The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

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

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III. Absentee Seigniors.

Vast extent of their fortunes and rights.-Possessing greater
advantages they owe greater services.-Reasons for their absenteeism.-
Effect of it.-- Apathy of the provinces.-Condition of their estates.-
They give no alms.-Misery of their tenants.-Exactions of their
agents.-Exigencies of their debts. - State of their justiciary. -
Effects of their hunting rights. - Sentiments of the peasantry towards
them.

The spectacle becomes still gloomier, on passing from the estates
on which the seigniors reside to those on which they are non-
residents. Noble or ennobled, lay and ecclesiastic, the latter are
privileged among the privileged, and form an aristocracy inside of an
aristocracy. Almost all the powerful and accredited families belong to
it whatever may be their origin and their date.[23] Through their
habitual or frequent residence near the court, through their alliances
or mutual visits, through their habits and their luxuries, through the
influence which they exercise and the enmities which they provoke,
they form a group apart, and are those who possess the most extensive
estates, the leading suzerainties, and the most complete and
comprehensive jurisdictions. Of the court nobility and of the higher
clergy, they number perhaps, a thousand in each order, while their
small number only brings out in higher relief the enormity of their
advantages. We have seen that the appanages of the princes of the
blood comprise a seventh of the territory; Necker estimates the
revenue of the estates enjoyed by the king's two brothers at two
millions.[24] The domains of the Ducs de Bouillon, d'Aiguillon, and
some others cover entire leagues, and, in immensity and continuity,
remind one of those, which the Duke of Sutherland and the Duke of
Bedford now possess in England. With nothing else than his forests and
his canal, the Duke of Orleans, before marrying his wife, as rich as
himself, obtains an income of a million. A certain seigniory, le
Clermontois, belonging to the Prince de Condé, contains forty thousand
inhabitants, which is the extent of a German principality; "moreover
all the taxes or subsidies occurring in le Clermontois are imposed for
the benefit of His Serene Highness, the king receiving absolutely
nothing."[25] Naturally authority and wealth go together, and, the
more an estate yields, the more its owner resembles a sovereign. The
archbishop of Cambray, Duc de Cambray, Comte de Cambrésis, possesses
the suzerainty over all the fiefs of a region which numbers over
seventy-five thousand inhabitants. He appoints one-half of the
aldermen of Cambray and the whole of the administrators of Cateau. He
nominates the abbots to two great abbeys, and presides over the
provincial assemblies and the permanent bureau, which succeeds them.
In short, under the intendant, or at his side, he maintains a pre-
eminence and better still, an influence somewhat like that to day
maintained over his domain by grand duke incorporated into the new
German empire. Near him, in Hainaut, the abbé of Saint-Armand
possesses seven-eighths of the territory of the provostship while
levying on the other eighth the seigniorial taxes of the corvées and
the dime. He nominates the provost of the aldermen, so that, in the
words of the grievances, "he composes the entire State, or rather he
is himself the State."[26] I should never end if I were to specify all
these big prizes. Let us select only those of the prelacy, and but one
particular side, that of money. In the "Almanach Royal," and in "La
France Ecclésiastique" for 1788, we may read their admitted revenues.
The veritable revenue, however, is one-half more for the bishoprics,
an double and triple for the abbeys; and we must again double the
veritable revenue in order to estimate its value in the money of to
day.[27]. The one hundred and thirty-one bishops and arch-bishops
possess in the aggregate 5, 600, 000 livres of episcopal income and
1,200,000 livres in abbeys, averaging 50,000 livres per head as in the
printed record, and in reality 100,000. A bishop thus, in the eyes of
his contemporaries, according to the statement of spectators cognizant
of the actual truth, was "a grand seignior, with an income of 100,000
livres."[28] Some of the most important sees are magnificently
endowed. That of Sens brings in 70,000 livres; Verdun, 74,000; Tours,
82,000; Beauvais, Toulouse and Bayeux, 90,000; Rouen, 100,000; Auch,
Metz and Albi, 120,000; Narbonne, 160,000; Paris and Cambray, 200,000
according to official reports, and probably half as much more in sums
actually collected. Other sees, less lucrative, are, proportionately,
still better provided. Imagine a small provincial town, oftentimes not
even a petty sub-prefecture of our times, - Conserans, Mirepoix,
Lavaur, Rieux, Lombez, Saint-Papoul, Comminges, Luçon, Sarlat, Mende,
Fréjus, Lescar, Belley, Saint-Malo, Tréguier, Embrun, Saint-Claude, -
and, in the neighborhood, less than two hundred, one hundred, and
sometimes even less than fifty parishes, and, as recompense for this
slight ecclesiastical surveillance, a prelate receiving from 25,000 to
70,000 livres, according to official statements; from 37,000 to
105,000 livres in actual receipts; and from 74,000 to 210,000 livres
in the money of to day. As to the abbeys, I count thirty-three of them
producing to the abbé from 25,000 to 120,000 livres, and twenty-seven
which bring from 20,000 to 100,000 livres to the abbess. Weigh these
sums taken from the Almanach, and bear in mind that they must be
doubled, and more, to obtain the real revenue, and be quadrupled, and
more, to obtain the actual value. It is evident, that, with such
revenues, coupled with the feudal rights, police, justiciary and
administrative, which accompany them, an ecclesiastic or lay grand
seignior is, in fact, a sort of prince in his district. He bears too
close a resemblance to the ancient sovereign to be entitled to live as
an ordinary individual. His private advantages impose on him a public
character. His rank, and his enormous profits, makes it incumbent on
him to perform proportionate services, and that, even under the sway
of the intendant, he owes to his vassals, to his tenants, to his
feudatories the support of his mediation, of his patronage and of his
gains.

To do this he must be in residence, but, generally, he is an
absentee. For a hundred and fifty years a kind of all-powerful
attraction diverts the grandees from the provinces and impels them
towards the capital. The movement is irresistible, for it is the
effect of two forces, the greatest and most universal that influence
mankind, one, a social position, and the other the national character.
A tree is not to be severed from its roots with impunity. Appointed to
govern, an aristocracy frees itself from the land when it no longer
rules. It ceases to rule the moment when, through increasing and
constant encroachments, almost the entire justiciary, the entire
administration, the entire police, each detail of the local or general
government, the power of initiating, of collaboration, of control
regarding taxation, elections, roads, public works and charities,
passes over into the hands of the intendant or of the sub-delegate,
under the supreme direction of the comptroller-general or of the
king's council.[29] Civil servants, men "of the robe and the quill,"
colorless commoners, perform the administrative work; there is no way
to prevent it. Even with the king's delegates, a provincial governor,
were he hereditary, a prince of the blood, like the Condés in
Burgundy, must efface himself before the intendant; he holds no
effective office; his public duties consist of showing off and
providing entertainment. Besides he would badly perform any others.
The administrative machine, with its thousands of hard, creaking and
dirty wheels, as Richelieu and Louis XIV, fashioned it, can work only
in the hands of workmen who may be dismissed at any time therefore
unscrupulous and prompt to give way to the judgment of the State. It
is impossible to allow oneself to get mixed up with rogues of that
description. He accordingly abstains, and abandons public affairs to
them. Unemployed, bored, what could he now do on his domain, where he
no longer reigns, and where dullness overpowers him? He betakes
himself to the city, and especially to the court. Moreover, only here
can he pursue a career; to be successful he has to become a courtier.
It is the will of the king, one must frequent his apartments to obtain
his favors; otherwise, on the first application for them the answer
will be, "Who is he? He is a man that I never see." In the king's eyes
there is no excuse for absence, even should the cause is a conversion,
with penitence for a motive. In preferring God to the king, he has
deserted. The ministers write to the intendants to ascertain if the
gentlemen of their province "like to stay at home," and if they
"refuse to appear and perform their duties to the king." Imagine the
grandeur of such attractions available at the court, governments,
commands, bishoprics, benefices, court-offices, survivor-ships,
pensions, credit, favors of every kind and degree for self and family.
All that a country of 25 millions men can offer that is desirable to
ambition, to vanity, to interest, is found here collected as in a
reservoir. They rush to it and draw from it. - And the more readily
because it is an agreeable place, arranged just as they would have it,
and purposely to suit the social aptitudes of the French character.
The court is a vast permanent drawing room to which " access is easy
and free to the king's subjects;" where they live with him, "in gentle
and virtuous society in spite of the almost infinite distance of rank
and power;" where the monarch prides himself on being the perfect
master of a household.[30] In fact, no drawing room was ever so well
kept up, nor so well calculated to retain its guests by every kind of
enjoyment, by the beauty, the dignity and the charm of its decoration,
by the selection of its company and by the interest of the spectacle.
Versailles is the only place to show oneself off; to make a figure, to
push one's way, to be amused, to converse or gossip at the head-
quarters of news, of activity and of public matters, with the élite of
the kingdom and the arbiters of fashion, elegance and taste. "Sire,"
said M. de Vardes to Louis XIV, "away from Your Majesty one not only
feels miserable but ridiculous." None remain in the provinces except
the poor rural nobility; to live there one must be behind the age,
disheartened or in exile. The king's banishment of a seignior to his
estates is the highest disgrace; to the humiliation of this fall is
added the insupportable weight of boredom. The finest chateau on the
most beautiful site is a frightful "desert"; nobody is seen there save
the grotesques of a small town or the village peasants.[31]

"Exile alone," says Arthur Young, "can force the French nobility to
do what the English prefer to do, and that is to live on their estates
and embellish them."

Saint-Simon and other court historians, on mentioning a ceremony,
repeatedly state that "all France was there"; in fact, every one of
consequence in France is there, and each recognizes the other by this
sign. Paris and the court become, accordingly, the necessary sojourn
of all fine people. In such a situation departure begets departure;
the more a province is forsaken the more they forsake it. "There is
not in the kingdom," says the Marquis de Mirabeau, "a single estate of
any size of which the proprietor is not in Paris and who,
consequently, neglects his buildings and chateaux."[32] The lay grand
seigniors have their hotels in the capital, their entresol at
Versailles, and their pleasure-house within a circuit of twenty
leagues; if they visit their estates at long intervals, it is to hunt.
The fifteen hundred commendatory abbés and priors enjoy their
benefices as if they were so many remote farms. The two thousand seven
hundred vicars and canons visit each other and dine out. With the
exception of a few apostolic characters the one hundred and thirty-one
bishops stay at home as little as they can; nearly all of them being
nobles, all of them men of society, what could they do out of the
world, confined to a provincial town? Can we imagine a grand seignior,
once a gay and gallant abbé and now a bishop with a hundred thousand
livres income, voluntarily burying himself for the entire year at
Mende, at Comminges, in a paltry cloister? The interval has become too
great between the refined, varied and literary life of the great
center, and the monotonous, inert, practical life of the provinces.
Hence it is that the grand seignior who withdraws from the former
cannot enter into the latter, and he remains an absentee, at least in
feeling.

A country in which the heart ceases to impel the blood through its
veins presents a somber aspect. Arthur Young, who traveled over France
between 1787 and 1789, is surprised to find at once such a vital
center and such dead extremities. Between Paris and Versailles the
double file of vehicles going and coming extends uninterruptedly for
five leagues from morning till night.[33] The contrast on other roads
is very great. Leaving Paris by the Orleans road, says Arthur Young,
"we met not one stage or diligence for ten miles; only two messageries
and very few chaises, not a tenth of what would have been met had we
been leaving London at the same hour." On the highroad near Narbonne,
"for thirty-six miles," he says, "I came across but one cabriolet,
half a dozen carts and a few women leading asses." Elsewhere, near St.
Girons, he notices that in two hundred and fifty miles he encountered
in all, "two cabriolets and three miserable things similar to our old
one-horse post chaise, and not one gentleman." Throughout this country
the inns are execrable; it is impossible to hire a wagon, while in
England, even in a town of fifteen hundred or two thousand
inhabitants, there are comfortable hotels and every means of
transport. This proves that in France "there is no circulation." It is
only in very large towns that there is any civilization and comfort.
At Nantes there is a superb theater "twice as large as Drury-Lane and
five times as magnificent. Mon Dieu! I cried to myself, do all these
wastes, moors, and deserts, that I have passed for 300 miles lead to
this spectacle? . . . In a single leap you pass from misery to
extravagance, ...the country deserted, or if a gentleman in it, you
find him in some wretched hole to save that money which is lavished
with profusion in the luxuries of a capital." "A coach," says M. de
Montlosier, "set out weekly from the principal towns in the provinces
for Paris and was not always full, which tells us about the activity
in business. There was a single journal called the Gazette de France,
appearing twice a week, which represents the activity of minds."[34]
Some magistrates of Paris in exile at Bourges in 1753 and 1754 give
the following picture of that place:

"A town in which no one can be found with whom you can talk at
your ease on any topic whatever, reasonably or sensibly. The nobles,
three-fourths of them dying of hunger, rotting with pride of birth,
keeping apart from men of the robe and of finance, and finding it
strange that the daughter of a tax-collector, married to a counselor
of the parliament of Paris, should presume to be intelligent and
entertain company. The citizens are of the grossest ignorance, the
sole support of this species of lethargy in which the minds of most of
the inhabitants are plunged. Women, bigoted and pretentious, and much
given to play and to gallantry."[35]

In this impoverished and benumbed society, among these Messieurs
Thibaudeau, the counselor, and Harpin, the tax-collector, among these
vicomtes de Sotenville and Countesses d'Escarbagnas, lives the
Archbishop, Cardinal de Larochefoucauld, grand almoner to the king,
provided with four great abbeys, possessing five hundred thousand
livres income, a man of the world, generally an absentee, and when at
home, finding amusement in the embellishing of his gardens and palace,
in short, the golden pheasant of an aviary in a poultry yard of
geese.[36] Naturally there is an entire absence of political thought.
"You cannot imagine," says the manuscript, "a person more indifferent
to all public matters." At a later period, in the very midst of events
of the gravest character, and which most nearly concern them, there is
the same apathy. At Chateau-Thierry on the 4th of July, 1789,[37]
there is not a café in which a new paper can be found; there is but
one at Dijon; at Moulins, the 7th of August, "in the best café in the
town, where I found near twenty tables set for company, but as for a
newspaper I might as well have demanded an elephant." Between
Strasbourg and Besançon there is not a gazette. At Besançon there is
"nothing but the Gazette de France, for which, this period, a man of
common sense would not give one sol, . . . and the Courier de l'Europe
a fortnight old; and well-dressed people are now talking of the news
of two or three weeks past, and plainly by their discourse know
nothing of what is passing. At Clermont "I dined, or supped, five
times at the table d'hôte with from twenty to thirty merchants, trade
men, officers, etc., and it is not easy for me to express the
insignificance, - the inanity of their conversation. Scarcely any
politics are mentioned at a moment when every bosom ought to beat with
none but political sensations. The ignorance or the stupidity of these
people must be absolutely incredible; not a week passes without their
country abounding with events[38] that are analyzed an debated by the
carpenters and blacksmiths of England." The cause of this inertia is
manifest; interrogated on their opinions, all reply: "We are of the
provinces and we must wait to know what is going on in Paris." Never
having acted, they do no know how to act. But, thanks to this inertia,
they let themselves be driven. The provinces form an immense stagnant
pond, which, by a terrible inundation, may be emptied exclusively on
one side, and suddenly; the fault lies with the engineers who failed
to provide it with either dikes or outlets.

Such is the languor or, rather, the prostration, into which local
life falls when the local chiefs deprive it of their presence, action
or sympathy. I find only three or four grand seigniors taking a part
in it, practical philanthropists following the example of English
noblemen; the Duc d'Harcourt, who settles the lawsuits of his
peasants; the Duc de Larochefoucauld-Liancourt who establishes a model
farm on his domain, and a school of industrial pursuits for the
children of poor soldiers; and the Comte de Brienne, whose thirty
villages are to demand liberty of the Convention.[39] The rest, for
the most part liberals, content themselves with discussions on public
affairs and on political economy. In fact, the difference in manners,
the separation of interests, the remoteness of ideas are so great that
contact between those most exempt from haughtiness and their immediate
tenantry is rare, and at long intervals. Arthur Young, needing some
information at the house of the Duc de Larochefoucauld himself, the
steward is sent for. "At an English nobleman's, there would have been
three or four farmers asked to meet me, who would have dined with the
family amongst the ladies of the first rank. I do not exaggerate when
I say that I have had this at least an hundred times in the first
houses of our islands. It is, however, a thing that in the present
style of manners in France would not be met with from Calais to
Bayonne except, by chance, in the house of some great lord that had
been much in England, and then not unless it was asked for. The
nobility in France have no more idea of practicing agriculture, and
making it a subject of conversation, except on the mere theory, as
they would speak of a loom or a bowsprit, than of any other object the
most remote from their habits and pursuits." Through tradition,
fashion and deliberation, they are, and wish only to be, people of
society; their sole concern is to talk and to hunt. Never have the
leaders of men so unlearned the art of leading men; the art which
consists of marching along the same pathway with them, but at the
head, and directing their labor by sharing in it. - Our Englishman,
an eye-witness and competent, again writes: "Thus it is whenever you
stumble on a grand seignior, even one that was worth millions, you are
sure to find his property desert. Those of the Duc de Bouillon and of
the Prince de Soubise are two of the greatest properties in France;
and all the signs I have yet seen of their greatness are heaths,
moors, deserts, and brackens. Go to their residence, wherever it may
be, and you would probably find them in the midst of a forest very
well peopled with deer, wild boars and wolves." "The great
proprietors," says another contemporary,[40] "attracted to and kept in
our cities by luxurious enjoyments know nothing of their estates,"
save "of their agents whom they harass for the support of a ruinous
ostentation. How can ameliorations be looked for from those who even
refuse to keep things up and make indispensable repairs?" A sure proof
that their absence is the cause of the evil is found in the visible
difference between the domain worked under absent abbé-commendatory
and a domain superintended by monks living on the spot "The
intelligent traveler recognizes it" at first sight by the state of
cultivation. "If he finds fields well enclosed by ditches, carefully
planted, and covered with rich crops, these fields, he says to
himself; belong to the monks. Almost always, alongside of these
fertile plains, is an area of ground badly tilled and almost barren,
presenting a painful contrast; and yet the soil is the same, being two
portions of the same domain; he sees that the latter is the portion of
the abbé-commendatory." "The abbatial manse." said Lefranc de
Pompignan, "frequently looks like the property of a spendthrift; the
monastic manse is like a patrimony whereon nothing is neglected for
its amelioration," to such an extent that " the two-thirds " which the
abbé enjoys bring him less than the third reserved by his monks. - The
ruin or impoverishment of agriculture is, again, one of the effects of
absenteeism. There was, perhaps, one-third of the soil in France,
which, deserted as in Ireland, was as badly tilled, as little
productive as in Ireland in the hands of the rich absentees, the
English bishops, deans and nobles.

Doing nothing for the soil, how could they do anything for men? Now
and then, undoubtedly, especially with farms that pay no rent, the
steward writes a letter, alleging the misery of the farmer. There is
no doubt, also, that, especially for thirty years back, they desire to
be humane; they descant among themselves about the rights of man; the
sight of the pale face of a hungry peasant would give them pain. But
they never see him; does it ever occur to them to fancy what it is
like under the awkward and complimentary phrases of their agent?
Moreover, do they know what hunger is? Who amongst them has had any
rural experiences? And how could they picture to themselves the misery
of this forlorn being? They are too remote from him to that, too
ignorant of his mode of life. The portrait they conceive of him is
imaginary; never was there a falser representation of the peasant;
accordingly the awakening is to be terrible. They view him as the
amiable swain, gentle, humble and grateful, simple-hearted and right-
minded, easily led, being conceived according to Rousseau and the
idylls performed at this very epoch in all private drawing rooms.[41]
Lacking a knowledge him they overlook him; they read the steward's
letter and immediately the whirl of high life again seizes them and,
after a sigh bestowed on the distress of the poor, they make up their
minds that their income for the year will be short. A disposition of
this kind is not favorable to charity. Accordingly, complaints arise,
not against the residents but against the absentees.[42] "The
possessions of the Church, says a letter, serve only to nourish the
passions of their holders." "According to the canons, says another
memorandum, every beneficiary must give a quarter of his income to the
poor; nevertheless in our parish there is a revenue of more than
twelve thousand livres, and none of it is given to the poor unless it
is some small matter at the hands of the curate." "The abbé de Conches
gets one-half of the tithes and contributes nothing to the relief of
the parish." Elsewhere, "the chapter of Ecouis, which owns the
benefice of the tithes is of no advantage to the poor, and only seeks
to augment its income." Nearby, the abbé of Croix-Leufroy, "a heavy
tithe-owner, and the abbé de Bernay, who gets fifty-seven thousand
livres from his benefice, and who is a non-resident, keep all and
scarcely give enough to their officiating curates to keep them alive."
"I have in my parish, says a curate of Berry,[43] six simple benefices
of which the titularies are always absent. They enjoy together an
income of nine thousand livres; I sent them in writing the most urgent
entreaties during the calamity of the past year; I received from one
them two louis only, and most of them did not even answer me."
Stronger is the reason for a conviction that in ordinary times they
will make no remission of their dues. Moreover, these dues, the
censives, the lods et ventes, tithes, and the like, are in the hands
of a steward, and he is a good steward who returns a large amount of
money. He has no right to be generous at his master's expense, and he
is tempted to turn the subjects of his master to his own profit. In
vain might the soft seignorial hand be disposed to be easy or
paternal; the hard hand of the proxy bears down on the peasants with
all its weight, and the caution of a chief gives place to the
exactions of a clerk.- How is it then when, instead of a clerk on the
domain, a fermier is found, an adjudicator who, for an annual sum,
purchases of seignior the management and product of his dues? In
election of Mayenne,[44] and certainly also in many others, the
principal domains are rented in this way. Moreover there are a number
of dues, like the tolls, the market-place tax, that on the flock
apart, the monopoly of the oven and of the mill which can scarcely be
managed otherwise; the seignior must necessarily employ an adjudicator
who spares him the disputes and trouble of collecting.[45] This
happens often and the demands and the greed of the contractor, who is
determined to gain or, at least, not to lose, falls on the peasantry: