They were a fine sight, these citizens of Paris, before the male half of the world had adopted, even in its hours of play, the black and gray livery of toil. The Parisians of the latter part of King Louis XVI.'s reign affected simplicity of attire, but not gloom. The cocked hat was believed to have permanently driven out the less graceful round hat. It was jauntily placed on the wearer's own hair, which was powdered and tied behind with a black ribbon. For the coat, stripes were in fashion, of light blue and pink, or other brilliant colors. The waistcoat and breeches might be pale yellow, with pink bindings and blue buttons; the garters and the clocks of the white stockings, blue; the shoes black, with plain steel buckles. This would be an appropriate costume for the street; although many people wore court-mourning from economy, and forgot to take it off when the court did. A handsome snuff-box, often changed, and a ring, were part of the costume of a well-dressed man; and it was usual to wear two watches, probably from an excessive effort after symmetry; while it is intimated by the satirist that clean lace cuffs were sometimes sewn upon a dirty shirt.[Footnote: Babeau,Paris, 214. Fashion plates in various books. For evening dress, suits all of black were beginning to come in towards 1789. In the street gentlemen were beginning to dress like grooms, aping the English. The sword was still worn at times, even by upper servants, but the cane was fast superseding it. Women also carried canes, which helped them to walk in their high-heeled shoes. Mercier, xi. 229, i. 293.]
The costume of gentlemen in this reign was as graceful in shape as any that has been worn in modern Europe. The coat and waistcoat were rather long and followed the lines of the person; the tight breeches met the long stockings just below the knee, showing the figure to advantage. The dress of ladies, on the other hand, was stiff, grotesque, and ungainly; waists were worn very long, and hoops were large and stiff. But the most noticeable thing was the huge structure which, almost throughout the reign, was built upon ladies' heads. As it varied between one and three feet in height, and was very elaborate in design, it could not often be taken down. No little skill was required to construct it, and poor girls could sometimes earn a living by letting out their heads by the hour to undergo the practice of clumsy barbers' apprentices. At one time red hair came into fashion and was simulated by the use of red powder. The colors for clothes varied with the invention of the milliners, and the habit of giving grotesque names to new colors had already arisen in Paris. About 1782, "fleas' back and belly," "goose dung," and "Paris mud" were the last new thing. Caps "à la Boston," and "à la Philadelphie," had gone out. Instead of the fashion-plates with which Paris has since supplied the world, but which under Louis XVI. were only just coming into use, dolls were dressed in the latest style by the milliners and sent to London, Berlin, and Vienna.[Footnote: Franklin,Les soins de toilette. Mercier, viii. 295, ii. l97, l98, 213]
The dress of the common people was more brilliant and varied than it is in our time, but probably less neat. Cleanliness of person has never been a leading virtue among the French poor. Although there were elaborate bathing establishments in the river, a large proportion of the people hardly knew what it was to take a bath.[Footnote: But Young says, "In point of cleanliness I think the merit of the two nations is divided; the French are cleaner in their persons, and the English in their houses." Young, i. 291. The whole comparison there given of French and English customs is most interesting.] The sentimental milkmaids of Greuze are no more like the tanned and wrinkled women that sold milk in the streets of Paris, than the court-shepherdesses of Watteau and Boucher were like the rude peasants that watched their sheep on the Jura mountains. But the Parisian cockney was fond of dress, and would rather starve his stomach than his back. The milliners' shops, where the pretty seamstresses sat sewing all day in sight of the street, reminding the Parisians of seraglios, were never empty of those who had money to spend. For leaner purses, the women who sat under umbrellas in front of the Colonnade of the Louvre had bargains of cast-off clothing; and there were booths along the quays on Sunday, and a fair in the Place de la Greve on Monday.[Footnote: Mercier, viii. 269, ix. 294, v. 281, ii. 267.]
It is sometimes said of our own times that the rich have become richer and the poor poorer than in former days. I believe that this is entirely untrue, and that in the second half of the nineteenth century a smaller proportion of the inhabitants of civilized countries suffers from hunger and cold than ever before. Whatever be the figures by which fortunes are counted, there is no doubt that the visible difference between the rich and the poor was greater in the reign of Louis XVI. than in our own time.[Footnote: Mercier mentions fortunes varying from 100,000 to 900,000 livres income, and speaks of the former as common, i. 172. Meanwhile clerks got from 800 to 1500 livres and even less. Those with 1200 wore velvet coats, ii. 118.] In spite of the fashion of simplicity which was one of the affectations of those days, the courtier still on occasion glittered in brocade. His liveried servants waited about his door. His lackeys climbed behind his coach, and awoke the dimly lighted streets with the glare of their torches, as the heavy vehicle bore him homeward from the supper and the card-table. The luxuries of great houses were relatively more expensive. A dish of early peas might cost six hundred francs. Six different officials (a word less dignified would hardly suit the importance of the subject), had charge of the preparation of his lordship's food and drink, and bullied the numerous train of serving-men, kitchen-boys, and scullions. There was themaître d'hôtel, or housekeeper, who attended to purchases and to storing the food; the chief cook, for soups,hors d'oeuvre,entrées, andentremets; the pastry-cook, with general charge of the oven; the roaster, who fattened the poultry and larded the meat before he put the turnspit dog into the wheel; an Italian confectioner for sweet dishes; and a butler to look after the wine. Bread was usually brought from the bakers, even to great houses, and was charged for by keeping tally with notches on a stick. Baking was an important trade in Paris, and in times of scarcity the bakers were given the first chance to buy wood. For delicacies, there was the great shop at the Hôtel d'Aligre in the Rue Saint Honoré, a "famous temple of gluttony," where truffles from Perigord, potted partridges from Nérac, and carp from Strasbourg were piled beside dates, figs, and pots of orange jelly; and where the foreigner from beyond the Rhine, or the Alps, could find his own sauerkraut or macaroni.[Footnote: Mercier, x. 208, xi. 229, 346, xii. 243.]
At the tables of the rich it was usual to entertain many guests; not in the modern way, by asking people for a particular day and hour, but by general invitation. The host opened his house two or three times a week for dinner or supper, and anybody who had once been invited was always at liberty to drop in. Thus arose a class of respectably dressed people who were in the habit of dining daily at the cost of their acquaintance. After dinner it was the fashion to slip away; the hostess called out a polite phrase across the table to the retreating guest, who replied with a single word.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 176, ii. 225.La Robe dine, La finance soupe.Mercier says that a man who was a whole year without calling at a house where he had once been admitted had to be presented over again, and make some excuse, as that he had traveled, etc. This the hostess pretended to believe.] It was of course but a small part of the inhabitants of Paris that ate at rich men's tables. The fare of the middle classes was far less elaborate; but it generally included meat once or twice a day. The markets were dirty, and fish was dear and bad. The duties which were levied at the entrance of the town raised the price of food, and of the wine which Frenchmen find equally essential. Provisions were usually bought in very small quantities, less than a pound of sugar at a time. Enough for one meal only was brought home, in a piece of printed paper, or an old letter. Unsuccessful books thus found their use at the grocer's. Before dinner the supply for dinner was bought; before supper, that for supper. After the meal nothing was left. The poorer citizens carried their dinners to be baked at the cook-shops, and saved something in the price of wood. The lower classes had their meat chopped fine and packed in sausages, as is still done in Germany, an economical measure by which many shortcomings are covered up and no scrap is lost.[Footnote: Ibid., i. 219, xii. 128.]
The use of coffee had become universal. It was sold about the streets for two sous a cup, including the milk and a tiny bit of sugar. While the rich drank punch and ate ices, the poor slaked their thirst with liquorice water, drawn from a shining cylinder carried on a man's back. The cups were fastened to this itinerant fountain by long chains, and were liable to be dashed from thirsty lips in a crowd by any one passing between the drinker and the water-seller.[Footnote: Mercier, viii. 270,n., iv. 154, xii. 296, v. 310. See plates in Fournel, 509, 516.]
For the very poor there was second-hand food, the rejected scraps of the rich. In Paris they were nasty enough; but at Versailles, where the king and the princes lived, even people that were well to do did not scorn to buy dishes that had been carried untouched from a royal table. Near the poultry market in Paris, a great pot was always hanging on the fire, with capons boiling in it; you bought a boiled fowl with its broth, a savory mess. In general the variety of food was increasing. Within forty years the number of sorts of fruit and vegetables in use had almost doubled.[Footnote: Ibid., v. 85, 249. Genlis,Dictionnaire des Étiquettes, ii. 40,n., citing Buffon. Scraps of food are still sold in the Central Market of Paris.]
The population was divided into many distinct classes, but there was a good deal of intercourse from class to class, nor was it extremely difficult for the able and ambitious to rise in the world. The financiers had become rich and important, but were regarded with jealousy. In an aristocratic state the nobles think it all wrong that any one else should have as much money as themselves. This is not strange; but it is more remarkable that the common people are generally of the same opinion, and that, while the profusion of the great noble is looked on as no more than the liberality which belongs to his station, the extravagance of the mere man of money is condemned and derided. This tendency was increased in France by the fact that many of the greatest fortunes were made by the farmers of the revenue, who were hated as publicans even more than they were envied as rich men. Yet one financier, Necker, although of foreign birth, was perhaps the most popular man in France during this reign, and it was not the least of Louis's follies or misfortunes that he could not bring himself to share the admiration of his people for his Director General of the Treasury.
The mercantile class in Paris did not hold a high position. The merchant was too much of a shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper was too much of a huckster. The smallest sale involved a long course of bargaining. This was perhaps partly due to the fact, admirable in itself, that the wife was generally united with her husband in the management of the shop. The customary law of Paris was favorable to the rights of property of married women; and the latter were associated with their husbands in commerce and consulted in all affairs. This habit is still observed in France. It tends to draw husband and wife together, by uniting their occupations and their interests. Unfortunately it tends also to the neglect of children, especially in infancy, when their claims are exacting. Thus the Frenchwoman of the middle class is in some respects more of a wife and less of a mother than the corresponding Anglo-Saxon. The babies, even of people of very moderate means, were generally sent out from Paris into the country to be nursed. Later in the lives of children, girls were kept continually with their mothers, watched and guarded with a care of which we have little conception. Boys were much more separated from their parents, and left to schoolmasters. Neither boys nor girls were trusted or allowed to gain experience for themselves nearly as much as we consider desirable.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 53, v. 231, ix. 173, vi. 325.]
Marriages were generally left to the discretion of parents, except in the lowest classes; and parents were too often governed by pecuniary, rather than by personal considerations in choosing the wives and husbands of their sons and daughters. Such a system of marriage would seem unbearable, did we not know that it is borne and approved by the greater part of mankind. It is possible that the chief objection to it is to be found less in the want of attachment between married people, which might be supposed to be its natural result, than in the diminution of the sense of loyalty. In England and America it is felt to be disgraceful to break a contract which both parties have freely made, with their eyes open; and this feeling greatly reenforces the other motives to fidelity. Yet while the rich and idle class in France, if the stories of French writers may be trusted, has always been honeycombed with marital unfaithfulness, there are probably no people in the world more united than the husbands and wives of the French lower and middle classes. Working side by side all the week with tireless industry, sharing a frugal but not a sordid life, they seek their innocent pleasures together on Sundays and holidays. The whole neighborhood of Paris is enlivened with their not unseemly gayety, as freely shared as the toil by which it was earned. The rowdyism of the sports in which men are not accompanied by women, the concentrated vulgarity of the summer boarding-house, where women live apart from the men of their families, are almost equally unknown in France. In the latter part of the eighteenth century many of the comfortable burghers of Paris owned little villas in the suburbs, whither the family retired on Sundays, sometimes taking the shop-boy as an especial favor. The common people also were to be found in great numbers in the suburban villages, such as Passy, Auteuil, or in the Bois de Boulogne, dancing on the green; although in the reign of Louis XVI. they are said to have been less gay than before.[Footnote: Mercier, in. 143, iv. 162, xii. 101.]
Artists, artisans, and journeymen, in their various degrees, formed classes of great importance, for Paris was famous for many sorts of manufactures, and especially for those which required good taste. But it was noticed that on account of the abridgment of the power of the trade-guilds, and the consequent rise of competition, French goods were losing in excellence, while they gained in cheapness; so that it was said that workmanship was becoming less thorough in Paris than in London.
The police of Paris was already remarkable for its efficiency. The inhabitants of the capital of France lived secure in their houses, or rode freely into the country, while those of London were in danger of being stopped by highwaymen on suburban roads, or robbed at night by housebreakers in town. From riots, also, the Parisians had long been singularly free, and for more than a century had seen none of importance, while London was terrified, and much property destroyed in 1780 by the Gordon riots. In spite of the forebodings of some few pessimists, people did not expect any great revolution, but rather social and economic reforms. It was believed that the powers of repression were too strong for the powers of insurrection. The crash came, at last, not through the failure of the ordinary police, but from demoralization at the centre of government and in the army. While Louis still reigned in peace at Versailles, the administration of Paris went on efficiently. Correspondence was maintained with the police of other cities. Criminals and suspected persons, when arrested, could be condemned by summary process. The Lieutenant General of Police had it in his discretion to punish without publicity. The more scandalous crimes were systematically hidden from the public; a process more favorable to morality than to civil liberty. For the criminal classes in Paris arbitrary imprisonment was the common fate, and disreputable men and women Were brought in by bands.[Footnote: Mercier, vi. 206. Monier, 396.]
The liability to arbitrary arrest affected the lives of but a small proportion of the citizens after all. To most Parisians it was far more important that the streets were safe by day and night; that fire-engines were provided, and Capuchin monks trained to use them, while soldiers hastened to the fire and would press all able-bodied men into the service of passing buckets; that small civil cases were promptly and justly disposed of.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 197, 210, ix. 220, xii. 162 (Jurisdiction consulaire).]
The increase of humane ideas which marked the age was beginning in the course of this reign to affect the hospitals and poor-houses as well as the prisons, and to diminish their horrors. At the Hotel Dieu, the greatest hospital in Paris, six patients were sometimes wedged into one filthy bed. Yet even, there, some improvement had taken place. And while Howard considered that hospital a disgrace to Paris, he found many other charitable foundations in the city which did it honor. Here as elsewhere there was no uniformity.[Footnote: Mercier, vii. 7, iii. 225. Howard,State of the Prisons, 176, 177. Babeau,La Ville, 435. Cognel, 88. A horrible description of the Hotel Dieu, written in 1788 by Tenon, a member of Academy of Sciences, is given in A. Franklin,L'Hygiène, 181.]
In the medical profession, the regular physicians held themselves far above the surgeons, many of whom had been barbers' apprentices; but it would appear that the science of surgery was better taught and was really in a more advanced state than that of medicine. More than eight hundred students attended the school of surgery. In medicine, inoculation was slowly making its way, but was resorted to only by the upper classes. Excessive bleeding and purgation were going out of fashion, but the poor still employed quacks, or swallowed the coarse drugs which the grocers sold cheaper than the regular apothecaries, or relied on the universal remedy of the lower classes in Paris, a cordial of black currants.[Footnote: It was calledCassis. Mercier, xii. 126, vii. 126.]
Near the Hotel Dieu was the asylum for foundlings, whither they were brought not only from Paris, but from distant towns, and whence they were sent out to be nursed in the country. They were brought to Paris done up tightly in their swaddling clothes, little crying bundles, packed three at a time into wadded boxes, carried on men's backs. The habit of dressing children loosely, recommended by Rousseau, had not yet reached the poor; as the habit of having babies nursed by their own mothers, which he had also striven to introduce, had been speedily abandoned by the rich. The mortality among the foundlings was great, for two hundred of them were sometimes kept in one ward during their stay at the asylum.[Footnote: Mercier, iii. 239, viii. 188. Cognel found the asylum very clean. Cognel, 87.]
Although some falling off in the ardor of religious practices was noticed as the Revolution drew near, the ceremonies of the church were still visible in all their splendor. On the feast of Corpus Christi a long procession passed through the streets, where doors and windows were hung with carpets and tapestry. The worsted pictures, it is true, were adapted rather to a decorative than to a pious purpose, and over-scrupulous persons might be shocked at seeing Europa on her bull, or Psyche admiring the sleeping Cupid, on the route of a religious procession. Such anomalies, however, could well be disregarded. Around the sacred Host were gathered the dignitaries of the state and the city in their robes of office, marshaled by the priests, who for that day seemed to command the town. In some cases, it is said, the great lords contented themselves with sending their liveried servants to represent them. Soldiers formed the escort. The crowd in the street fell on its knees as the procession passed. Flowers, incense, music, the faithful with their foreheads in the dust, all contributed to the picturesqueness of the scene. A week later the ceremony was repeated with almost equal pomp. On the Sunday following, there was another procession in the northern suburbs. Naked boys, leading lambs, represented Saint John the Baptist; Magdalens eight years old, walking by their nurses' side, wept over their sins; the pupils of the school of the Sacred Heart marched with downcast eyes. The Host was carried under a dais of which the cords were held by respected citizens, and was escorted by forty Swiss guards. A hundred and fifty censers swung incense on the air. The diplomatic corps watched the procession from the balcony of the Venetian ambassador, even the Protestants bowing or kneeling with the rest. [Footnote: Mercier, iii. 78. Cognel, 101.]
From time to time, through the year, these great ceremonies were renewed, either on a regularly returning day, or as occasion might demand. On the 3d of July the Swiss of the rue aux Ours was publicly carried in procession. There was a legend that a Swiss Protestant soldier had once struck the statue of the Holy Virgin on the corner of this street with his sword, and that blood had flowed from the wounded image. Therefore, on the anniversary of the outrage, a wicker figure was carried about the town, bobbing at all the sacred images at the street corners, with a curious mixture of piety and fun. Originally it had been dressed like a Swiss, but the people of Switzerland, who were numerous and useful in Paris, remonstrated at a custom likely to bring them into contempt; and the grotesque giant was thereupon arrayed in a wig and a long coat, with a wooden dagger painted red in his hand. The grammarian Du Marsais once got into trouble on the occasion of this procession. He was walking in the street when one woman elbowed another in trying to get near the statue. "If you want to pray," said the woman who had been pushed, "go on your knees where you are; the Holy Virgin is everywhere." Du Marsais was so indiscreet as to interfere. Being a grammarian, he was probably of a disputatious turn of mind. "My good woman," said he, "you have spoken heresy. Only God is everywhere; not the Virgin." The woman turned on him and cried out: "See this old wretch, this Huguenot, this Calvinist, who says that the Holy Virgin is not everywhere!" Thereupon Du Marsais was attacked by the mob and forced to take refuge in a house, whence he was rescued by the guard, which kept him shut up for his own safety until after nightfall.[Footnote: Mercier, iv. 97. Fournel, 176. This procession was abolished by order of the police, June 27, 1789. Fournel, 177.]
For an occasional procession, we have one in October, 1785, when three hundred and thirteen prisoners, redeemed from slavery among the Algerines, were led for three days about the streets with great pomp by brothers of the orders of the Redemption. Each captive was conducted by two angels, to whom he was bound with red and blue ribbons, and the angels carried scrolls emblazoned with the arms of the orders. There was the usual display of banners and crosses, guards and policemen; there were bands of music and palm-branches. The long march required frequent refreshment, which was offered by the faithful, and it is said that many of the captives and some of the professionally religious persons indulged too freely. A drunken angel must have been a cheerful sight indeed. The object of this procession was to raise money to redeem more prisoners from slavery, for the Barbary pirates were still suffered by the European powers to plunder the commerce of the Mediterranean and to kidnap Christian sailors.[Footnote: Bachaumont, xxx. 24. Compare Lesage, i. 347 (Le diable boiteux, ch. xix). For a procession of persons delivered by charity from imprisonment for not paying their wet nurses, see Mercier, xii. 85.]
Nor was it in great festivals alone that the religious spirit of the people was manifested. On Sundays all shops were shut, and the common people heard at least the morning mass, although they were getting careless about vespers. Every spring for a fortnight about Easter, there was a great revival of religious observance, and churches and confessionals were crowded. But throughout the year, one humble kind of procession might be met in the streets of Paris. A poor priest, in a worn surplice, reverently carries the Host under an old dirty canopy. A beadle plods along in front, with an acolyte to ring the bell, at the sound of which the passers-by kneel in the streets and cabs and coaches are stopped. Louis XV. once met the "Good God," as the eucharistic wafer was piously called, and earned a short-lived popularity by going down on his silken knees in the mud. All persons may follow the viaticum into the chamber of the dying. The watch, if it meets the procession on its return, will escort it back to its church.[Footnote:Ordonnance de la police du Châtelet concernant l'observation des dimanches et fêtes, du 18 Novembre, 1782. Monin, 403.]
Let us follow it in the early morning, and, taking our stand under the porch where the broken statues of the saints are still crowned with the faded flowers of yesterday's festival, or wandering thence about the streets of the city, let us watch the stream of life as it flows now stronger, now more gently hour by hour.
It is seven o'clock. The market gardeners, with their empty baskets, are jogging on their weary horses toward the suburbs. Already they have supplied the markets. They meet only the early clerks, fresh shaven and powdered, hastening to their offices. At nine, the town is decidedly awake. The young barber-surgeons ("whiting" as the Parisians call them), sprinkled from head to foot with hair powder, carry the curling-iron in one hand, the wig in the other, on their way to the houses of their customers. The waiters from the lemonade-shops are bringing coffee and cakes to the occupants of furnished lodgings. On the boulevards, young dandies, struck with Anglomania, contend awkwardly with their saddle-horses.
At ten lawyers in black and clients of all colors flock to the island in the river where are the courts of law. The Palace, as the great court-house is called, is a large and imposing pile of buildings, with fine halls and strong prisons, and the most beautiful of gothic chapels. But the passages are blocked with the stalls of hucksters who sell stationery, books, and knicknacks.[Footnote: Mercier, vi. 72, iv. 146, ix. 171. Cognel, 41.]
In the rue Neuve des Petits Champs they are drawing the royal lottery. The Lieutenant-Général of Police, accompanied by several officers, appears on a platform. Near him is the wheel of fortune. The wheel is turned, it stops, and a boy with blindfolded eyes puts his hand into an opening in the wheel, and pulls out a ticket, which he hands to the official. The latter opens it, holding it up conspicuously in front of him to avert suspicion of foul play. The ticket is then posted on a board, and the boy pulls out another. The crowd is noisy and excited at first, then sombre and discouraged as all the chances are exhausted.
Noon is the time when the Exchange is most active, and when lazy people hang about the Palais Royal, whose gardens are the centre of news and gossip. The antechambers of bankers and men in place are crowded with anxious clients. At two the streets are full of diners-out, and all the cabs are taken. They are heavy and clumsy vehicles, dirty inside and out, and the coachmen are drunken fellows. Clerks and upper servants dash about in cabriolets, and sober people are scandalized at seeing women in these frivolous vehicles unescorted. "They go alone; they go in pairs!" cries one, "without any men. You would think they wanted to change their sex." Dandies drive the high-built English "whiski." All are blocked among carts and drays, with sacks, and beams, and casks of wine. For people that would go out of town there are comfortable traveling chaises, or the cheap and wretchedcarrabas, in which twenty persons are jolted together, and the rate of travel is but two or three miles an hour; while on the road to Versailles, the active postillions known asenragéswill take you to the royal town and back, a distance of twenty miles, and give you time to call on a minister of state, all within three hours.[Footnote: Mercier, vii. 114, 228, ix. 1, 266, xi. 17, xii. 253. Chérest, ii. 166.]
Between half past two and three, people of fashion are sitting down to dinner, following the mysterious law of their nature which makes them do everything an hour or two later in the day than other mortals. At quarter past five the streets are full again. People are on their way to the theatre, or going for a drive in the boulevards, and the coffee-houses are filling. As daylight fails, bands of carpenters and masons plod heavily toward the suburbs, shaking the lime from their heavy shoes. At nine in the evening people are going to supper, and the streets are more disorderly than at any time in the day. The scandalous scenes which have disappeared from modern Paris, but which are still visible in London, were in the last century allowed early in the evening; but long before midnight the police had driven all disorderly characters from the streets. At eleven the coffee-houses are closing; the town is quiet, only to be awakened from time to time by the carriages of the rich going home after late suppers, or by the tramp of the beasts of burden of the six thousand peasants who nightly bring vegetables, fruit, and flowers into the great city.[Footnote: Ibid., iv. 148.]
The provincial towns in France under Louis XVI. were only beginning to assume a modern appearance. Built originally within walls, their houses had been tall, their streets narrow, crooked, and dirty. But in the eighteenth century most of the walls had been pulled down, and public walks or drives laid out on their sites. The idea that the beauty of cities consists largely in the breadth and straightness of their streets had taken a firm hold on the public mind. This idea, if not more thoroughly carried out than it can be in an old town, has much in its favor. Before the French Revolution the broad, dusty, modern avenues, which allow free passage to men and carriages and free entrance to light and air, but where there is little shade from the sun or shelter from the wind, were beginning to supersede the cooler and less windy, but malodorous lanes where the busy life of the Middle Ages had found shelter. Large and imposing public buildings were constructed in many towns, facing on the public squares. With the artistic thoroughness which belongs to the French mind, the fronts of the surrounding private houses were made to conform in style to those of their prouder neighbors. The streets were lighted, although rather dimly; their names were written at their corners, and in some instances the houses were numbered.
But such innovations did not touch every provincial town, nor cover the whole of the places which they entered. More commonly, the old appearance of the streets was little changed. The houses jutted out into the narrow way, with all manner of inexplicable corners and angles. The shop windows were unglazed, and shaded only by a wooden pent-house, or by the upper half of a shutter. The other half might be lowered to form a shelf, from which the wares could overrun well into the roadway. Near the wooden sign which creaked overhead stood a statue of the Virgin or a saint. Glancing into the dimly-lighted shop, you might see the master working at his trade, with a journeyman and an apprentice. The busy housewife bustled to and fro; now chaffering with a customer at the shop-door, now cooking the dinner, or scolding the red-armed maid, in the kitchen.[Footnote: Babeau,La Ville, 363. Ibid.,Les Artisans, 73, 82. Viollet le Duc,Dict. d'Architecture(Boutique.)]
The house was only one room wide, but several stories high. Upstairs were the chambers and perhaps a sitting-room. Even among people of moderate means the modern division of rooms was coming into fashion, and beds were being banished from kitchens and parlors. There were more beds also, and fewer people in each, than in former years. On the walls of the rooms paint and paper were taking the place of tapestry, and light colors, with brightness and cleanliness, were displacing soft dark tones, dirt, and vermin.[Footnote: Babeau,Les Bourgeois, 9, 19, 37.]
Houses were thinly built and doors and windows rattled in their frames. The rooms in the greater part of France were heated only by open fires, although stoves of brick or glazed pottery were in common use in Switzerland and Germany; and wood was scarce and dear. In countries where the winter is short and sharp, people bear it with what patience they may, instead of providing against it, as is necessary where the cold is more severe and prolonged. Thicker clothes were worn in the house than when moving about in the streets. Wadded slippers protected the feet against the chill of the brick floors, and the old sat in high-backed chairs to cut off the draft, with footstools under their feet. Chilblains were, and are still, a constant annoyance of European winter. The dressing-gown was in fashion in France as in America, where we frequently see it in portraits of the last century. Similar garments had been in use in the Middle Ages. They belong to cold houses.[Footnote: Babeau,Les Artisans, 123. In 1695 the water and wine froze on the king's table at Versailles,Les Bourgeois, 23.]
The dress of the working-classes, which had been very brilliant at the time of the Renaissance, had become sombre in the seventeenth century, but was regaining brilliancy in the eighteenth. The townspeople dressed in less bright colors than the peasants of the country, but not cheaply in proportion to their means. Already social distinctions were disappearing from costume, and it was remarked that a master-workman, of a Sunday, in his black coat and powdered hair, might be mistaken for a magistrate; while the wife of a rich burgher was hardly distinguishable from a noblewoman.[Footnote: Babeau,Les Artisans, 13, 199. Handiwork was very cheap. Babeau gives the bill for a black gown costing 210 livres 15 sous, of which only 3 livres was for the making;Les Bourgeois, 169 n.]
Great thrift was practiced by the poorer townspeople of the middle class, but their lives were not without comfort. We read of a family in a small town of Auvergne before the middle of the century, composed of a man and his wife, with a large number of children, the wife's mother, her two grandmothers, her three aunts, and her sister, all sitting about one table, and living on one modest income. The husband and father had a small business and owned a garden and a little farm. In the garden almost enough vegetables were raised for the use of the family. Quinces, apples, and pears were preserved in honey for the winter. The wool of their own sheep was spun by the women, and so was the flax of their field, which the neighbors helped them to strip of an evening. From the walnuts of their trees they pressed oil for the table and for the lamp. The great chestnuts were boiled for food. The bread also was made of their own grain, and the wine of their own grapes.
In the country towns, among people of small means, a healthy freedom was allowed to boys and girls. There were moonlight walks and singing parties. Love matches resulted from thus throwing the young people together, and were found not to turn out worse than other marriages. But in large towns matches were still arranged by parents, and the girls were educated rather to please the older people than the young men, for it was the elders who would find husbands for them.[Footnote: Marmontel, i. 10, 51. Babeau,Les Bourgeois, 315.]
Amusements were simple and rational in the cultivated middle class. People in the provinces were not above enjoying amateur music and recitation, and the fashion of singing songs at table, which was going out of vogue in Paris, still held its own in smaller places. A literary flavor, which has now disappeared, pervaded provincial society. People wrote verses and made quotations. But this did not prevent less intellectual pleasures. Players sometimes spent eighteen out of the twenty-four hours at the card-table. Balls were given either by private persons or by subscription. Dancing would begin at six and last well into the next morning; for the dwellers in small towns will give themselves up to an occupation or an amusement with a thoroughness which the more hurried life of a capital will not allow. The local nobility, and the upper ranks of the burgher class, the officers, magistrates, civil functionaries and their families, met at these balls; for social equality was gaining ground in France. The shopkeepers and attorneys contented themselves, as a rule, with quieter pleasures, excursions into the country, theatres, visits, and little supper parties. Dancing in the open air and street shows, in which once all classes had taken part, were now left to the poor.[Footnote: Babeau,Les Bourgeois, 209, 225, 241, 305.]
The journeyman sometimes lived with his master, sometimes had a room of his own in another part of the town. He dressed poorly and lived hard; but generally had his wine. Bread and vegetables formed the solid part of his diet, beans being a favorite article of food. Wages appear to have been about twenty-six sous a day for men, and fifteen for women on an average, the value of money being perhaps twice what it is now, but the variations were great from town to town. The hours of work were long. People were up at four in the summer mornings, in provincial towns, and did not stop working until nine at night. But the work was the varied and leisurely work of home, not the monotonous drudgery of the great factory. Moreover, holidays were more than plenty, averaging two a week throughout the year. The French workman kept them with song and dance and wine; but drunkenness and riot were uncommon.[Footnote: Babeau,Les Artisans, 21, 34. A. Young, i. 565.]
The workman's chance of rising in his trade was far better than it is now. There were not twice as many journeymen as masters.[Footnote: Babeau,Les Artisans, 63. Perhaps more workmen under Louis XVI. Manufactures on a larger scale were coming in. At Marseilles, 65 soap factories employed 1000 men; 60 hatters, 800 men and 400 women. Julliany, i. 85. But Marseilles was a large city. In smaller places the old domestic trades still held their ground.] The capital required for setting up in business was small, although the fees were relatively large; the police had to be paid for a license; and the guilds for admission.
These guilds regulated all the trade and manufactures of the country. They held strict monopolies, and no man was allowed to exercise any handicraft as a master without being a member of one of them. The guilds were continually squabbling. Thus it was an unceasing complaint of the shoemakers against the cobblers that the latter sold new shoes as well as second-hand, a practice contrary to the high privileges of the shoemakers' corporation. Sometimes the civil authorities were called on to interfere. We find the trimming-makers of Paris, who have the right to make silk buttons, obtaining a regulation which forbids all persons wearing buttons of the same cloth as their coats, or buttons that are cast, turned or made of horn.
Minute regulations governed manufactures exercised within the guilds. The number of threads to the inch in cloth of various names and kinds was strictly regulated. New inventions made their way with difficulty against the vested rights of these corporations. Thus Le Prevost, who invented the use of silk in making hats, was exposed to all sorts of opposition from the other hatters, who said that he infringed their privileges; but he overcame it by perseverance, and finally made a large fortune. The regulations served to keep up the standard of excellence in manufacture, which probably fell in some respects on their abolition. They were often made to benefit the masters at the expense of the workmen, who on their side formed secret combinations of their own, fighting by much the same methods as such unions employ to-day. Thus in 1783 the journeymen paper-makers instituted a system of fines on their masters, which they enforced by deserting in a body the service of those who resisted them.[Footnote: Babeau,Les Artisans, 51, 108, 202, 239. Levasseur, ii. 353. Turgot, iii. 328, 347. (Éloge de M. de Gournay), Mercier, xi. 363.]
The successful master of a trade, as he grew rich, might pass into the upper middle class, thehaute bourgeoisie. He became a manufacturer, a merchant, perhaps even, when he retired on his fortune, a royal secretary, with a patent of hereditary nobility. His children, instead of leaving school when they had learned to read, write and cipher, and had taken their first communion, stayed on, or were promoted to a higher school, to learn Latin and Greek. His wife was called Madame, like a duchess. She had probably assisted in his rise, not only by good advice and domestic frugality, but by the arts of a saleswoman and by her talent for business. Should he die while his sons were young, she understood his affairs and could carry them on for her own benefit and for that of her children. No longer a single maidservant, red in the face and slatternly about the skirts, clatters among the pots in the little dark kitchen behind the shop, or stands with her arms akimbo giving advice to her mistress. The successful man has mounted his house on a larger scale, and if the insolent lackeys of the great do not hang about his door, there are at least one or two of those quiet and attentive old men-servants, whose respectful and self-respecting familiarity adds at once to the comfort and the dignity of life. [Footnote: Babeau,Les Artisans, 158, 167, 181, 204, 271.]
It was not within the walls of his own house alone that the burgher might be a man of importance. The towns retained to the end of the monarchy a few of the rights for which they had struggled in earlier and rougher times. Assemblies differently composed in different places, but sometimes representing the guilds and fraternities and sometimes made up of the whole body of citizens, took a part in the government of the town. They voted on loans, on the conduct of the city's lawsuits, and on municipal business generally. Officers were chosen in various ways, some of them by very complicated forms of election, and some by throwing of lots. These officers bore different titles in different places, as consuls, echevins, syndics, or jurats. They sometimes exercised considerable executive and judicial powers, controlling the ordinary police of the city. Their perquisites and privileges varied from town to town, with the color of their official robes, and the ceremonies of their installation. The cities valued their ancient rights, shorn as they were of much substantial importance by the centralizing servants of the crown; and repeatedly bought them back from the king, as time after time the old offices were abolished, and new-fashioned purchasable mayoralties set up in their stead.[Footnote: Babeau,La Ville, 39. When the towns bought in the office of mayor, they had to name an incumbent, and the town owned the office only for his lifetime and had to buy it in again on his death.Ibid., 81. This looks as if the royal office of mayor were not hereditary, In spite of theEdit de la Paulette. Where no other purchaser came forward, the towns were obliged to buy the office.Ibid., 79.]
The municipal authorities shared with the clergy the control of education and the care of the poor and the sick. The last were collected in large hospitals, many of which were inefficiently managed.[Footnote: There were great differences from place to place. Howard,passim. The hospital, poor-house, etc., at Dijon were good; the hospital at Lyons large, but close and dirty. Rigby, 102, 113. Muirhead, 156.] It must always be borne in mind, when thinking of the daily life of the past, that in old times, and even so late as the second half of the last century, a high degree of civilization and a great deal of luxury were not inconsistent with an almost entire disregard of what we are in the habit of considering essential conveniences. Comfort, indeed, has been well said to be a modern word for a modern idea. Dirt and smells were so common, even a hundred years ago, as hardly to be noticed, and diseases arising from filth and foul air were borne as unavoidable dispensations of divine wrath. Yet some advance had been made. Baths had been absolutely essential in the Middle Ages when every one wore wool; the result of the common use of linen had been at first to put them out of fashion; under Louis XVI. they were coming in again. The itch, so common in Auvergne early in the century that in the schools a separate bench was set apart for the pupils who had it, was almost unknown in 1786. Leprosy had nearly disappeared from France before the end of the seventeenth century. The plague was still an occasional visitant in the first quarter of the eighteenth, in spite of rigorous quarantine regulations. On its approach towns shut their gates and manned their walls, and the startled authorities took to cleansing and whitewashing. In 1722, the doctors of Marseilles went about dressed in Turkey morocco, with gloves and a mask of the same material; the mask had glass eyes, and a big nose full of disinfectants. How the sight of this costume affected the patients is not mentioned. When the plague was over, the Te Deum was sung, and processions took their way to the shrine of Saint Roch.[Footnote: Babeau,Les Bourgeois, 177. Ibid.,La Ville, 443.]
Schools were established in every town. The schoolmasters formed a guild, the writing-masters another, and neither was allowed to infringe the prerogatives of its rival. The schoolmasters in towns were generally appointed by the clergy, but the municipal government kept a certain control. A good deal of the teaching of boys was done by Brotherhoods, while that of girls was almost entirely entrusted to Sisters. In many places primary instruction was free and obligatory, at least in name. The law making it so had been passed under Louis XIV., for the purpose of bringing the children of Protestants under Catholic teaching; but this law was not always enforced. In northern France, there were evening schools for adults, and Sunday schools where reading and writing was taught, probably to children employed in trades during the week. A certain amount of religious instruction preceded the ceremony of the "first communion." As to secondary or advanced schools, they are said to have been more numerous and accessible in the eighteenth century than now, when they have mostly been consolidated in the larger cities. There were five hundred and sixty-two establishments reckoned as secondary in France in 1789, about one third of them being in the hands of Brotherhoods. There were also many private schools licensed by the municipal authorities. The boys when away from home lived very simply indeed. Marmontel, who was sent from his own little town to attend the school at a neighboring one, has left a description of his mode of life. "I was lodged according to the custom of the school with five other scholars, at the house of an honest artisan of the town; and my father, sad enough at going away without me, left with me my package of provisions for the week. They consisted of a big loaf of rye-bread, a small cheese, a piece of bacon and two or three pounds of beef; my mother had added a dozen apples. This, once for all, was the allowance of the best fed scholars in the school. The woman of the house cooked for us; and for her trouble, her fire, her lamp, her beds, her lodging and even the vegetables from her little garden which she put in the pot, we gave her twenty-five sous apiece a month; so that all told, except for my clothing, I might cost my father from four to five louis a year." This was about 1733, and the style of living may have risen a little, even for schoolboys, during the following half century. The sons of professional men and people of the middle class were better off in respect to education than most young nobles; as the former were sent to good schools, while the latter were brought up at home by incompetent tutors. It would appear to have been easy enough for a boy to get an education; harder for a girl. But no one who has glanced at the literature of the time will imagine that France was then destitute of clever women.[Footnote: Babeau,La Ville, 482. Ibid.,Les Bourgeois, 369. Marmontel, i. 16. Montbarey, i. 280. Ch. de Ribbe, i. 320.]
In the eighteenth century great changes were taking place in the national life. Simple artisans presumed to be more comfortable in 1789 than the first people of the town had been fifty years before. The middle class lived in many respects like the nobility, with material luxuries and intellectual pleasures. Yet the artificial barriers were still maintained. The citizen, unless of noble birth, was excluded not only from the army, but from the higher positions in the administration and in the legal profession. The nobility of the gown was liable to be treated with alternate familiarity and impertinence by that of the sword or by that of the court. The last held most of the positions which strongly appealed to vanity, many of those which bore the largest profit. Jealousy is possible only where persons or classes come near each other, and before the Revolution the various classes in France were rapidly drawing together.
There is perhaps no great country inhabited by civilized man more favored by nature than France. Possessing every variety of surface from the sublime mountain to the shifting sand-dune, from the loamy plain to the precipitous rock, the land is smiled upon by a climate in which the extremes of heat and cold are of rare occurrence. The grape will ripen over the greater part of the country, the orange and the olive in its southeastern corner. The deep soil of many provinces gives ample return to the labor of the husbandman. If the inhabitants of such a country are not prosperous, surely the fault lies rather with man than with nature.
It has been the fashion to represent the French peasant before the Revolution as a miserable and starving creature. "One sees certain wild animals, male and female, scattered about the country; black, livid and all burnt by the sun; attached to the earth in which they dig with invincible obstinacy. They have something like an articulate voice, and when they rise on their feet they show a human face; and in fact they are men. They retire at night into dens, where they live on black bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the trouble of sowing, digging and harvesting to live, and thus deserve not to lack that bread which they have sown." This description, eloquently written by La Bruyere, has been quoted by a hundred authors. Some have used it to embellish their books with a sensational paragraph; others, and they are many, to show from what wretchedness the French nation has been delivered by its Revolution.
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,Caractères, 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, andpassim. 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. Chérest, 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 ofmetayers, 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 vingtièmes 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 régime, 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 thecapitaineriesor 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 thecahiersproves the grievance. See the chapter on thecahiers. Thecapitainerieof 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 thecens, 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 thechampart, 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 calledlods 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 ruralcahiers, passim. Mathieu gives the text of a customary right ofbanalité. The fee of thefour banalwas 1/24 of the bread by weight; themoulin banal, 1/12 of the flour; thepressoir 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.