Part 410

Banished to Troyes (August, 1787), in consequence of its refusal to register two edicts relating to the stamp-duty and the land-tax, the Parliament of Paris "grew weary of exile, and the minister recalled it on condition that the two edicts should be passed. But this was only a suspension of hostilities; the necessities of the crown soon rendered the struggle more obstinate and violent. The minister had to make fresh applications for money; his existence depended on the issue of several successive loans to the amount of 440,000,000. It was necessary to obtain the enrolment of them. Brienne, expecting opposition from the parliament, procured the enrolment of this edict, by a 'bed of justice,' and to conciliate the magistracy and public opinion, the protestants were restored to their rights in the same sitting, and Louis XVI. promised an annual publication of the state of finances, and the convocation of the states-general before the end of five years. But these concessions were no longer sufficient: parliament refused the enrolment, and rose against the ministerial tyranny. Some of its members, among others the duke of Orleans, were banished. Parliament protested by a decree against 'lettres de cachet,' and required the recall of its members. This decree was annulled by the king, and confirmed by parliament. The warfare increased. The magistracy of Paris was supported by all the magistracy of France, and encouraged by public opinion. It proclaimed the rights of the nation, and its own incompetence in matters of taxation; and, become liberal from interest, and rendered generous by oppression, it exclaimed against arbitrary imprisonment, and demanded regularly convoked states-general. After this act of courage, it decreed the irremovability of its members, and the incompetence of any who might usurp their functions. This bold manifesto was followed by the arrest of two members, d'Eprémenil and Goislard, by the reform of the body, and the establishment of a plenary court. Brienne understood that the opposition of the parliament was systematic, that it would be renewed on every fresh demand for subsidies, or on the authorization of every loan. Exile was but a momentary remedy, which suspended opposition, without destroying it. He then projected the reduction of this body to judicial functions. … All the magistracy of France was exiled on the same day, in order that the new judicial organization might take place. The keeper of the seals deprived the Parliament of Paris of its political attributes, to invest with them a plenary court, ministerially composed, and reduced its judicial competence in favour of bailiwicks, the jurisdiction of which he extended. Public opinion was indignant; the Châtelet protested, the provinces rose, and the plenary court could neither be formed nor act. Disturbances broke out in Dauphiné, Brittany, Provence, Flanders, Languédoc, and Béarn; the ministry, instead of the regular opposition of parliament, had to encounter one much more animated and factious. {1256} The nobility, the third estate, the provincial states, and even the clergy, took part in it. Brienne, pressed for money, had called together an extraordinary assembly of the clergy, who immediately made an address to the king, demanding the abolition of his plenary court, and the recall of the states-general: they alone could thenceforth repair the disordered state of the finances, secure the national debt, and terminate these disputes for power. … Obtaining neither taxes nor loans, unable to make use of the plenary court, and not wishing to recall the parliaments, Brienne, as a last resource, promised the convocation of the states-general. By this means he hastened his ruin. … He succumbed on the 25th August, 1788. The cause of his fall was a suspension of the payment of the interest on the debt, which was the commencement of bankruptcy. This minister has been the most blamed because he came last. Inheriting the faults, the embarrassments of past times, he had to struggle with the difficulties of his position with inefficient means. He tried intrigue and oppression; he banished, suspended, disorganized parliament; everything was an obstacle to him, nothing aided him. After a long struggle, he sank under lassitude and weakness; I dare not say from incapacity, for had he been far stronger and more skilful, had he been a Richelieu or a Sully, he would still have fallen. It no longer appertained to anyone arbitrarily to raise money or to oppress the people. … The states-general had become the only means of government, and the last resource of the throne. They had been eagerly demanded by parliament and the peers of the kingdom, on the 13th of July, 1787; by the states of Dauphiné, in the assembly of Vizille; by the clergy in its assembly at Paris. The provincial states had prepared the public mind for them; and the notables were their precursors. The king after having, on the 18th of December, 1787, promised their convocation in five years, on the 8th of August, 1788, fixed the opening for the 1st of May, 1789. Necker was recalled, parliament re-established, the plenary court abolished, the bailiwicks destroyed, and the provinces satisfied; and the new minister prepared everything for the election of deputies and the holding of the states. At this epoch a great change took place in the opposition, which till then had been unanimous. Under Brienne, the ministry had encountered opposition from all the various bodies of the state, because it had sought to oppress them. Under Necker, it met with resistance from the same bodies, which desired power for themselves and oppression for the people. From being despotic, it had become national, and it still had them all equally against it. Parliament had maintained a struggle for authority, and not for the public welfare; and the nobility had united with the third estate, rather against the government than in favour of the people. Each of these bodies had demanded the states-general: the parliament, in the hope of ruling them as it had done in 1614; and the nobility, in the hope of regaining its lost influence. Accordingly, the magistracy proposed as a model for the states-general of 1789, the form of that of 1614, and public opinion abandoned it; the nobility refused its consent to the double representation of the third estate, and a division broke out between these two orders. This double representation was required by the intellect of the age, the necessity of reform, and by the importance which the third estate had acquired. It had already been admitted into the the provincial assemblies. … Opinion became daily more decided, and Necker wishing, yet fearing, to satisfy it, and desirous of conciliating all orders, of obtaining general approbation, convoked a second assembly of notables on the 6th of November, 1788, to deliberate on the composition of the states-general, and the election of its members. … Necker, having been unable to make the notables adopt the [double] representation of the third estate, caused it to be adopted by the council. The royal declaration of the 27th of November decreed, that the deputies in the states-general should amount to at least a thousand, and that the deputies of the third estate should be equal in number to the deputies of the nobility and clergy together. Necker moreover obtained the admission of the curés into the order of the clergy, and of protestants into that of the third estate. The district assemblies were convoked for the elections; every one exerted himself to secure the nomination of members of his own party, and to draw up manifestoes setting forth his views. Parliament had but little influence in the elections, and the court none at all. The nobility selected a few popular deputies, but for the most part devoted to the interests of their order, and as much opposed to the third estate as to the oligarchy of the great families of the court. The clergy nominated bishops and abbés attached to privilege, and cures favourable to the popular cause, which was their own; lastly, the third estate selected men enlightened, firm and unanimous in their wishes. The deputation of the nobility was comprised of 242 gentlemen, and 28 members of the parliament; that of the clergy, of 48 archbishops or bishops, 35 abbés or deans, and 208 curés; and that of the communes, of two ecclesiastics, 12 noblemen, 18 magistrates of towns, 200 county members, 212 barristers, 16 physicians, and 216 merchants and agriculturists. The opening of the states-general was fixed for the 5th of May, 1789."

_F. A. Mignet, History of the French Revolution, introd._

ALSO IN: _W. Smyth, Lectures on the History of the French Revolution, lecture 6 (volume 1)._

_J. Necker, On the French Revolution, part 1, section 1._

FRANCE: A. D. 1789. The condition of the people on the eve of the great Revolution. The sources and causes of its destructive fury.

"In 1789 three classes of persons, the Clergy, the Nobles, and the King occupied the most prominent position in the State, with all the advantages which it comports; namely, authority, property, honors, or, at the very least, privileges, immunities, favors, pensions, preferences, and the like. … The privileged classes number about 270,000 persons, comprising of the nobility 140,000 and of the clergy 130,000. This makes from 25,000 to 30,000 noble families; 23,000 monks in 2,500 monasteries, and 37,000 nuns in 1,500 convents, and 60,000 curates and vicars in as many churches and chapels. Should the reader desire a more distinct impression of them, he may imagine on each square league of territory, and to each thousand of inhabitants, one noble family in its weathercock mansion, in each village a curate and his church, and, every six or seven leagues, a conventual body of men or of women. … {1257} A fifth of the soil belongs to the crown and the communes, a fifth to the third estate, a fifth to the rural population, a fifth to the nobles and a fifth to the clergy. Accordingly, if we deduct the public lands, the privileged classes own one half of the kingdom. This large portion, moreover, is at the same time the richest, for it comprises almost all the large and handsome buildings, the palaces, castles, convents, and cathedrals, and almost all the valuable movable property. … Such is the total or partial exemption from taxation. The tax-collectors halt in their presence, because the king well knows that feudal property has the same origin as his own; if royalty is one privilege seigniory is another; the king himself is simply the most privileged among the privileged. … After the assaults of 450 years, taxation, the first of fiscal instrumentalities, the most burdensome of all, leaves feudal property almost intact. … The privileged person avoids or repels taxation, not merely because it despoils him, but because it belittles him; it is a mark of plebeian condition, that is to say, of former servitude, and he resists the fisc as much through pride as through interest. … La Bruyère wrote, just a century before 1789, 'Certain savage-looking beings, male and female, are seen in the country, black, livid and sunburnt, and belonging to the soil which they dig and grub with invincible stubbornness. They seem capable of articulation, and, when they stand erect they display human lineaments. They are, in fact, men. They retire at night into their dens, where they live on black bread, water and roots. They spare other human beings the trouble of sowing, ploughing and harvesting, and thus should not be in want of the bread they have planted.' They continue in want of it during 25 years after this, and die in herds. I estimate that in 1715 more than one-third of the population, six millions, perish with hunger and of destitution. The picture, accordingly, for the first quarter of the century preceding the Revolution, far from being overdrawn, is the reverse; we shall see that, during more than half a century, up to the death of Louis XV., it is exact; perhaps, instead of weakening any of its points, they should be strengthened. . . . Undoubtedly the government under Louis XVI. is milder; the intendants are more humane, the administration is less rigid, the 'taille' becomes less unequal, and the 'corvée' is less onerous through its transformation, in short, misery has diminished, and yet this is greater than human nature can bear. Examine administrative correspondence for the last thirty years preceding the Revolution. Countless statements reveal excessive suffering, even when not terminating in fury. Life to a man of the lower class, to an artisan, or workman, subsisting on the labor of his own hands, is evidently precarious; he obtains simply enough to keep him from starvation and he does not always get that. Here, in four districts, 'the inhabitants live only on buckwheat,' and for five years, the apple crop having failed, they drink only water. There, in a country of vineyards, 'the vine-dressers each year are reduced, for the most part, to begging their bread during the dull season.' … In a remote canton the peasants cut the grain still green and dry it in the oven, because they are too hungry to wait. … Between 1750 and 1760, the idlers who eat suppers begin to regard with compassion and alarm the laborers who go without dinners. Why are the latter so impoverished, and by what chance, on a soil as rich as that of France, do those lack bread who grow the grain? In the first place, many farms remain uncultivated, and, what is worse, many are deserted. According to the best observers 'one-quarter of the soil is absolutely lying waste. … Hundreds and hundreds of arpents of heath and moor form extensive deserts.' … This is not sterility but decadence. The régime invented by Louis XIV. has produced its effect; the soil for a century past is reverting back to a wild state. … In the second place, cultivation, when it does take place, is carried on according to mediæval modes. Arthur Young, in 1789, considers that French agriculture has not progressed beyond that of the 10th century. Except in Flanders and on the plains of Alsace, the fields lie fallow one year out of three and oftentimes one year out of two. The implements are poor; there are no ploughs made of iron; in many places the plough of Virgil's time is still in use. … Arthur Young shows that in France those who lived on field labor, and they constituted the great majority, are 76 per cent. less comfortable than the same laborers in England, while they are 76 per cent. less well fed and well clothed, besides being worse treated in sickness and in health. The result is that, in seven-eighths of the kingdom, there are no farmers but simply métayers. ['The poor people,' says Arthur Young, 'who cultivate the soil here are métayers, that is, men who hire the land without ability to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide cattle and seed, and he and his tenants divide the product.'] … Misery begets bitterness in a man; but ownership coupled with misery renders him still more bitter"; and, strange as it appears, the acquisition of land by the French peasants, in small holdings, went on steadily during the 18th century, despite the want and suffering which were so universal. "The fact is almost incredible, but it is nevertheless true. We can only explain it by the character of the French peasant, by his sobriety, his tenacity, his rigor with himself, his dissimulation, his hereditary passion for property and especially for that of the soil. He had lived on privations and economized sou after sou. … Towards 1760, one-quarter of the soil is said to have already passed into the hands of agriculturists. … The small cultivator, however, in becoming a possessor of the soil assumed its charges. Simply as day-laborer, and with his arms alone, he was only partially affected by the taxes; 'where there is nothing the king loses his dues.' But now, vainly is he poor and declaring himself still poorer; the fisc has a hold on him and on every portion of his new possessions. … In 1715, the 'taille' [see TAILLE AND GABELLE] and the poll-tax, which he alone pays, or nearly alone, amounts to 66,000,000 livres, the amount is 93,000,000 in 1759 and 110,000,000 in 1789. … 'I am miserable because too much is taken from me. Too much is taken from me because not enough is taken from the privileged. Not only do the privileged force me to pay in their place, but, again, they previously deduct from my earnings their ecclesiastical and feudal dues. When, out of my income of 100 francs, I have parted with 53 francs, and more, to the collector, I am obliged again to give 14 francs to the seignior, also more than 14 for tithes, and, out of the remaining 18 or 19 francs, I have additionally to satisfy the excise-men. {1258} I alone, a poor man, pay two governments, one, the old government [the seigniorial government of the feudal regime], local and now absent, useless, inconvenient and humiliating, and active only through annoyances, exemptions and taxes; and the other [the royal government], recent, centralized, everywhere present, which, taking upon itself all functions, has vast needs and makes my meagre shoulders support its enormous weight.' These, in precise terms, are the vague ideas beginning to ferment in the popular brain and encountered on every page of the records of the States-General. … The privileged wrought their own destruction. … At their head, the king, creating France by devoting himself to her as if his own property, ended by sacrificing her as if his own property; the public purse is his private purse, while passions, vanities, personal weaknesses, luxurious habits, family solicitudes, the intrigues of a mistress and the caprices of a wife, govern a state of 26,000,000 men with an arbitrariness, a heedlessness, a prodigality, an unskilfulness, an absence of consistency, that would scarcely be overlooked in the management of a private domain. The king and the privileged excel in one direction, in good-breeding, in good taste, in fashion, in the talent for self-display and in entertaining, in the gift of graceful conversation, in finesse and in gayety, in the art of converting life into a brilliant and ingenious festivity. … Through the habit, perfection and sway of polished intercourse they stamped on the French intellect a classic form, which, combined with recent scientific acquisitions, produced the philosophy of the 18th century, the ill-repute of tradition, the ambition of recasting all human institutions according to the sole dictates of reason, the appliance of mathematical methods to politics and morals, the catechism of the rights of man, and other dogmas of anarchical and despotic character in the 'Contrat Social.'—Once this chimera is born they welcome it as a drawing-room fancy; they use the little monster as a plaything, as yet innocent and decked with ribbons like a pastoral lambkin; they never dream of it becoming a raging, formidable brute; they nourish it, and caress it, and then, opening their doors, they let it descend into the streets.—Here, amongst a middle class which the government has rendered ill-disposed by compromising its fortunes, which the privileged have offended by restricting its ambition, which is wounded by inequality through injured self-esteem, the revolutionary theory gains rapid accessions, a sudden asperity, and, in a few years, it finds itself undisputed master of public opinion.—At this moment, and at its summons, another colossal monster rises up, a monster with millions of heads, a blind, startled animal, an entire people pressed down, exasperated and suddenly loosed against the government whose exactions have despoiled it, against the privileged whose rights have reduced it to starvation."

_H. A. Taine, The Ancient Régime, book 1, chapters 1, 2, and book 5, chapters 1, 2, 5._

"When the facts of history are fully and impartially set forth, the wonder is rather that sane men put up with the chaotic imbecility, the hideous injustices, the shameless scandals, of the 'Ancien Regime,' in the earlier half of the century, many years before the political 'Philosophes' wrote a line,—why the Revolution did not break out in 1754 or 1757, as it was on the brink of doing, instead of being delayed, by the patient endurance of the people, for another generation. It can hardly be doubted that the Revolution of '89 owed many of its worst features to the violence of a populace degraded to the level of the beasts by the effect of the institutions under which they herded together and starved; and that the work of reconstruction which it attempted was to carry into practice the speculations of Mably and of Rousseau. But, just as little, does it seem open to question that, neither the writhings of the dregs of the populace in their misery, nor the speculative demonstrations of the Philosophers, would have come to much, except for the revolutionary movement which had been going on ever since the beginning of the century. The deeper source of this lay in the just and profound griefs of at least 95 per cent. of the population, comprising all its most valuable elements, from the agricultural peasants to the merchants and the men of letters and science, against the system by which they were crushed, or annoyed, whichever way they turned. But the surface current was impelled by the official defenders of the 'Ancien Régime' themselves. It was the Court, the Church, the Parliaments, and, above all, the Jesuits, acting in the interests of the despotism of the Papacy, who, in the first half of the 18th century, effectually undermined all respect for authority, whether civil or religious, and justified the worst that was or could be said by the 'Philosophes' later on."

See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1702-1715; and JESUITS: A.D. 1761-1767.

_Prof. T. H. Huxley, Introduction to F. Rocquain's "The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution"_