The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2

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At Troyes,[22] on the 18th of July, a market-day, the peasants
refuse to pay the entrance duties; the octroi having been suppressed
at Paris, it ought also to be suppressed at Troyes. The populace,
excited by this first disorderly act, gather into a mob for the
purpose of dividing the grain and arms amongst themselves, and the
next day the town-hall is invested by seven or eight thousand men,
armed with clubs and stones. The day after, a band, recruited in
the surrounding villages, armed with flails, shovels, and pitch-
forks, enters under the leadership of a joiner who marches at the
head of it with a drawn saber; fortunately, "all the honest folks
among the burgesses "immediately form themselves into a National
Guard, and this first attempt at a Jacquerie is put down. But the
agitation continues, and false rumors constantly keep it up. - On
the 29th of July, on the report being circulated that five hundred
"brigands" had left Paris and were coming to ravage the country, the
alarm bell sounds in the villages, and the peasants go forth armed.
Henceforth, a vague idea of some impending danger fills all minds;
the necessity of defense and of guarding against enemies is
maintained. The new demagogues avail themselves of this to keep
their hold on the people, and when the time comes, to use it against
their chiefs. - It is of no use to assure the people that the
latter are patriots; that the recently welcomed Necker with
enthusiastic shouts; that the priests, the monks, and canons were
the first to adopt the national cockade; that the nobles of the city
and its environs are the most liberal in France; that, on the 20th
of July, the burgess guard saved the town; that all the wealthy give
to the national workshops; that Mayor Huez, "a venerable and honest
magistrate," is a benefactor to the poor and to the public. All the
old leaders are objects of distrust. -- On the 8th of August, a mob
demands the dismissal of the dragoons, arms for all volunteers,
bread at two sous the pound, and the freedom of all prisoners. On
the 19th of August the National Guard rejects its old officers as
aristocrats, and elects new ones. On the 27th of August, the crowd
invade the town-hall and distribute the arms amongst themselves. On
the 5th of September, two hundred men, led by Truelle, president of
the new committee, force the salt depot and have salt delivered to
them at six sous per pound. -- Meanwhile, in the lowest quarters of
the city, a story is concocted to the effect that if wheat is scarce
it is because Huez, the mayor, and M. de St. Georges, the old
commandant, are monopolists, and now they say of Huez what they said
five weeks before of Foulon, that "he wants to make the people eat
hay." The many-headed brute growls fiercely and is about to spring.
As usual, instead of restraining him, they try to manage him.

"You must put your authority aside for a moment," writes the deputy
of Troyes to the sheriffs," and act towards the people as to a
friend; be as gentle with them as you would be with your equals, and
rest assured that they are capable of responding to it."

Thus does Huez act, and he even does more, paying no attention to
their menaces, refusing to provide for his own safety and almost
offering himself as a sacrifice.

"I have wronged no one," he exclaimed; "why should any one bear me
ill-will?"

His sole precaution is to provide something for the unfortunate poor
when he is gone: he bequeaths in his will 18,000 livres to the poor,
and, on the eve of his death, sends 100 crowns to the bureau of
charity. But what avail self-abnegation and beneficence against
blind, insane rage! On the 9th of September, three loads of flour
proving to be unsound, the people collect and shout out,

"Down with the flour-dealers! Down with machinery! Down with the
mayor! Death to the mayor, and let Truelle be put in his place! "

Huez, on leaving his court-room, is knocked down, murdered by kicks
and blows, throttled, dragged to the reception hall, struck on his
head with a wooden-shoe and pitched down the grand staircase. The
municipal officers strive in vain to protect him; a rope is put
around his neck and they begin to drag him along. A priest, who
begs to be allowed at least to save his soul, is repulsed and
beaten. A woman jumps on the prostrate old man, stamps on his face
and repeatedly thrusts her scissors in his eyes. He is dragged
along with the rope around his neck up to the Pont de la Selle, and
thrown into the neighboring ford, and then drawn out, again dragged
through the streets and in the gutters, with a bunch of hay crammed
in his mouth.[23]

In the meantime, his house as well as that of the lieutenant of
police, that of the notary Guyot, and that of M. de Saint-Georges,
are sacked; the pillaging and destruction lasts four hours; at the
notary's house, six hundred bottles of wine are consumed or carried
off; objects of value are divided, and the rest, even down to the
iron balcony, is demolished or broken; the rioters cry out, on
leaving, that they have still to burn twenty-seven houses, and to
take twenty-seven heads. "No one at Troyes went to bed that fatal
night."- During the succeeding days, for nearly two weeks, society
seems to be dissolved. Placards posted about the streets proscribe
municipal officers, canons, divines, privileged persons, prominent
merchants, and even ladies of charity; the latter are so frightened
that they throw up their office, while a number of persons move off
into the country; others barricade themselves in their dwellings and
only open their doors with saber in hand. Not until the 26th does
the orderly class rally sufficiently to resume the ascendancy and
arrest the miscreants. -- Such is public life in France after the
14th of July: the magistrates in each town feel that they are at the
mercy of a band of savages and sometimes of cannibals. Those of
Troyes had just tortured Huez after the fashion of Hurons, while
those of Caen did worse; Major de Belzance, not less innocent, and
under sworn protection,[24] was cut to pieces like Laperouse in the
Fiji Islands, and a woman ate his heart.

VI.

Taxes are no longer paid. - Devastation of the Forests. - The new
game laws.

It is, under such circumstances, possible to foretell whether taxes
come in, and whether municipalities that sway about in every popular
breeze will have the authority to collect the odious revenues. --
Towards the end of September,[25] I find a list of thirty-six
committees or municipal bodies which, within a radius of fifty
leagues around Paris, refuse to ensure the collection of taxes. One
of them tolerates the sale of contraband salt, in order not to
excite a riot. Another takes the precaution to disarm the employees
in the excise department. In a third the municipal officers were
the first to provide themselves with contraband salt and contraband
tobacco.

At Peronne and at Ham, the order having come to restore the toll-
houses, the people destroy the soldiers' quarters, conduct all the
employees to their homes, and order them to leave within twenty-four
hours, under penalty of death. After twenty months' resistance
Paris will end the matter by forcing the National Assembly to give
in and by obtaining the final suppression of its octroi.[26] -- Of
all the creditors whose hand each one felt on his shoulders, that of
the exchequer was the heaviest, and now it is the weakest; hence
this is the first whose grasp is to be shaken off; there is none
which is more heartily detested or which receives harsher treatment.
Especially against collectors of the salt-tax, custom-house
officers, and excisemen the fury is universal. These,
everywhere,[27] are in danger of their lives and are obliged to fly.
At Falaise, in Normandy, the people threaten to "cut to pieces the
director of the excise." At Baignes, in Saintonge, his house is
devastated and his papers and effects are burned; they put a knife
to the throat of his son, a child six years of age, saying, "Thou
must perish that there may be no more of thy race."
For four hours the clerks are on the point of being torn to pieces;
through the entreaties of the lord of the manor, who sees scythes
and sabers aimed at his own head, they are released only on the
condition that they "abjure their employment." -- Again, for two
months following the taking of the Bastille, insurrections break out
by hundreds, like a volley of musketry, against indirect taxation.
>From the 23rd of July the Intendant of Champagne reports that "the
uprising is general in almost all the towns under his command." On
the following day the Intendant of Alençon writes that, in his
province, "the royal dues will no longer be paid anywhere." On the
7th of August, M. Necker states to the National Assembly that in the
two intendants' districts of Caen and Alençon it has been necessary
to reduce the price of salt one-half; that "in an infinity of places
" the collection of the excise is stopped or suspended; that the
smuggling of salt and tobacco is done by "convoys and by open force
" in Picardy, in Lorraine, and in the Trois-Évêchés; that the
indirect tax does not come in, that the receivers-general and the
receivers of the taille are "at bay" and can no longer keep their
engagements. The public income diminishes from month to month; in
the social body, the heart, already so feeble, faints; deprived of
the blood which no longer reaches it, it ceases to propel to the
muscles the vivifying current which restores their waste and adds to
their energy.

"All controlling power is slackened," says Necker, "everything is a
prey to the passions of individuals." Where is the power to
constrain them and to secure to the State its dues? -- The clergy,
the nobles, wealthy townsmen, and certain brave artisans and
farmers, undoubtedly pay, and even sometimes give spontaneously.
But in society those who possess intelligence, who are in easy
circumstances and conscientious, form a small select class; the
great mass is egotistic, ignorant, and needy, and lets its money go
only under constraint; there is but one way to collect the taxes,
and that is to extort them. From time immemorial, direct taxes in
France have been collected only by bailiffs and seizures; which is
not surprising, as they take away a full half of the net income.
Now that the peasants of each village are armed and form a band, let
the collector come and make seizures if he dare ! -- " Immediately
after the decree on the equality of the taxes," writes the
provincial commission of Alsace,[28] "the people generally refused
to make any payments, until those who were exempt and privileged
should have been inscribed on the local lists." In many places the
peasants threaten to obtain the reimbursement of their installments,
while in others they insist that the decree should be retrospective
and that the new rate-payers should pay for the past year. "No
collector dare send an official to distrain; none that are sent dare
fulfill their mission." -- " It is not the good bourgeois" of whom
there is any fear, "but the rabble who make the latter and every one
else afraid of them;" resistance and disorder everywhere come from
"people that have nothing to lose." -- Not only do they shake off
taxation, but they usurp property, and declare that, being the
Nation, whatever belongs to the Nation belongs to them. The forests
of Alsace are laid waste, the seignorial as well as communal, and
wantonly destroyed with the wastefulness of children or of maniacs.
"In many places, to avoid the trouble of removing the woods, they
are burnt, and the people content themselves with carrying off the
ashes." -- After the decrees of August 4th, and in spite of the law
which licenses the proprietor only to hunt on his own grounds, the
impulse to break the law becomes irresistible. Every man who can
procure a gun begins operations;[29] the crops which are still
standing are trodden under foot, the lordly residences are invaded
and the palings are scaled; the King himself at Versailles is
wakened by shots fired in his park. Stags, fawns, deer, wild boars,
hares, and rabbits, are slain by thousands, cooked with stolen wood,
and eaten up on the spot. There is a constant discharge of musketry
throughout France for more than two months, and, as on an American
prairie, every living animal belongs to him who kills it. At
Choiseul, in Champagne, not only are all the hares and partridges of
the barony exterminated, but the ponds are exhausted of fish; the
court of the chateau even is entered, to fire on the pigeon-house
and destroy the pigeons, and then the pigeons and fish, of which
they have too many, are offered to the proprietor for sale -- It is
"the patriots" of the village with "smugglers and bad characters"
belonging to the neighborhood who make this expedition; they are
seen in the front ranks of every act of violence, and it is not
difficult to foresee that, under their leadership, attacks on public
persons and public property will be followed by attacks on private
persons and private property.

VII.

Attack upon private individuals and private property. - Aristocrats
denounced to the people as their enemies. - Effect of news from
Paris.- Influence of the village attorneys. - Isolated acts of
violence. - A general rising of the peasantry in the east. - War
against the castles, feudal estates, and property. - Preparations
for other Jacqueries.

Indeed, an outlawed class already exists, they are called "
aristocrats." This deadly term, applied at first to the nobles and
prelates in the States-General who declined to take part in the
reunion of the three orders, is extended so as to embrace all whose
titles, offices, alliances, and manner of living distinguish them
from the multitude. That which entitled them to respect is that
which marks them out as objects of ill-will; while the people, who,
though suffering from their privileges, did not regard them
personally with hatred, are now taught to consider them as their
enemies. Each, on his own estate, is held accountable for the evil
designs attributed to his brethren at Versailles, and, on the false
report of a plot at the center, the peasants classify him as one of
the conspirators.[30] Thus does the peasant jacquerie commence, and
the fanatics who have fanned the flame in Paris are to do the same
in the provinces. "You wish to know the authors of the agitation,"
writes a sensible man to the committee of investigation; "you will
find them amongst the deputies of the Third-Estate," and especially
among the attorneys and advocates. "These dispatch incendiary
letters to their constituents, which letters are received by
municipal bodies alike composed of attorneys and of advocates....
they are read aloud in the public squares, while copies of them are
distributed among all the villages. In these villages, if any one
knows how to read besides the priest and the lord of the manor, it
is the legal practitioner," the born enemy of the lord of the manor,
whose place he covets, vain of his oratorical powers, embittered by
his power, and never failing to blacken everything.[31] It is
highly probable that he is the one who composes and circulates the
placards calling on the people, in the King's name, to resort to
violence. -- At Secondigny, in Poitou, on the 23rd of July,[32] the
laborers in the forest receive a letter "which summons them to
attack all the country gentlemen round about, and to massacre
without mercy all those who refuse to renounce their privileges....
promising them that not only will their crimes go unpunished, but
that they will even be rewarded." M. Despretz-Montpezat,
correspondent of the deputies of the nobles, is seized, and dragged
with his son to the dwelling of the procurator-fiscal, to force him
to give his signature; the inhabitants are forbidden to render him
assistance "on pain of death and fire." "Sign," they exclaim, "or we
will tear out your heart, and set fire to this house !" At this
moment the neighboring notary, who is doubtless an accomplice,
appears with a stamped paper, and says to him, "Monsieur, I have
just come from Niort, where the Third-Estate has done the same thing
to all the gentlemen of the town; one, who refused, was cut to
pieces before our eyes." -- "We are compelled to sign renunciations
of our privileges, and give our assent to one and the same taxation,
as if the nobles had not already done so." The band gives notice
that it will proceed in the same fashion with all the chateaux in
the vicinity, and terror precedes or follows them. "Nobody dares
write," M. Despretz sends word; " I attempt it at the risk of my
life." -- Nobles and prelates become objects of suspicion
everywhere; village committees open their letters, and they have to
suffer their houses to be searched.[33] They are forced to adopt
the new cockade: to be a gentleman, and not wear it, is to deserve
hanging. At Mamers, in Maine, M. de Beauvoir refuses to wear it,
and is at the point of being put into the pillory and felled. Near
La F1èche, M. de Brissac is arrested, and a message is sent to Paris
to know if he shall be taken there, "or be beheaded in the
meantime." Two deputies of the nobles, MM. de Montesson and de Vassé
who had come to ask the consent of their constituents to their
joining the Third-Estate, are recognized near Mans; their honorable
scruples and their pledges to the constituents are considered of no
importance, nor even the step that they are now taking to fulfill
them; it suffices that they voted against the Third-Estate at
Versailles; the populace pursues them and breaks up their carriages,
and pillages their trunks. -- Woe to the nobles, especially if they
have taken any part in local rule, and if they are opposed to
popular panics! M. Cureau, deputy-mayor of Mans,[34] had issued
orders during the famine, and, having retired to his chateau of
Nouay, had told the peasants that the announcement of the coming of
brigands was a false alarm; he thought that it was not necessary to
sound the alarm bell, and all that was necessary was that they
should remain quiet. Accordingly he is set down as being in league
with the brigands, and besides this he is a monopolist, and a buyer
of standing crops. The peasants lead him off; along with his son-
in-law, M. de Montesson, to the neighboring village, where there
are judges. On the way "they dragged their victims on the ground,
pummeled them, trampled on them, spit in their faces, and besmeared
them with filth." M. de Montesson is shot, while M. Cureau is killed
by degrees; a carpenter cuts off the two heads with a double-edged
ax, and children bear them along to the sound of drums and violins.
Meanwhile, the judges of the place, brought by force, draw up an
official report stating the finding of thirty louis and several
bills of the Banque d'Escompte in the pockets of M. de Cureau, on
the discovery of which a shout of triumph is set up: this evidence
proves that they were going to buy up the standing wheat ! -- Such
is the course of popular justice. Now that the Third-Estate has
become the nation, every mob thinks that it has the right to
pronounce sentences, which it carries out, on lives and on
possessions.

These explosions are isolated in the western, central and southern
provinces; the conflagration, however, is universal in the east. On
a strip of ground from thirty to fifty leagues broad, extending from
the extreme north down to Provence. Alsace, Franche-Comté,
Burgundy, Mâconnais, Beaujolais, Auvergne, Viennois, Dauphiny, the
whole of this territory resembles a continuous mine which explodes
at the same time. The first column of flame which shoots up is on
the frontiers of Alsace and Franche-Comté, in the vicinity of
Belfort and Vésoul, a feudal district, in which the peasant, over-
burdened with taxes, bears the heavier yoke with greater impatience.
An instinctive argument is going on in his mind without his knowing
it. "The good Assembly and the good King want us to be happy,
suppose we help them! They say that the King has already relieved us
of the taxes, suppose we relieve ourselves of paying rents! Down
with the nobles! They are no better than the tax-collectors! " -- On
the 16th of July, the chateau of Sancy, belonging to the Princesses
de Beaufremont, is sacked, and on the 18th those of Lure, Bithaine,
and Molans.[35] On the 29th, an accident which occurs with some
fire-works at a popular festival at the house of M. de Mesmay, leads
the lower class to believe that the invitation extended to them was
a trap, and that there was a desire to get rid of them by
treachery.[36] Seized with rage they set fire to the chateau, and
during the following week[37] destroy three abbeys, ruin eleven
chateaux and pillage others. " All records are destroyed, the
registers and court-rolls are carried off; and the deposits
violated." -- Starting from this spot, "the hurricane of
insurrection" stretches over the whole of Alsace from Huningue to
Landau.[38] The insurgents display placards, signed Louis, stating
that for a certain lapse of time they shall be permitted to exercise
justice themselves, and, in Sundgau, a well-dressed weaver,
decorated with a blue belt, passes for a prince, the King's second
son. They begin by falling on the Jews, their hereditary leeches;
they sack their dwellings, divide their money among themselves, and
hunt them down like so many fallow-deer. At Bâle alone, it is said
that twelve hundred of these unfortunate fugitives arrived with
their families. -- The distance between the Jew creditor and the
Christian proprietor is not great, and this is soon cleared.
Remiremont is only saved by a detachment of dragoons. Eight hundred
men attack the chateau of Uberbrünn. The abbey of Neubourg is taken
by storm. At Guebwiller, on the 31st of July, five hundred
peasants, subjects of the abbey of Murbach, make a descent on the
abbot's palace and on the house of the canons. Cupboards, chests,
beds, windows, mirrors, frames, even the tiles of the roof and the
hinges of the casements are hacked to pieces: "They kindle fires on
the beautiful inlaid floors of the apartments, and there burn up the
library and the title-deeds." The abbot's superb carriage is so
broken up that not a wheel remains entire. "Wine streams through
the cellars. One cask of sixteen hundred measures is half lost; the
plate and the linen are carried off." -- Society is evidently being
overthrown, while with the power, property is changing hands.

These are their very words. In Franche-Comte[39] the inhabitants of
eight communes come and declare to the Bernardins of Grâce-Dieu and
of Lieu-Croissant "that, being of the Third-Estate, it is time now
for the people to rule over abbots and monks, considering that the
domination of the latter has lasted too long," and thereupon they
carry off all the titles to property and to rentals belonging to the
abbey in their commune. In Upper Dauphiny, during the destruction
of M. de Murat's chateau, a man named Ferréol struck the furniture
with a big stick, exclaiming, "Hey, so much for you, Murat; you have
been master a good while, now it's our turn!"[40] Those who rifle
houses, and steal like highway robbers, think that they are
defending a cause, and reply to the challenge, "Who goes there?" "We
are for the brigand Third-Estate!" -- Everywhere the belief prevails
that they are clothed with authority, and they conduct themselves
like a conquering horde under the orders of an absent general. At
Remiremont and at Luxeuil they produce an edict, stating that "all
this brigandage, pillage, and destruction" is permitted. In
Dauphiny, the leaders of the bands say that they possess the King's
orders. In Auvergne, "they follow imperative orders, being advised
that such is his Majesty's will." Nowhere do we see that an
insurgent village exercises personal vengeance against its lord. If
the people fire on the nobles they encounter, it is not through
personal hatred. They are destroying the class, and do not pursue
individuals. They detest feudal privileges, holders of charters,
the cursed parchments by virtue of which they are made to pay, but
not the nobleman who, when he resides at home, is of humane
intentions, compassionate, and even often beneficent. At Luxeuil,
the abbot, who is forced with uplifted ax to sign a relinquishment
of his seignorial rights over twenty-three estates, has dwelt among
them for forty-six years, and has been wholly devoted to them.[41]
In the canton of Crémieu, "where the havoc is immense," all the
nobles, write the municipal officers, are "patriots and benevolent."
In Dauphiny, the engineers, magistrates, and prelates, whose
chateaux are sacked, were the first to espouse the cause of the
people and of public liberties against the ministers. In Auvergne,
the peasants themselves "manifest a good deal of repugnance to act
in this way against such kind masters." But it must be done; the
only concession which can be made in consideration of the kindness
which had been extended to them is, not to burn the chateau of the
ladies of Vanes, who had been so charitable; but they burn all their
title-deeds, and torture the business agent at three different times
by fire, to force him to deliver a document which he does not
possess; they then only withdraw him from the fire half-broiled,
because the ladies, on their knees, implore mercy for him. They are
like the soldiers on a campaign who execute orders with docility,
for which necessity is the only plea, and who, without regarding
themselves as brigands, commit acts of brigandage.

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