IV. 1783-87. Calonne
N.B. (1). Nominee of Marie-Antoinette ;: ‘ Madame, si c’est possible, c’est fait; si c’est impossible, cela se fera. hence (2). Policy of reckless expenditure at Court (much money also expended upon public works).
(3). Scandals at Court; e. g., Queen’s Necklace.
(4). As à result of this policy, complete exhaustion of treasury.
(5). Corvée again abolished, impositions on Nobles sub. stituted as à means of raising money.
(6). Finally in 1787 ‘ Assembly of Notables, ‘la nouvelle troupe de comédiens engagée par le sieur de Calonne,’ in the words of a pamphlet.
The Notables demanded a publication of the National accounts. Calonne unable to meet their demands, and forced to retire.
V. 1787-88. Loménie de Brienne (archbishop of Toulouse). N.B. (1). Generalization of system of provincial assemblies, with power of controlling local imposts, and ‘vote par tête.”
(2). The Parlement insisted that States-general alone couldaltermanagementoftaxation,and wasexiled to Troyes; soon afterwards recalled; Lit de justice held, and a loan of 420 millions registered in spite of Protest by the Parlement. ‘C’est illégal,’ cried the Duke of Orleans. ‘C’est légal, parce que je le veux, said the King. Two magistrates imprisoned by lettres de cachet. Orleans exiled.
(3). Brienne declared national bankruptcy; and dismissed.
VI. 1783-89 Necker, recalled, advised summoning of Estatesgeneral for January, 1789. The Tiers-état to be represented by a number equal to that of the other two estates combined.
EDITORS NOTES
Pilnitz.
H£re the Emperor Leopold (brother of Marie-Antoinette) met Frederick William IT of Prussia in August 1791, after Louis” fight from Paris in the preceding June had been checked at Varennes. There were present at Pilnitz amongst others the Count of Provence (subsequently Louis XVIII) and the Count of Artois (subsequently Charles X), the brothers of Louis XVI, leaders of the reactionary court party. The Count of Artois, in particular, was a firm adherent of the cause of the ancien régime and exercised a great influence over the Queen. The Declaration published as the result of this meeting called upon the great powers of Europe to take steps to ensure the safety of the throne of Louis XVI. This interference exasperated the French people, and led indirectly to the Revolutionary wars. This was very far from being the object of Leopold, whose intentions were in reality pacific : he had, for this reason, inserted in the manifesto a clause which made any action of his own or of ths King of Prussia dependent upon the formation of à coalition against France by the other powers of Europe, and he knew that Pitt at that time would not accede to such a scheme. It was the action of Artois, who by publishing the Declaration in France, and by taking the guarding clause for granted, aroused the fury of the French people.
Arthur Young.
A Sufftolk squire, enthusiastic upon the subject of agriculture, who made three tours in France in the years 1787, 1788, 1789, for the sake of studying the conditions and methods of French farming. Devoid of nerves and extremely observant, he journeyed throughout France, usually on horseback, on the eve of
dif
the Revolution. Apart from a great mass of technical detail dealing with the subject in which he was principally interested, he has left behind him in his diary many notes of unique interest upon the social and political conditions of rural France at that time. He met many of the French nobility both in Paris and in the country, and his accounts of them bear out to à great extent the description which Tocqueville gives of their life and character. Young’s travels form one of Tocqueville’s main authorities ; there are continual references to them in this volume.
PAGE 13, LINE 30. l
. . . Joule les peuples . . . les gagne à sa cause.
The Belgian Republic of 1790, indeed, may be said to have been directly occasioned by the removal of Louis XVI from Versailles to Paris by the National Guard on October 6, 1789. Similarly the constitution of Holland was more than once altered to keep in harmony with the development of the Revolution in France. There was practically no country in Europe where the spirit of the French nation did not make itself felt. In Italy the impetus was given to a struggle for nationality lasting for more than half a century, before it gained any measure of success, whilst even in England there was a party which was won over by the generous impulses of the revolutionaries. ‘ How much the greatest event it is that has happened, and how much the best, exclaimed Fox, when he heard the
news of the capture of the Bastille.
St. Salvien.
Presbyter of Marseilles ; wrote ‘ De Gubernatione Dei ? ; lived during the fifth century. Of his writings Mr. Hodgkin says : ‘ How easily we could imagine, in listening to that description of a Gaulish Conventus, that we had glided unconsciously over thirteen centuries and were listening to the preparation of a cahier setting forth the wrongs of the iniquitously taxed Tiers-États before the convocation of the States-General.’ St. Salvien’s answer to the question ‘ Why does the Christian Empire fall before the barbarians ?’ was, ‘ Sola nos morum nostrorum vitia vicerunt.”
M. de Maistre.
A publicist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, in company with others, such as Bonald and Lamennais, representative of a party which favoured a return to the principles of the ancien régime, on the ground that the doctrines of the perfectability of man and complete religious scepticism had been proved to be failures, and that the theory of the social contract upheld by Rousseau was as fallacious as it was disastrous.
Il est facile aujourd'hui . ..
Between the years 1830-50 there was a revival of religious enthusiasm throughout Europe; in England it took shape in the Oxford Movement ; in France it reached its climax during the Second Republic (1848-51). In the revolution of 1848 the Paris mob brought their flags to be blessed at Notre-Dame, and in the country the clergy were induced in many places to bless the trees of liberty. The contrast between this state of affairs and the violent anti-religious enthusiasm of the first and second revolutions is startling enough to justify this remark of Tocqueville. The subsequent history of the Church in France, first under the Second Empire (1851-70), and afterwards under the Third Republic, if not so happy as that between 1830-50, has at all events proved that the frantic anti-christian outbursts in 1789 formed but a temporary phase in the development of the Revolution, as Tocqueville insists.
Une sorte de fureur à l'Église.
As early as 1753 the following words were written by a prominent French statesman, D’Argenson: ‘On ne saurait attribuer la perte de la religion en France à la philosophie anglaise qui n’a gagné à Paris qu’une centaine de philosophes, mais à la haïne contre les prêtres qui va au dernier excès. A peine osent-ils se montrer dans les rues sans être hués . .. tout chemine à une grande révolution dans la religion ainsi que dans le gouvernement. . .. On prétend que si cette révolution est pour arriver à Paris elle commencera par le déchirement de quelques
— sit
méme par chi de l'archevêque de Paris , , . enfin la | D Tips en pui a deu
preswrved in England, an exterior cf behaviour —one did not find among them poachers or fox- , who, having speht the morning in scampering after hounds, dedicate the
crening to the botile, and reel frora inebristy to the pulpit.”
Pacs 17, 1158 20, Bien. ., dors Le coflicisme,
Pace 18, LISE 4, Miroheau.
| grestest orator and statesman of the Pevolution; died Ayril 2, 1791. Akbough be led the Tiers-État at the first mectings of the be very soon rezlized the anarchy that was in store for France, He therefore established coraraunications with the Court, by means of his friend Lz Marck, and attempted to become the 2dviser of the King, whilst #4 the
D. ee di otre care y or party in assembly. Louis, ever, influenced L the $ ienne, never really trusted him, and was rather his desth. Nevertheless, the
cf Mirabeau La Marck proves conclusively the wisdom end the of the counsels which King, who
Mirabeau wished the King to go to Rouen. ‘Paris ne veut que l'argent : les provinces demandent les lois.” ‘Se retirer à Metz ou sur toute autre frontière serait déclarer la guerre à la Nation et abdiquer le trône.”
Fragiles et puissants.
Highly centralized governments, depending upon few persons, having their seat in the enclosed area of several ‘ bureaux,” and supported by military authority, occupy much the same position and can exercise much the same arbitrary rule as an individual autocrat. The revolutions of 1830 and 1851 have proved, however, that it is only necessary to get possession of the government offices to effect a revolution under such conditions. |
On vit alors des Français . .
This refers to the expedition sent by Charles I to assist the Huguenots in La Rochelle, 1627. Partly owing toill-fortune, but chiefly to bad generalship, Buckingham, who was the commander of the force, was completely unsuccessful, and Richelieu was enabled to reduce the insurgents.
Des hommes nés au fond de la Baltique.
Le., the Swedes under the leadership of Gustavus Adolphus, who successfully championed the cause of Protestantism in Germany from July, 1630, till November, 1632.
Le même brandon.
During the latter part of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century Western Europe was in a condition of social and political unrest. In England this feeling was evidenced by such risings as those of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, the preachings of John Ball, and also by the more important doctrines of Wyclif and his followers the Lollards. In Bohemia the followers of John Huss, who was practically a disciple of
Wyclif, combated the established religion, and were not easily subdued ; while in France the peasantry rose in an insurrection known as the Jacquerie, and the citizens of Paris and other towns were frequently in a state of riot and revolt.
In France the main causes for this state of affairs were the misery inflicted on the rural districts by the 100 years’ war, by the black death, and by the exactions of the nobles and the Church ; while in the towns the growing wealth of the bourgeois, fostered by the policy of Philip the Fair (1285-1314) and his successors, led to an attempt to enforce a regular constitution upon the monarchy, weakened by the 100 years’ war.
PAGE 25, LINE 27. \ Où la civilisation semble . .,
In one sense civilization can hardly be said to simplify social institutions or political systems. During the nineteenth century it seems rather to have emphasized the individuality of nations. In fact, the doctrine of Nationality has dominated European politics since the time of Napoleon.
L'égalité devant la loi, etc. ; la liberté de la presse.
In England the press became free in 1695, owing to a tacit arrangement allowing the licensing act, which had been passed annually since 1662, to lapse altogether. Only the law of libel and the Stamp Act (1712) have limited the power of the press since 1695.
Speeches in the House of Commons were very indifferently reported during the greater part of the eighteenth century. In 1771 Conway’s case led to reporters being definitely admitted to the gallery, where even now they only sit on sufferance, though since 1875 à resolution of the House is necessary for the ejection of a stranger.
These very primary civil rights, which the English have enjoyed ever since they have been of any practical use, werc obtained by the French people only at the beginning of the Revolution, and were withdrawn temporarily under the Empire of Napoleon : unless the full meaning of this fact is realized, one of the chief causes of the violence of revolutionary feeling in France cannot possibly be grasped.
Pace 32, LINE 4.
Propriétaire foncier.
As early as 1315, Louis le Hutin (X) had allowed his serfs to
buy their emancipation, proclaiming : ‘ Selon le droit de nature .
chacun doit naître franc.” Of the benefits of the system of peasant proprietorship in the various districts in France where he saw it, Arthur Young says: ‘ Going out of Gange (Hérault) I was surprised to find by far the greatest exertion in irrigation which I had yet seen ; . . . an activity has been here that has swept away all difficulties before it and has clothed the very rocks with verdure. It would be à disgrace to common sense to ask the cause. The enjoyment of property had done it. Give à man secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden. Give à man a nine years’ lease of a garden, and he will turn it into a desert.”
‘ There are some parts of England (where small yeomen still remain) that resemble this country of Béarn; but we have very little that is equal to what°[ have seen in this ride of
twelve miles from Pau to Moneng (Basses-Pyrenées). It is all |
in the hands of little proprietors, without the farms being so small as to occasion a vicious and miserable population. An air of neatness pervades the whole.” Compare also the Remonstrance of the Parliament of Pau, 1788 : ‘ Dans nos campagnes, tout le monde est propriétaire.”
En Angleterre il y avait eu des paysans.
The Veoman class is now of little importance in England. There are à certain number of the old freeholders, especially in Lincolnshire, but in most places tenant-farming has been found very much more remunerative for the cultivators of the soil. From 1430-1832 the franchise qualification in England was the 40s. freehold, a proof of the important position of the yeomen in early English history; the fact that Cromwell did not make any alteration in this qualification also tends to indicate that as late as the middle of the seventeenth century the freeholders were a considerable body. The Reform Bill took from this class its political prerogative. Arthur Young estimates that half France was cultivated by métayers, i e., tenants who hold rent-free and share the profits of agriculture with the owners of the soil. This system, never accepted in
England, is now used with great success in parts of France. Young has nothing to say in its favour. It is practically the profit-sharing system of agriculture.
L’Angleterre était administrée . .
The local administration in England from Tudor times was mainly in the hands of the Justices of Peace, whose powers lay not only in the local Courts of Justice but also in the general supervision of the district rates, wages, &c. The great Poor Law Act of 1601 gave them much control in the question of relief, while the Settlement Acts in 1662 gave them further power in controlling local labour. The office of Lord Lieutenant, also instituted by Queen Mary (Tudor), gave to a large landowner in each county an increased share of responsibility for the conduct of local affairs. The active part played in the administration of the country by the gentry in England saved the country from becoming a prey to à class of official administrators (Intendants, &c.) who, while they deprived the French local mapnates of their authority, left to them their right of receiving the feudal dues from their tenants. The peasants thus had no protector, but two masters.
Droit exclusif de la chasse.
Arthur Young says of the ‘ capitaineries ? (i.e., paramountships over certain lands granted by the king to princes of the blood, with game rights even over the lands not belonging to them) : ‘ It must be observed that by game must be understood whole droves of wild boars, and herds of deer not confined by any wall or pale, but wandering at pleasure over the whole country to the destruction of crops, and to the peopling of the galleys by the wretched peasants who presumed to kill them in order to save that food which was to support their helpless children. . . . There were numerous edicts for preserving the game which prohibited weeding and hoeing, lest the partridges should be disturbed ; manuring with night-soil lest the flavour of the partridges should be injured by feeding on corn so produced ; taking away stubble which would deprive the birds of shelter. . . . These capitaineries extended over 400 leagues of country.
Dans le temps où nous avions ...
Le., under the ‘July Monarchy,’ 1830-48, and the Second Republic, 1848-51. Tocqueville is thinking bitterly of the rule of Louis Napoleon.
Pays d'élection.
The pays d'élection were so called because in early times the royal domain was divided into districts for purposes of taxation, and each district allotted to a farmer of taxes, ‘ élu,’ nominally elected by the community, but in reality appointed by the king. ‘This was the case from the fourteenth century onwards. For the pays d'état, which comprise some of the more distant provinces such as Lille, Douai, Provence, Foix, Soule, Béarn, and several others, see Tocqueville’s appendix. The pays d'état consisted of lands which had lapsed to the throne either by the feudal doctrine that when the male line of à house dies out the king inherits, or simply by right of conquest in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Prince apanagiste.
I. e., à prince of the royal house to whom was allotted by the king an ‘apanage,’ or district, for his sustenance. This system originated in the desire on the part of the early Capetians to suppress the power of the feudal nobles, but the remedy often proved worse than the disease, as for instance was the case in Burgundy, given in apanage to Philip the Hardy, younger son of John the Good (d. 1364), with fatal results to the peace of France for many years. However, most of the great houses of France owe their power to this system, though as early as the days of Charles V (d. 1380) its dangers were realized and annuities and money payments granted to the princes of the blood instead of land. Subsequent kings however reverted to the arrangement of which Louis 1X (1226-70) himself had made use.
PAGE 45, LINE 9, The Marquis d’Argenson.
Secretary of State for Foreign affairs under Louis XV, from November, 1744, to January, 1747. He died in 1757. His
memoirs form a most valuable commentary on the state of public feeling during his day, and also prove him to have been a man of considerable foresight and originality. Of him Voltaire, his friend, said, ‘ C’est le meilleur citoyen qui ait tâté du ministère, and Rousseau himself admitted that ‘il avait conservé dans le ministère le cœur d’un citoyen et des vues droites et saines sur le gouvernement de son pays.” The broadness and modernity of his views may be judged from such remarks as, ‘ Laisser faire, telle devrait être la devise de toute puissance publique depuis que le monde est civilisé,’ or ‘ Dans tout bon gouvernement il doit exister liberté absolue de conscience,’ or ‘La Liberté est l’appui du trône, l’ordre rend légitime la liberté, c’est l'égalité, c’est le travail assidu, qui augmentent le capital de l’état, which constantly appear in his writings.
Law.
A Scot who, under the patronage of the regent, Orleans, opened a private bank in Paris in 1716. He had a great success, and in 1718 he was authorized to adopt for his bank the name of ‘Royal bank, so that his notes were accepted as currency equivalent to gold and silver. He soon began to speculate and form companies. A boom ensued followed by a scare: then came the crash, and Law, being unable to meet the run upon his bank, took flight from Paris in 1720. The story corresponds in a most remarkable manner with that of the South Sea Bubble which occurred at the same time in England.
Les émeutes que le prix des grains faisait naître.
Cf. Young, Paris, June 10, 1789 :—*The want of bread is terrible ; accounts arrive every moment from the provinces, of riots and disturbances and calling in the military to preserve the peace of the markets. The prices reported are the same as I found at Abbeville and Amiens, 5 sous (24d.) a pound for white bread and 34 to 4 sous for the common sort eaten by the poor. These rates are beyond their faculties and occasion great misery. At Meudon the police (that is to say, the intendant) ordered that no wheat should be sold on the market
without a person at the same time taking an equal quantity of barley. Even as early as the time of Maupeou (chancellor 17704) the words ‘ pain à deux sous, chancelier pendu, ou révolution à Paris’ had been found written on the walls of the palace at Versailles.
Fondait des sociétés d'agriculture.
Young describes a meeting of the Royal Society of Agriculture at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, June, 1789. Being an honorary member, he attended and had a right to vote. Nothing can exceed the contempt which he felt for these purely theoretic farmers, upon whom in vain he pressed the merits of turnips. . . ‘I did not tell them that all hitherto done had been absolute folly ; and that the right way to begin was to undo everything done.”
La paroisse en Angleterre.
The beginnings of the Parochial system are attributed to Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury at the close of the seventh century. For practical purposes in very early times the parish may be considered roughly as coincident with the Anglo-Saxon administrative unit the ‘township.” In the nineteenth century, from the Select Vestry Act of 1819 to the Parish Councils Act of 1894, which practically reconstituted the ‘ township,’ giving to villages of less than 300 inhabitants an elective body with power to control allotments of land, &c., the tendency has been all in the direction of strengthening that ancient administrative unit of which the vestry meeting is the most familiar survival.
À la date de 1757 une déclaration du roi...
The violent penal code aimed against Roman Catholics, especially the priests, which existed also nominally at this time in ireland, forms a curious parallel to this ordinance of Louis XV. In reality the penalties of the law were seldom enforced either in Ireland or in France.
Mirabeau le père.
1715-1789. One of the ‘ physiocratic ? school of economists, author of several works on political subjects, notably ‘ Ami des hommes,’ 1756, ‘ Utilité des États Provinciaux,’ 1750, ‘ Théorie de l’Impôt,’ 1760. His ability was recognized outside France by Leopold of Tuscany (afterwards Emperor) and Gustavus III of Sweden. He advocated local administration, and a restitution of the noblesse to their former powers. He suffered eight days” imprisonment and exile from Paris owing to his attack on the farmers of taxes. His relations with his more famous son were far from happy.
Mais ses fondements étaient restés.
The extraordinary strength of centralized institutions has never been more conclusively proved than by the history of France during the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, when Europe was arrayed against her. The national character of the French seems to lend itself to a centralized form of rule, whether it be absolute monarchy or bureaucracy ; the words of Richelieu have been verified by subsequent history: ‘La légèreté et l’inconstance des Français ne peuvent être vaincues que par la présence de leur maître. Ils sont capables de tout, pourvu que ceux qui les commandent soient capables de bien enseigner ce qu’il faut qu’ils pratiquent.” ‘ Voilà,’ says M. Sorel, . “toute la base de l’ancien établissement monarchique et, l’on peut ajouter, toutes les causes de la grandeur et de la décadence de la royauté française.” Tocqueville himself emphasized this feature of the French national character when he wrote: ‘ We are the most civilized people in the world, and yet in certain respects we have retained more of the savage than any other nation ; for the great characteristic of the savage is to be influenced by the sudden impressions of the present, without recollection of the past or thought of the future.”
La Fronde.
An unsuccessful rising against the rule of Mazarin, 1649-1652. At first it took the form of a constitutional revolt headed by the HEADLAM Y
Parlement of Paris, aiming at the abolition of the Intendants (instituted by Richelieu several years previously), the reduction of the taille, the granting of rights to the Habeas Corpus, and the general control of taxation. The Nobility, however, joined the Parlement : the revolt became a civil war, and its character changed altogether. The struggle was now one between oligarchy and the bureaucracy instituted by Louis XIII and Richelieu, and continued by Mazarin in the name of the infant king Louis XIV. After three years of disorder the minister managed to divide his foes, who had nothing in common but their hatred of himself, and the Fronde came to an end. The country in general would not support the nobles, and Paris had not then the power to carry the provinces with it alone. Mazarin returned to power, and till his death in 1661 continued to strengthen the prestige of the monarchy. The Fronde marked the attempt and failure on the part of the Parlement of Paris to emulate the deeds of the Parliament of London : it also proved the unworthiness cf the French nobility, and condemned them to become a body of courtiers and cavalry officers during the reigns of Louis XIV and his successor, and so to lose all sympathy with their vassals, to whom they henceforth were to be bound by no tie except that of pecuniary extortion.,
Pace 81, LINE 33.
Avant la prise de la Bastille.
Cf. Arthur Young, Nancy, July 15, 1789. (The Bastille was stormed on the 14th.)
‘ Letters from Paris! all confusion! the ministry removed, M. Necker ordered to quit the country without noise. The effect on the people of Nancy was considerable . . . all agreed that it was fatal news and that it would occasion great commotion. “* What will be the result at Nancy ? ” The answer was in effect the same from all I put the question to: ‘“ We are a provincial town, we must wait to see what is done at Paris ; but everything is to be feared from the people, because bread is so dear, they are half starved and are consequently ready for commotion , . .” i. e. if a starving populace were not in question, no one would dream of moving.”
One of the most obvious reasons for the inertness and lack of enterprise in the French provincial towns, at this period, Young points out, lay in the fact that there were scarcely any newspapers to be procured. With great difficulty he ob-
tained one at Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, but in less important places there was à complete absence of reliable information ; on the great high roads, he adds, he met very little traffic even near the larger cities. It was this lack of intercommunication which deprived the country of any corporate feeling. Paris, as Tocqueville says, seemed to have absorbed the vital power of the nation. Yet the one exception, the town of Grenoble in Dauphiné, showed enough initiative (under the inspiration of Mounier) to make its influence felt in Paris and give vast impetus to the revolutionary sentiment,
PAce 93, LINE I.
Le bourgeois du XIV® siècle.
The reign of Philip the Fair, 1285-1314, marks the beginnings of bourgeois power in France. The king summoned representatives of the cities to the assemblies of the States-general in 1302, 1308, and 1314, the first three regular meetings of the national representatives. He also definitely completed the formation of the three central courts of France, the Conseil, the Parlement, and the Chambre des Comptes. The administration thus began to pass into the hands of jurists and other men not of noble birth, ‘ Borjois avec le ray se tinrent ’ ; chivalry felt the force of the king’s attack.
Charles V continued this policy, both as Dauphin during his father’s captivity after Poictiers (1356), and as King, 1364-1380. ‘ La royauté autorise les sujets des seigneurs à se soustraire à leurs juridictions pour se soumettre à celle du roi et à devenir - bourgeois du roi. Le tiers-état fournit au roi des conseillers, des fonctionnaires. Les distinctions s’effacent entre les roturiers que le service du roi anoblit et les chevaliers qui se confondent avec eux dans les rangs des légistes. Il en est qui arrivent aux fonctions épiscopales : d’autres qui, acquérant des fiefs nobles, se mêlent à la noblesse d'épée.’
PAGE 93, LINE ld.
Les états généraux du XIVe siècle.
In the memorable meetings of the States-general in 1356, 1357, the three estates united themselves together to draw up what has been called ‘la Grande charte française.” In the body assembled at Paris in 1356 there were 800 members, 400 of
whom represented the Tiers-état: the leading spirits were Etienne-Marcel, Prévôt des Marchands de Paris, a bourgeois, and Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon. By their ordinance, says M. Gasquet, ‘le gouvernement tout entier passait ainsi des mains de la royauté à celles des états. (Consentement libre d'impôt, durée et périodicité de cet impôt entraînant la périodicité des états, contrôle financier, désignation des membres du conseil, c’est-à-dire, responsabilité ministérielle; du premier coup, sous la pression des événements les nobles et bourgeois du quatorzième siècle avaient trouvé toutes les règles et assuré les conditions d'existence du gouvernement constitutionnel.”
Unfortunately for France the Hundred Years’ War and the lack of combination between the estates at subsequent crises enabled the kings to evade the conditions of this ordinance. It was only in 1484 that a noble could say with truth, in the assembly of the estates, ‘ Les députés des trois ordres travaillent en commun au bien de la chose publique.’
‘Malheureusement . . . cette concorde et cette harmonie n'auront pas de lendemain . . . aux convocations suivantes les députés de noble à bourgeois se traiteront comme de maître à valet, sans souci de l’unité de la nation.” Even when forced to summon the estates the kings of France could rely on their disunion, and foster it to suit their own ends.
Dans les états particuliers.
‘ Dans le Languedoc, si les trois ordres rédigeaient séparément leurs cahiers, ils nommaiïent en commun leurs députés. Il en était de même en Champagne. Dans la Bretagne chaque ordre choisissait les députés de l’ordre différent: ceux du clergé étaient élus par la noblesse et par le tiers ; ceux du tiers par le clergé et la noblesse ; ceux de la noblesse par le clergé et par le tiers. —Gasquet.
Tout le monde connaît cet acte célèbre.
Cf. Lavisse. ‘ En 1314 les barons de France s’unirent . . . ils résolurent de dire au roi qu’ils ne se laisseraient plus tailler sans résistance. . . . Des ligues s’étaient formées dans plusieurs provinces. ... La ligue de Bourgogne, daté de Novembre 1314, est conclue “ entre un certain nombre de barons pour eux et pour les
nn
autres nobles du duché de Bourgogne, des abbés, des doyens, et des prieurs, au nom du clergé ” et le ‘ commun de onze villes ” pour toutes les villes grandes et petites du duché.
‘ Nous avons juré de nous défendre les uns et les autres contre toutes les entreprises déraisonnables du roi.’
This Burgundian league allied itself to that of the Champenois and other districts, and forced Philip le Bel to make some more or less superficial concessions. Similarly leagues were formed against his successor Louis X in 1315.
Charles VII. 1422-1461.
This king drove the English from France and ended the Hundred Years War by the aid of Joan of Arc. In 1439 the States-general met at Orléans, and granted Charles the right of levying the taille for the maintenance of the army. Originally the taille was a payment made by those who did not fight (but might have been called upon to do so), in order that an efficient fighting force might be maintained by the king: at first it was paid by ‘tous marchands, méchaniques, laboureurs, praticiens, officiers, tabellions, notaires et autres.” Those exempted were the nobles, the students of the Universities of Paris, Orléans, Angers, and Poictiers, the royal officials, ‘ pauvres et misérables personnes,’ the clergy, and the members of the royal courts. Subsequently many towns and individuals came to be exempted.
C'était un moyen d’abaisser la noblesse.
Similarly the Tudors established a nobility entirely dependent upon themselves ; while James I created the order of baronets largely as a means of raising money.
Lavoisier. 1743-1794.
This famous chemist, amongst other great scientific achievements, invented gas meters and revolutionized the terminology of science ; in 1769 he was made a farmer of taxes. During the earlier part of the Revolution he composed a scheme of taxation, De la richesse territoriale de la France. He was guillotined on May 6, 1794, when all who had held farms of taxes were proscribed. ‘The Republic has no need of savants, was the answer to a petition in his favour.
N'impose qui ne veut.
The ordinance of 1356. ‘L’octroi de cet impôt ne vaudra que pour un an. Il est levé sans préjudice des franchises et libertés des états, qui seuls ont le droit d’en prescrire la prorogation pour les années suivantes, si les nécessités du royaume commandent de nouveaux sacrifices.’ —Gasauet.
In England arbitrary taxation had been opposed as early as 1198, when Hugh of Lincoln refused to pay an imposition of Richard I, and Becket had previously resisted Henry Il.
1341. Consent of Parliament required for direct taxation beyond fixed revenue.
1362. Parliament gains similar control over indirect taxation.
The meetings of the États-généraux were so irregular and infrequent that the concessions obtained from the French kings were merely temporary and superficial.
Captivité du roi Jean et la démence de Charles VI.
Jean II, called ‘ The Good ? for no very obvious reason, was taken prisoner by the Black Prince at Poictiers in 1356, and remained in England till 1359.
Charles VI went mad in 1392, and remained in that condition with some lucid intervals until he died in 1422.
Mazarin . .. se borna à ajouter . . . à la taille.
In this policy of giving way before the resistance of the rich and letting the weight of taxation fall upon the poor lies the explanation of the disorder in the state of the national finances which Mazarin left to his successor Colbert in 1661. This action is very typical of the policy of French kings as described by Pascal: ‘ne pouvant fortifier la justice, on a justifié la force”: as soon as they failed to carry out this maxim, the revolutionary spirit arose and swept them away.
Le fief de la terre tenue en roture.
Feudal tenures were definitely abolished in England by the Convention Parliament, 1660, the king’s revenue, amounting to £1,200,000, being raised by excise,
PAGE 110, LINE 27, Saint Louis.
Louis IX (1226-1270), with his provost Étienne Boileau, collected and codified the charters of guilds, giving them a legal status. k
Henry III (1574-1589).
Cf. Gasquet.
Henry III granted his sister Margaret the right to create two masters of every craft in each town through which she should pass. By his ordinance of 1581 he also insisted on the control of trades and crafts being absolutely in the hands of their respective guilds and corporations,
Louis XII (1498-1515). Le père du peuple.
Cf. Voltaire :
Ce roi qu’à nos aïeux donna le ciel propice Sur son trône avec lui fit asseoir la justice ;
Il pardonna souvent, il régna sur les cœurs, Et des yeux de son peuple il essuya les pleurs.’
‘J'aime mieux voir les courtisans rire de mon avarice que les peuples pleurer de mes dépenses.” (Louis XII.)
‘ Le roi Louis XII, l’auteur de l'ordonnance de 1498, ouvrit la voie à la vénalité des offices en rendant vénaux les offices de finances.” (Gasquet.)
Henry IV (1593-1610).
‘ Seul roi de qui le pauvre ait gardé la mémoire.” In 1604 Henry instituted the ‘ Paulette, à system by which ‘les offciers de justice et de finance purent transmettre leur charge à leurs héritiers, à la condition de payer tous les ans au Trésor le soixantième du prix de cette charge.” The name ‘ Paulette ? is derived from the originator of the idea, Charles Paulet, a secretary of Henry IV.
Dans les hautes classes . ..
C£. Talleyrand’s remark: ‘Qui n’a pas vécu avant 1789 ne connaît pas la douceur de vivre.’
Le Duc de Choiseul.
Chief minister of France 1758-1770, previously ambassador at Vienna to the court of Maria Theresa. He was responsible for the marriage of the future Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette, the expulsion of the Jesuits from France (1764), and a more vigorous foreign policy, intended to remedy the disasters of the Seven Years War. The story of his disgrace well illustrates the character of the monarchy of Louis XV. The Duc d’Aiguillon, Governor of Brittany, was accused by the Parlement of Rennes of actions arbitrary and unjust. He appealed to the judgement of his peers, and the case was adjourned to the Parlement of Paris. The case began, but Louis suddenly ordained that the proceedings should cease. The Parlement protested in vain. Choiseul gave it his support. The Chancellor Maupeou insisted on the royal prerogative in an address to the magistrates assembled at Versailles : their reply was a refusal to continue the administration of justice any longer. Under the influence of Madame du Barry, his mistress, who was also a friend of d’Aiguillon and Maupeou, Louis determined to chastise ‘this factious party bent on injuring the power of the crown,’ and Choiseul was ordered to resign and retire to his property at Chanteloup.
PAGE 140, LINE l4.
Je vois sous mes yeux . ..
Arthur Young was here alluding to the ‘ open-field system ? of agriculture, which had been in use in England from Anglo- Saxon times until the eighteenth century. ‘The Goths and Vandals of husbandry” he calls these open-field farmers elsewhere, whose lands were cultivated in strips, who knew nothing of scientific rotation of crops, who had no money to invest in the soil, and could not irrigate for fear of ruining their ncighbours’ holdings.
Ils n’étaient point mélés aux affaires comme en Angleterre. e. g. Swift, Addison, Bolingbroke, Burke.
Pace 152, LINE 37.
Salente.
An ideal republic, the subject of the ‘ Télémaque ? of Fénelon written in 1699. This work was suppressed by Louis XIV, for under the name of ‘ Idoménée ” the character of the king was described. Fénelon had been tutor to the Duke of Burgundy, the grandson and heir of Louis, but had been banished to his archbishopric of Cambrai, where he devoted himself to writings upon political science. Louis XIV called him ‘le bel esprit le plus chimérique de notre royaume.” Fénelon was a convinced aristocrat ; his ideas for the regeneration of France consisted in the abolition of Intendants and the secretaries of state, for whom he wished to substitute ‘ missi,’ or mere advisory officials sent by the king, and committees of nobles ; he longed ‘ rendre la vie à la nation par l'exercice de ses franchises locales, provinciales, nationales, et en même temps, mettre un contrepoids à la centralisation monarchique.”
Diderot, dc.
Authors of the Encyclopedia produced 1751-65. Nominally a summary of knowledge, this work also played the part of a sort of revolutionary press. ‘The encyclopedists, says Mr. Hassall, ‘aimed at nothing less than the establishment of a complete system of education which was to succeed the destruction of the monarchy and the Church.
Letronne. Mercier de la Rivière. Quesnay. Abbé Bodeau.
These, with Gournay, Turgot, and the elder Mirabeau, formed the leaders of the ‘ Physiocrats.” This school of economists (cire. 1750-89) favoured a return to a natural system of life. The land is the only source of wealth: therefore agriculture
is the true vocation of man : every man has a right to work and to be encouraged ; in order that the net produce of toil may be great there must be freedom of trade and industry, for ‘ pauvre paysan, pauvre royaume ; pauvre royaume, pauvre roi." Society accepts government by contract as a necessary evil. Government must be absolute, but must not interfere in the details of life. ‘ Laisser faire, laisser passer ” should be its motto.
‘ Prosperity, security, liberty, these comprise the whole social order.
La centralisation et le socialisme.
This statement may appear a little paradoxical; but it is possible to argue that socialism is only another form of autocracy. In every civilized community not in a state of blank anarchy there must be some ultimate authority. This authority may lie in the hands of the mass or of an individual. If there is no rival to check or challenge, then this authority is absolute and autocratic. When Louis XIV said ‘ L'état c’est moi, he meant he could do what he pleased. Whenever a whole community recognizes no leaders, but submits itself absolutely in every detail of administration and legislature to the authority, either of the majority of its representatives or the representatives of its majority, then that community is as autocratic as à community can be. There may be equality either under an autocratic individual or under an autocratic state ; again there may be despotism, either of one man or of the majority. Pervert the socialistic organization, or decapitate the autocrat, and in either case the result will be bureaucracy.
Vauban . .. Duke of Burgundy.
In 1707 Vauban published the Dîme royale, addressed to Louis XIV: the book was destroyed by the public executioner and Vauban died of chagrin. The following quotation explains Tocqueville’s allusion : ‘La dixième partie des habitants du royaume est réduite à la mendicité, cinq autres dixièmes sont à peu près dans la même condition, des quatre autres parties trois sont embarrassées de dettes et de procès, dans la dernière il y a tout au plus 10,000 familles qui soient à l’aise. Again, speaking of the district of Vézelay, Vauban says: ‘Cinq cent
onze maisons sont en ruines et inhabitables, et deux cent quarante-huit dans lesquelles il ne loge personne ; le tout faiee sept cent cinquante-neuf, qui est encore la septième du out.
Vauban proposed to remedy the universal poverty and misery by a tax of a tithe graduated according to the means of the contributors. j
In 1697 Louis XIV authorized an inquiry to be made into the condition of the country, for the benefit of his grandson ‘le Grand Dauphin, duke of Burgundy. Les mémoires des commissaires, the result of this command, draw a picture, no less terrible than the writings of Vauban, of the decayed and wretched condition of France.
Pace 176, LINES 7-24.
La mort de Louis XIV ... une sorte de léthargie.
The peace of Utrecht was signed in 1713, and Louis died two years later, leaving his throne to à sickly child, under the regency of the Duke of Orleans. The old king had been unpopular at the end of his reign, but Paris acclaimed his great-grandson, Louis XV, with as much enthusiasm as it was capable of showing at the time. The following episode shows the condition of the people. ‘... Dans le tumulte accourt le gouverneur de Paris, le duc de Tresmes. “Hé! Messieurs, Messieurs, qu'est-ce cela, Messieurs ! Messieurs ! ” voilà toute sa harangue, on calmait à peu de frais d’éloquence les insurrections parisiennes en ce temps-là. —" Rien n’égale la soumission des peuples.’
The government of Orleans was liberal-minded to a certain extent, yet regency did nothing to impair the prospects of Louis XV, nor were the economies of Fleury his successor calculated to do ought but improve the prospects of the young king. ‘Loin d’avoir été aussi ébranlé qu’on le prétend par le règne de Louis XIV, le principe monarchique en 1715 était donc en pleine vigueur. Son affaiblissement fut l’œuvre de Louis XV lui-même et du XVIII®E siècle.” Compare with this also D’Argenson’s jeremiad on the court of Louis XV. ‘La cour ! la cour! Là est tout le mal. La cour est le tombeau de la nation. O poveretta Francia! tout est pillé par les grands et la noblesse ; la noblesse est la rouille du gouvernement . .. un vent de folie, de prodigalité, d'impôts, de ruine et de révolte souffle partout en France, et nos ennemis en profiteront bientôt.”
Sully.
‘England, says A. Young, ‘ has produced many Colberts, but not one Sully. This great minister of Henry IV (1593-1610) devoted his energies to the improvement of French agriculture, ‘ Pâturage et labourage sont les deux mamelles dont la France est alimentée, les vraies mines et trésors de Pérou, he said. The king was no less eager than the minister. ‘Quand il allait au pays il s’arrêtait pour parler au peuple, il s’informait des passants quel était le prix de chaque chose ; il disait: “Je voudrais savoir ce que vaut un liard, combien de peine ont ces pauvres gens pour l’acquérir, afin qu’ils ne fussent chargés que selon leur portée.” ” Sully and Henry carried into effect much legislation for the benefit of farmers ; they encouraged various forms of production, made canals, and introduced for the first time scientific ideas of cultivation in France by giving support to Olivier de Sèvres, whose ‘ Théâtre d’agriculture et mesurage des champs,’ the result of thirty years varied and practical experience, appeared in 1610. Sully would not lend himself to Henry’s other schemes for the restoring and improving the decayed industries of the country: herein lies the difference between him and Colbert, who, during the first years of his administration, before the wars of Louis XIV, diverted all available revenue to army organization, and directed all his resources to the encouragement of trade and industry by a policy of protection and high tariffs, not only for external but for internal trade, high duties being placed upon corn to prevent transport from province to province.
Les trente-sept ans.
i. e. 1815-1852. Louis XVIII, Charles X, Louis Philippe, and the Second Republic.
Pace 182, LINE 20.
Une telle vue étonne.
‘I told M. de la Bourdonnaye that his province of Bretagne seemed to have nothing in it but poverty and privilege, says Arthur Young, but this was one of the districts where, as Tocqueville points out, the Revolution produced a civil war, the peasants having to be subdued by Hoche, a general
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appointed by the Constituent Assembly. Perhaps à partial explanation of this conservatism in one of the most wretched districts in France lies in the fact that the local noblesse had remained at home instead of going to court. The raison d’être of the feudal exactions was thus obvious to the peasants. The payments may have been more burdensome, but the lord was there: the tie was still strong. The Breton nobility were not rich, and thus their poverty also brought them nearer to the peasantry.
Beaumarchais. 1732-99:
Originally a watchmaker, named Caron, he was employed by Madame de Pompadour in this capacity. He married an aristocrat and became a courtier. Involved in a lawsuit regarding a disputed will, he wrote his Mémoires, which Voltaire himself envied. Losing his case, he was deprived of his civil rights for two years. Subsequently he wrote The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, two famous plays, now perhaps better known in England in their operatic form. He was employed by Louis XV as a political agent in England, and he subsequently actively assisted the Americans in the War of Independence.
Les dragonnades.
In 1682 Louis XIV began à policy of religious persecution. His first measure was to close many Protestant schools and . churches: finding that Huguenots were leaving the country, he issued a proclamation threatening the galleys to all caught trying to emigrate. In 1684 a rising took place in the Cevennes ; Louis subdued it mercilessly, and, to punish the insurgents, quartered dragoons upon them, until they conformed to the orthodox creed. This episode came to be known as the ‘ dragonnades.” In the next year, 1685, the king completed his work by revoking the Edict of Nantes, thereby putting an end to religious toleration in France for the time.
La Galicie.
In 1846 the Ruthenian peasantry in Galicia, encouraged secretly, it was said, by the Austrian Government, rose against the Polish nobles and massacred them indiscriminately.
La Jacquerie.
A rising of the French peasantry in 1358. The insurrection of ‘ chiens enragés,’ as Froissart calls them, broke out in Champagne, Ile de France, and the Beauvaisis ; as many as 100,000 men are said to have been under arms ; their leader was William Karle, with whom Étienne Marcel associated himself. Fearful excesses were committed ; towns closed their gates, and the French and English armies associated themselves to massacre the insurgents. With the extinction of the Jacquerie the career of Marcel came to an inglorious end.
Les maillotins.
In March, 1382, an insurrection, due to the heavy taxation by the Duke of Anjou, one of the regent uncles of Charles VI, broke out in Paris. Tax-gatherers and tax-farmers were massacred, but the University opposed itself to the rioters, and, the young king promising to withdraw the impost and pardon those who dispersed, the disturbance came to an end ; some of the ringleaders were thrown into the Seine, however, in spite of the king’s pledge. The name ‘maillotin’ is derived from maillet, i. e. a sort of hammer or mallet used by the mob. About the same time risings of the same kind and for the same causes took place in Languedoc, Rouen, Reims, Orléans, Châlons, Troyes, and Sens.
Les Seize.
A faction in Paris at the time of the League in the reigns of Henry III, Charles IX, and Henry IV ; so called because it had sixteen leaders representing the sixteen quarters of Paris.
C'est l’idée mère du socialisme moderne.
This remark is more or less the corollary of that on page 170, that socialism is to centralization as the cultivated to the wild tree. The idea of the king being the ultimate owner of all the land never held good in France, because the Capetian dynasty
took so long a period to enforce its sovereignty in the country. For several centuries the kings of France were mere suzerains, often less powerful than some of the great feudal princes (e. g. those of the House of Anjou in the twelfth century), but the doctrine was always in the background and evidenced by all the symbolism of vassalage. As soon as the king felt himself strong enough to do so, he announced himself owner in deed as well as in name of the possessions of his nobles. In this land question lies the main difference between English and French (and also German) feudalism. The Norman kings of England at once insisted on their sovereignty, and lordship of the soil not only of the feudatory lords, but also of the mere freemen (Oath of Salisbury, 1086), with the result that the right of private warfare, so fatal to France, was never admitted in England, except perhaps onte in the case of Baldwin de Redvers during the reign of Stephen.
Le maximum.
This law fixed a maximum price at which articles of prime necessity were to be sold. It was made use of by the Revolutionary tribunal in September, 1793, which thus gave itself a power of terrorizing over the smaller bourgeois. The system was abolished in December, 1794, by the Thermidorians. Napoleon reinstituted it in 1811 for a short time, when the price of corn was rising rapidly in Paris.
Des lois obscures.
Cf. Cromwell’s description of the common law of England as ‘an ungodly jumble.”
La révolution d’ Angleterre.
The story of the gentleman who was hunting between the lines of the armies of King and Parliament on the day of the battle of Edgehill shows that the civil war in England, even in a part of the country often the seat of the operations of war, did not go far below the surface of the soil ; it is also known that the season at Bath was not appreciably affected during the most crucial period of the campaign.
Ils jugeaient . ..
“ And this is law I will maintain Until my dying day, sir,
That whatsoever king may reign J’Il be the Vicar of Bray, sir.”
La haine de l'inégalité.
It may be noticed that Tocqueville makes no mention of the word ‘ Fraternité ” ; and with reason. There is no truer criticism of the absurdity of the use of this word by the French than that of Metternich: ‘ Fraternity in France has led me to suppose that, if I had a brother, I should call him my cousin. From the days of the Jacquerie, in 1358, to those of the Commune in 1871, the French have shown à most remarkable savagery towards one another on innumerable occasions. When roused to passion they seem to massacre one another more willingly than they do their foes. In the cause of Equality the guillotine and the barricade have played a larger part than either ‘ Liberty ? or ‘ Fraternity.
