is just. . . . Did we dare, we should undertake to
plant the slopes with vines; but we are so persecuted by the clerks of
the excise we would rather pull up those already planted; the wine
that we could make would all go to them, scarcely any of it remaining
for ourselves. These exactions are a great scourge and, to escape
them, we would rather let the ground lie waste. . . . Relieve us of
all these extortions and of the excisemen; we are great sufferers
through all these devices; now is the time to change them; never shall
we be happy as long as these last. We entreat all this of you, Sire,
along with others of your subjects as wearied as ourselves. . . . We
would entreat yet more but you cannot do all at one time."

Imposts and privileges, in the really popular registers, are the
two enemies against which complaints everywhere arise[76].

"We are overwhelmed by demands for subsidies, . . . we are burdened
with taxes beyond our strength, . . . we do not feel able to support
any more, we perish, overpowered by the sacrifices demanded of us.
Labor is taxed while indolence is exempt. . . . Feudalism is the most
disastrous of abuses, the evils it causes surpassing those of hail and
lightning. . . . Subsistence is impossible if three-quarters of the
crops are to be taken for field-rents, terrage, etc. . . . The
proprietor has a fourth part, the décimateur a twelfth, the harvester
a twelfth, taxation a tenth, not counting the depredations of vast
quantities of game which devour the growing crops: nothing is left for
the poor cultivator but pain and sorrow."

Why should the Third-Estate alone pay for roads on which the nobles
and the clergy drive in their carriages? Why are the poor alone
subject to militia draft? Why does "the subdelegate cause only the
defenseless and the unprotected to be drafted?" Why does it suffice to
be the servant of a privileged person to escape this service? Destroy
those dove-cotes, formerly only small pigeon-pens and which now
contain as many as 5,000 pairs. Abolish the barbarous rights of
"motte, quevaise and domaine congéable[77] under which more than
500,000 persons still suffer in Lower Brittany." "You have in your
armies, Sire, more than 30,000 Franche-Comté serfs;" should one of
these become an officer and be pensioned out of the service he would
be obliged to return to and live in the hut in which he was born,
otherwise; at his death, the seignior will take his pittance. Let
there be no more absentee prelates, nor abbés-commendatory. "The
present deficit is not to be paid by us but by the bishops and
beneficiaries; deprive the princes of the church of two-thirds of
their revenues." "Let feudalism be abolished. Man, the peasant
especially, is tyrannically bowed down to the impoverished ground on
which he lies exhausted. . . . There is no freedom, no prosperity, no
happiness where the soil is enthralled. . . . Let the lord's dues, and
other odious taxes not feudal, be abolished, a thousand times returned
to the privileged. Let feudalism content itself with its iron scepter
without adding the poniard of the revenue speculator."[78]

Here, and for some time before this, it is not the Countryman who
speaks but the procureur, the lawyer, who places professional
metaphors and theories at his service. But the lawyer has simply
translated the countryman's sentiments into literary dialect.

___________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1]"Collection des économistes," II. 832. See a tabular statement
by Beaudan.

[2] "Ephémérides du citoyen," IX. 15; an article by M. de Butré,
1767.

[3] "Collection des économistes," I. 551, 562.

[4] "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Champagne"
(1787), p. 240.

[5] Cf., "Notice historique sur la Révolution dans le département de
l'Eure," by Boivin-Champeaux, p. 37. - A register of grievances of the
parish of Epreville; on 100 francs income the Treasury takes 22 for
the taille, 16 for collaterals, 15 for the poll-tax, 11 for the
vingtièmes, total 67 livres.

[6] "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Ile-de-France
(1787), p. 131.

[7] "Procèx-verbaux de l'ass. prov de la Haute-Guyenne" (1784), II.
17, 40, 47.

[8] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. d'Auvergne" (1787), p. 253. -
Doléances, by Gautier de Biauzat, member of the council elected by the
provincial assembly of Auvergne. (1788), p.3.

[9] See note 5 at the end of the volume.

[10] "Théron de Montaugé," p. 109 (1763). Wages at this time are
from 7 to 12 sous a day during the summer.

[11] Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and registers of the
States-General, V. 59, p. 6. Memorandum to M. Necker from M. d'Orgeux,
honorary councilor to the Parliament of Bourgogne, 25 Oct. 1788..

[12] Ibid. H, 1418. A letter of the intendant of Limoges, Feb. 26,
1784.

[13] Turgot, II. 259.

[14] Archives nationales, H, 426 (remonstrances of the Parliament
of Brittany, Feb. 1783).

[15] Mercier; XI. 59; X. 262.

[16] Archives nationales, H, 1422, a letter by M d'Aine, intendant
of Limoges (February 17, 1782) one by the intendant of Moulins (April,
1779); the trial of the community of Mollon (Bordelais), and the
tables of its collectors.

[17] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. d'Auvergne," p. 266.

[18] Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," I. 72

[19] " Procés-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Berry" (1778), I. pp.72,
80.

[20] De Tocqueville, 187.

[21] Archives nationales, H, 1417. (A letter of M. de Cypièrre,
intendant at Orleans, April 17, 1765).

[22] "Traité de Population," 2d part, p.26.

[23] Archives nationales, H, 1417. (A letter of M. de Cypièrre,
intendant at Orleans, April 17, 1765).

[24] Ibid. H, 1418. (Letter of May 28, 1784).

[25] Ibid. (Letter of the intendant of Tours, June 15, 1765.)

[26] Archives Nationales, H, 1417. A report by Raudon, receiver of
tailles in the election of Laon, January, 1764.

[27] "Procèx-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Berry" (1778), I. p.72.

[28] Champfort, 93.

[29] "Procèx-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Berry," I. 77.

[30] Arthur Young, II. 205.

[31] "Procès-verbaux of the ass. prov. of the generalship of Rouen"
(1787), p.271.

[32] Letrosne (1779). "De l'administration provinciale et de Ia
reforme de l'impôt," pp. 39 to 262 and 138. - Archives nationales, H.
138 (1782). Cahier de Bugey, "Salt costs a person living in the
countryside purchasing it from the retailers from 15 to 17 sous a
pound, according to the way of measuring it.

[33] Floquet, VI. 367 (May 10, 1760).

[34] Boivin-Champeaux, p.44. (Cahiers of Bray and of Gamaches).

[35] Arthur Young, II. 175-178.

[36] Archives nationales, G, 300; G, 319. (Registers and
instructions of various local directors of the Excise to their
successors).

[37] Letrosne, ibid. 523.

[38] Octroi: a toll or tax levied at the gates of a city on
articles brought in. (SR.)

[39] Archives Nationales, H, 426 (Papers of the Parliament of
Brittany, February, 1783).

[40] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Soissonnais" (1787), p.45.
- Archives nationales, H, 1515 (Remonstrances of the Parliament of
Metz, 1768). The class of indigents form more than twelve-thirteenths
of the whole number of villages of laborers and generally those of the
wine-growers." Ibid. G, 319 (Tableau des directions of Chateaudon and
Issoudun),

[41] Albert Babeau, I. 89. p. 21.

[42] "Mémoires," presented to the Assembly of Notables, by M. de
Calonne (1787), p.67.

[43] Here we are at the root of the reason why democratically
elected politicians and their administrative staffs are today taxed
even though such taxation is only a paper-exercise adding costs to the
cost of government administration. (SR.)

[44] Gautier de Bianzat, "Doléances," 193, 225. "Procès-verbaux de
l'ass. prov. de Poitou" (1787), p.99.

[45] Gautier de Bianzat, ibid..

[46] Archives nationales, the procès-verbaux and cahiers of the
States-General, V. 59. P. 6. (Letter of M. Orgeux to M. Necker), V.
27. p. 560-573. (Cahiers of the Third-Estate of Arnay-le-Duc)

[47] In these figures the rise of the money standard has been kept
in mind, the silver "marc," worth 59 francs in 1965, being worth 49
francs during the last half of the eighteenth century.

[48] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Ile-de-France," 132, 158;
de l'Orléanais, 96, 387.

[49] "Mémoire," presented to the Assembly of Notables (1787), p. 1.
- See note 2 at the end of the volume, on the estate of Blet.

[50] "Procès-verbeaux de l'ass. prov. d'Alsace" (1787), p. 116;" -
of Champagne," 192. (According to a declaration of June 2, 1787, the
tax substituted for the corvée may be extended to one-sixth of the
taille, with accessory taxes and the poll-tax combined). "De la
généralité d'Alençcon," 179; " - du Berry," I. 218.

[51] Archives nationales, G, 322 (Memorandum on the excise dues of
Compiègne and its neighborhood, 1786)

[52] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de l'Ile-de-France," p. 104.

[53] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Berry, I. 85, II. 91. " -
de l'Orléanais, p. 225." "Arbitrariness, injustice, inequality, are
inseparable from the taille when any change of collector takes place."

[54] "Archives Nationales," H. 615. Letter of M. de Lagourda, a
noble from Bretagne, to M. Necker, dated December 4, 1780: " You are
always taxing the useful and necessary people who decrease in numbers
all the time: these are the workers of the land. The countryside has
become deserted and no one will any longer plow the land. I testify to
God and to you, Sir, that we have lost more than a third of our
budding wheat of the last harvest because we did not have the
necessary man-power do to the work."

[55] Ibid. 1149. (letter of M. de Reverseau, March 16, 1781); H,
200 (letter of M. Amelot, Nov. 2, 1784).

[56] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de la généralite de Rouen,"
p.91.

[57] Hippeau, VI. 22 (1788).

[58] D'Argenson. VI. 37.

[59] Archives nationales, H. 200 (Memoir of M. Amelot, 1785).

[60] Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. d'Auvergne," 253.

[61] Boivin-Champeaux, "Doléances de la parvisse de Tilleul-
Lambert" (Eure). "Numbers of privileged characters, Messieurs of the
elections, Messieurs the post-masters, Messieurs the presidents and
other attachés of the salt-warehouse, every individual possessing
extensive property pays but a third or a half of the taxes they ought
to pay."

[62] De Tocqueville, 385. - "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de
Lyonnais," p. 56

[63] Archives nationales, H, 1422. (Letters of M. d'Aine,
intendant, also of the receiver for the election of Tulle, February
23, 1783).

[64] De Tocqueville, 64, 363.

[65] Archives nationales, H, 612, 614. (Letters of M. de la Bove,
September 11, and Dec. 2, 1774; June 28, 1777).

[66] Mercier, II. 62.

[67] "Grievances" of the parish of Aubervilliers.

[68] Archives nationales, G, 300; G, 322 ("Mémoires" on the excise
duties).

[69] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. des Trois-Evêchés p. 442.

[70] Archives nationales, H, 1422 (Letter of the intendant of
Moulins, April 1779).

[71] Archives nationales, H. 1312 (Letters of M. D'Antheman
procureur-général of the excise court (May 19, 1783), and of the
Archbishop of Aix (June 15, 1783).) - Provence produced wheat only
sufficient for seven and a half months' consumption.

[72] Abbreviation for the "cahier des doléances", in English
'register of grieviances', brought with them by the representatives of
the people to the great gathering in Paris of the "States-Généraux" in
1789. (SR.)

[73] The feudal dues may be estimated at a seventh of the net
income and the dime also at a seventh. These are the figures given by
the ass. prov. of Haute-Guyenne (Procès-verbaux, p. 47). - Isolated
instances, in other provinces, indicate similar results. The dime
ranges from a tenth to the thirteenth of the gross product, and
commonly the tenth. I regard the average as about the fourteenth, and
as one-half of the gross product must he deducted for expenses of
cultivation, it amounts to one-seventh. Letrosne says a fifth and even
a quarter.

[74] Boivin-Champeaux, 72.

[75] Grievances of the community of Culmon (Election de Langres.)

[76] Boivin-Champeaux, 34, 36, 41, 48. - Périn ("Doléances des
paroisses rurales de l'Artuis," 301, 308). - Archives nationales,
procès-verbaux and cahiers of the States-Géneraux, vol. XVII. P. 12
(Letter of the inhabitants of Dracy-le Viteux).

[77] Motte: a mound indicative of Seigniorial dominion; quevaise;
the right of forcing a resident to remain on his property under
penalty of forfeiture; domaine congéable; property held subject to
capricious ejection. (TR)

[78] Prud'homme, "Résumé des cahiers," III. passim, and especially
from 317 to 340.

CHAPTER III. INTELLECTUAL STATE OF THE PEOPLE.

I.

Intellectual incapacity. - How ideas are transformed into marvelous
stories.

To comprehend their actions we ought now to look into the
condition of their minds, to know the current train of their ideas,
their mode of thinking. But is it really essential to draw this
portrait, and are not the details of their mental condition we have
just presented sufficient? We shall obtain a knowledge of them later,
and through their actions, when, in Touraine, they knock a mayor and
his assistant, chosen by themselves, senseless with kicks from their
wooden shoes, because, in obeying the national Assembly, these two
unfortunate men prepared a table of taxes; or when at Troyes, they
drag through the streets 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.[1] Try to imagine the peasant of the eighteenth
century, penned and shut up from father to son in his hamlet, without
parish highways, deprived of news, with no instruction but the Sunday
sermon, continuously worrying about his daily bread and the taxes,
"with his wretched, dried-up aspect,"[2] not daring to repair his
house, always persecuted, distrustful, his mind contracted and
stinted, so to say, by misery. His condition is almost that of his ox
or his ass, while his ideas are those of his condition. He has been a
long time stolid; "he lacks even instinct,"[3] mechanically and
fixedly regarding the ground on which he drags along his hereditary
plow. In 1751, d'Argenson wrote in his journal:

"nothing in the news from the court affects them; the reign is
indifferent to them. . . . . the distance between the capital and the
province daily widens. . . . Here they are ignorant of the striking
occurrences that most impressed us at Paris. . . .The inhabitants of
the country side are merely poverty-stricken slaves, draft cattle
under a yoke, moving on as they are goaded, caring for nothing and
embarrassed by nothing, provided they can eat and sleep at regular
hours."

They make no complaints, "they do not even dream of
complaining;"[4] their wretchedness seems to them natural like winter
or hail. Their minds, like their agriculture, still belong to the
middle ages.-In the environment of Toulouse,[5] to ascertain who
committed a robbery, to cure a man or a sick animal, they resort to a
sorcerer, who divines this by means of a sieve. The countryman fully
believes in ghosts and, on All Saints' eve, he lays the cloth for the
dead.- In Auvergne, at the outbreak the Revolution, on a contagious
fever making its appearance, M. de Montlosier, declared to be a
sorcerer, is the cause of it, and two hundred men assemble together to
demolish his dwelling. Their religious belief is on the same level.[6]
"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,[7] "of the
power of the king to compel any man to bestow his wife or daughter on
me, and my village (Sacy, in Burgundy) thought as I did."[8] There is
no room in minds of this description for abstract conceptions, for any
idea of social order; they are submissive to it and that is all. "The
mass of the people," writes Governor in 1789, "have no religion but
that of their priests, no law but that of those above them, no
morality but that of self-interest; these are the beings who, led on
by drunken curates, are now on the high road to liberty, and the first
use they make of it is to rebel on all sides because there is
dearth."[9]

How could things be otherwise? Every idea, previous to taking root
in their brain, must possess a legendary form, as absurd as it is
simple, adapted to their experiences, their faculties, their fears and
their aspirations. Once planted in this uncultivated and fertile soil
it vegetates and becomes transformed, developing into gross
excrescences, somber foliage and poisonous fruit. The more monstrous
the greater its vigor, clinging to the slightest of probabilities and
tenacious against the most certain of demonstrations. Under Louis XV,
in an arrest of vagabonds, a few children having been carried off
willfully or by mistake, the rumor spreads that the king takes baths
in blood to restore his exhausted functions, and, so true does this
seem to be, the women, horrified 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 justice[10]. Under
Louis XVI evidence is presented to the people that there is no
scarcity: in 1789, [11] 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 bleus)." To them
this is a sufficient reason, and no argument could convince them to
the contrary. Thus, among the dregs of society, foul and horrible
romances are forged, in connection the famine and the Bastille, in
which Louis XVI., the queen Marie Antoinette, the Comte d'Artois,
Madame de Lamballe, the Polignacs, the revenue farmers, the seigniors
and ladies of high rank are portrayed as vampires and ghouls. I have
seen many editions of these in the pamphlets of the day, in the
engravings not exhibited, and among popular prints and illustrations,
the latter the most effective, since they appeal to the eye. They
surpass the stories of Mandrin[12] and Cartouche, being exactly
suitable for men whose literature consists of the popular laments of
Mandrin and Cartouche.

II.

Political incapacity. - Interpretation of political rumors and of
government action.

By this we can judge of their political intelligence. Every
object appears to them in a false light; they are like children who,
at each turn of the road, see in each tree or bush some frightful
hobgoblin. Arthur Young, on visiting the springs near Clermont, is
arrested,[13] and the people want to imprison a woman, his guide, some
of the bystanders regarding him as an "agent of the Queen, who
intended to blow the town up with a mine, and send all that escaped to
the galleys." Six days after this, beyond Puy, and notwithstanding his
passport, the village guard come and take him out of bed at eleven
o'clock at nights, declaring that "I was undoubtedly a conspirator
with the Queen, the Count d'Artois and the Count d'Entragues (who has
property here), who had employed me as arpenteur to measure their
fields in order to double their taxes." We here take the unconscious,
apprehensive, popular imagination in the act; a slight indication, a
word, prompting the construction of either air castles or fantastic
dungeons, and seeing these as plainly as if they were so many
substantial realities. They have not the inward resources that render
capable of separating and discerning; 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 Province[14] 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."[15] At Lyons, when the tapsters of
the town and the peasants of the neighborhood trample the customs
officials underfoot they believe that the king has suspended all
customs dues for three days.[16] The scope of their imagination is
proportionate to their shortsightedness. "Bread, no more rents, no
more taxes!" is the sole cry, the cry of want, while exasperated want
plunges ahead like a famished bull. Down with the monopolist ! -
storehouses are forced open, convoys of grain are stopped, markets are
pillaged, bakers are hung, and the price of bread is fixed so that
none is to be had or is concealed. Down with the octroi ! -
barriers are demolished, clerks are beaten, money is wanting in the
towns for urgent expenses. Burn tax registries, account-books,
municipal archives, seigniors' charter-safes, convent parchments,
every detestable document creative of debtors and sufferers ! The
village itself is no longer able to preserve its parish property. The
rage against any written document, against public officers, against
any man more or less connected with grain, is blind and determined.
The furious animal destroys all, although wounding himself, driving
and roaring against the obstacle that ought to be outflanked.