CHAPTER I
FEUDALISM IN 1789
rHE économie organisation of France in the Middle Ages has been studied and described by an admirable band of scholars — Delisle, Luchaire ^nobos, and Henri Sée, and an attentive study of ir works gives us an idea of the System which, though cure as to certain details, is fully adéquate for the pose of this inquiry. The English student of économie :ory who knows his Seebohm, Ashley, and Vinogradoff, [ hâve no difficulty in recognising that the essential tures of the mediæval land System were the same on h sides of the Channel. In what follows, only those tures are «ummarily described.
The territory was divided into seigneuries or (to use best English équivalent) manors. These were the nomic units which went to make up the System as a Die. At the head of each was a seigneur, a lord, who I his estate from the king, mediately or immediately, the rendering of certain services which we need stay to consider. He was the pivot, as it were, on ich the whole organisation of the manor turned. The d of which this last consisted was divided into two in portions ; the lord’s land or domain, and the dings of his tenants, J It is with the status and conons of tenure of the latter that we are most concerned.
The tenant was usually a serf. In strict law, he v little better than a slave, without personal property bodily freedom, but his condition was, in fact, mitigat at once by the self-interest and the religious scrup of his lord. But he was not free to corne and go, or choose his employments at his own will ; he could i even marry when or whom he would.1 He might tolerably secure in the enjoyment of his holding, labour was scarce, and it was to the lord’s interest concédé some fixity of tenure ; nevertheless, the ten; held only at his superior’s pleasure. When he died, heir or widow might be admitted to the holding in stead, but this was legally an act of grâce, only to purchased by payment of a heavy fine.2
The actual conditions of the serf’s tenure w sufhciently onerous. He was bound to work for many days in each week upon the lord’s domain, us: his own plough and team, and to do harvest work carting when required ; in addition, he had usually make payments in money or kind, as a supplément this corvée or labour rent.3 There were also cas charges, levied upon spécial occasions, and the lord 1 usually the right to tallage his men at will. Nor w these the only servitudes which weighed upon peasant. He could not grind his corn at any mill chose, or bake his bread in his own oven, or press grapes in his own winepress. The seigneur had monopoly of ail these necessary instruments of prod
1 " It is certain that the serfs . . . could not marry without t master’s authorisation ; this was necessary, even when they mar persons living on the same domain and belonging to the same lo: Sée, Moyen Age, p. 71.
2 " Possession of the tenure was quite precarious ; the lord c< revoke it at will. It is well understood, a priori, that if the serf without children, his land falls once more under the direct domina of the proprietor.” Sée, Moyen Age, p. 73.
8 “ The corvées weigh upon the peasants without distinction. One of the most important is the obligation to till the lord’s fiel Sée, Mo en Age, p. 85.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
., a monopoly which he had both will and power ;tly to enforce. Finally, the lord was the tenant’s irai judge. One of the most important results of break-up of the Roman state-system had been the ationalisation of justice, which had, for the most :, become private property, and remained so, to some :nt, till the Révolution came to make ail things new.
lord had now his own gallows and prison, and ;uted judgment, often very terrible judgment, upon vile bodies of his tenants.
such, in broadest outline, was the land-system of Liæval France. We hâve now to discover how much bat System survived in 1789.
3ne feature, at any rate, had not disappeared. France still parcelled out into seigneuries or manors. Over •eat part of the territory the old legal rule still held i — “ no land without a lord.” But the status and ers of these lords had declined, as we hâve seen, Ist those of the cultivators had improved. Serfdom, the mediæval sense of the word, had practically ished, and the peasant had now become either a prietor or a free tenant-farmer. But in either case vas still subjected to a mass of obligations towards lord which were direct survivais from the feudal These seigneurial rights differed widely from cûnce to province, but we can roughly divide them 1 four main groups : 1 (a) servitudes attaching to ;ons or properties which may be regarded as the t obvious relies of serfdom ; (b) payments or services lered in money or in kind, charged upon the land l by the cultivator ; (c) seigneurial monopolies of ous kinds ; ( d ) the rights of jurisdiction still exercised the noble class. We may begin our description of lalism in 1789 with a discussion of the first of these ips.
\s has been said, serfdom, in the full significance of
1 Cf. Sagnac, p. 32.
the word, had practically disappeared from Fra: though it existed in ail its rigour in other parts of Eur< From some provinces it had vanished at a very e; period ; from Normandy, for example, by the thirtee century. Not only was the peasant personally f but his political status had risen, and he now conduc much of his communal business independently of seigneur. Nevertheless, in certain provinces, tenure a distinctly servile character still existed in 1789. IV important of these was the mainmorte, the “ dead har The mainmorte of the Middle Ages has been scribed as “ a right of succession in virtue of which seigneur inherits the property of the serf who 1 without children living in community with him ; the serf it involves the obligation not to alienate tenure : to give or sell it would be to deprive the \ prietor of a future inheritance.” 1 In the latter j of the eighteenth century, though remaining in esse the same, mainmorte was classified into two spec “ personal,” which weighed upon individuals,
“ real,” which attached to land. This distinction, h ever, was of theoretical, rather than of practical, imp ance, and would seem to hâve arisen from the mari in which persons became subject to this right. Se inherited it from their parents ; they were born int servile status. Others acquired it by the occupai of a servile tenure for a specified period, such as a } and a day.2 But, to quote a writer who has discus this difficult question in detail, “ there was in rea no great différence between the two conditions. . The sources disclose no fundamental distinction betw the two groups of serfs as to their rights, and betw the two classes of lands, as to the charges weigt upon them.” 3 For our purpose it is more import to note the disabilities attaching to the condition.
1 Sée, Moyen Age, p. 178. 2 Karéiew, p. 19 et seq.
3 Ibid. p. 24.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
extreme form, these were very onerous. A striking mple is provided by the case of the peasants who ï lands from the Abbey of Luxeuil. They were ipelled to résidé on the estate, and could not go else- ;re without the lord abbot’s express consent ; if, ;n they died, their children were not living in comnity with them, their lands reverted to the lord, and, trary to the custom prevailing in the rest of the vince of Franche-Comté, women who married outside lordship could not retain their right of inheritance spending their wedding-night under the parental f ; parents could not inherit lands from their children hese died without heirs ; and, finally, the unfortunate rgs could not enfranchise themselves by abandoning ir tenures, another restriction which was exceptional he province.1
Such conditions were peculiarly oppressive, but this ance does not stand alone. In their statement pdevances drawn up in 1789 the peasants of Saintrre-le-Moutier (Nivernais) speak of “ the slavish ’nmorte . . . thanks to which the serfs can neither beath their land, nor change their dwelling-places, nor ose their occupations at will ” : which "admits besides the partition of these wretched people like cattle, :n their fathers belong to one manor and their mothers mother.” 2 There were peasants in Burgundy who ld neither give nor bequeath their holdings,3 and ’éiew considers that inability to dispose of land lout the lord’s consent was a feature common to forms of mainmorte ,4 A circumstance apparently igating these hardships was that, in legal theory, the 1 who was not mainmortable by birth but who held die land, could enfranchise himself at will by abandonhis holding. But it is obvious that this privilège quite illusory. How was the peasant to live when
1 Finot, 1880. 1 Quoted by Karéiew, p. 24.
* Ibid. p. 23 note. 4 Ibid. p. 22.
he had given up his land ? In Burgundy, moreover, 1 was obliged to surrender one, or sometimes two-thir< of his moveable property in addition.1 Under the: circumstances we cannot regard as exaggerated tl complaint of a contemporary that “ he (the mai mortable ) is permitted to live at liberty provided that ] dies of hunger.” 2
How many persons suffered under these servile co ditions in 1789 ? That, unfortunately, is a questi< that cannot be answered with précision. Mainmor, properly speaking, seems to hâve existed only in certa of the provinces of the East and Centre, namely, Franch Comté, Berry, Burgundy, and Marche ; but in bo Berry and the Bourbonnais a class of peasants known bordiers were subjected to a similar servitude. Th could only transmit their holdings to their heirs, even direct line of descent, if these were actually living wi them at the moment of death. “ Other dispositio not less rigorous were attached to this tenure. The ne payment of dues for three years led to its confiscati to the profit of the seigneur.” 3 This right of bordelc may certainly be classed with that of mainmorte in cc sidering the different figures which hâve been put forwa in regard to this question. Clerget, writing in 17! declared that there were a million and a half mainmo ables in France, and this statement has often been 1 critically repeated.4 But Clerget gave no proofs of ' assertion, which, indeed, bears obvious marks of < aggeration. Boncerf, a much better authority, writi at the same period, speaks of 300,000. This seems m< reasonable on the face of it, but the only definite figu available are those given by M. Jules Finot in the arti
1 Karéiew, p. 23 note.
a The Abbé Clerget, La Cri de la raison, 1789.
* Mège, p. 64.
4 Its most recent appearance is in an otherwise excellent art in the Economie Journal, March 1919.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
•eviously cited, who says that in the twenty-seven liages held by the Abbey of Luxeuil and the Priory of Dntaine, there were 11,121 mainmortable inhabitants.
. Aulard, the latest authority to study the question, rntents himself with the cautious statement that “ it mnot be denied that there were serfs at the epoch of suis XVI, and that there were many of them, that is 1 say, thousands and thousands.” 1 To this, in the -esent state of our knowledge of the matter, nothing of ilue can be added.
The condition of these gens de mainmorte had attracted uch attention during the years immediately preceding ie Révolution. The existence of such a relie of the ark Ages was felt to be a shocking anachronism in a îriod which prided itself on its enlightenment. Volire’s campaign on behalf of the unhappy peasants of te Jura, held in dead hand by the monks of Saintlaude, is well known, and it set on foot a movement of hich the last stages form the subject of this book. oncerf’s little tract of 1776, on the abuses of feudalism, Tped the current of reforming opinion, even though it as suppressed by legal authority. Turgot, as we know, id a scheme for the progressive extinction of économie udalism which would, incidentally, hâve abolished ainmorte, but he fell from power before it could be put ito execution. In 1779, however, Louis XVI, inspired y Necker, issued a famous edict which swept away this Tic of serfdom from the royal domain. The preamble t the law States that the king would hâve wished to put 1 end to it throughout the realm, but was restrained y regard for the rights of property on the one hand, id the poverty of the exchequer, which forbade any leasure of compensation, on the other. He did, how- /er, destroy one glaring abuse : the so-called “ right l pursuit,” " in virtue of which," says the edict, lords of fiefs hâve sometimes pursued into the free
1 Aulard, p. n.
territories of the realm, and even into our capital, the properties and acquisitions of citizens who hâve lived outside the place of their servitude for many years, an exorbitant right, which the tribunals hâve hesitated to recognise, and one of which the principles of social justice forbid us to permit the survival.” Finally, the edict expresses the hope that the royal example will be generally followed.
It would be interesting to know to what extent this hope was realised, but here, again, précisé information is lacking.1 What can be positively affirmed is that there was no general movement of émancipation. {The Parliament of Franche-Comté refused to register the edict until October 1788, thus making its provisions of doubtful legal effect in that province ; the monks of Saint-Claude, as heedless of the king’s example as they had been of Voltaire’s agitation, still hardened their hearts and refused to set their people free. Clermont Tonnerre, the Abbot of Luxeuil, made a valiant effort to release the serfs on the abbey’s lands. He had raised the question as early as 1775, in a memorial to the royal council which forcibly described the apathy, poverty, and économie loss which were the conséquences of the right of mainmorte. A few sentences deserve to be quoted. “ In the thirty years,” he wrote, “ during which the petitioner has ruled over this abbey, he has seen nothing but heavy, indolent, discouraged and dejected men, lands left uncultivated, culture absolutely neglected no commerce, no émulation, and a general apathy. . . , Mainmorte, then, is at once destructive of agriculture; of manufactures, and of commerce ; it is revolting te humanity ; it annihilâtes human existence. By reducing a part of His Majesty’s subjects to a kind of insupportable slavery in a free kingdom, it humiliâtes and crushes them and renders them, to some extent, incapable of action
1 See the interesting discussion of this point in M. Aulard’s work p. 18 et seq.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
is an obstacle to marriage and tends to dépopulation, ther because those who languish under its yoke refuse reproduce their slavish race, or by reason of the emiation of inhabitants, fatigued by the servitude under lich they groan ; in short, mainmorte may be regarded a scourge to the State. The seigneurs themselves, in e districts where this servitude still exists, lose much ore by the lack of culture of the lands of their estâtes an they gain by the escheats, reversions and other suai dues attached to the right of mainmorte ; the heritances are despoiled ; the mainmortables , who hâve ithing but a misérable life to regret and nothing to ;e, give themselves up to ail kinds of excesses ; mainorte is a source, as abundant as it is continuai, of lawits and contests, as burdensome, expensive and ruinous r the seigneurs as for their subjects.” 1 But the good bot’s éloquence and humanitarian zeal could not preil against the apathy of the bureaucracy. In spite the edict, his plans for the enfranchisement of his rcs de mainmorte had not received the necessary royal action when the Révolution began, and the peasants Luxeuil were still mainmortables in 1789. We shall set them and their abbot again in the course of this story.
These facts go to prove that there was no widespread Dvement of libération following on the royal example, d, if we may judge by the details of two cases known us, enfranchisement, when it occurred, was sometimes arly bought. The inhabitants of Pusey, in Franchemté, procured their freedom from mainmorte and rtain other vexatious charges by the payment of a sum 50,000 livres and the cession of a meadow The inbitants of La Marche and La Rougère, in the province Marche, obtained their freedom from servitude in 1788 the payment of 2526 livres to the Prior of Nouzier. .t was squeezing misery itself,” they said, “ but the 1 Finot, 1880.
state of slavery in which they were held had become insupportable to them.” 1 As M. Aulard drily remarks, “ it seems that sometimes, however philanthropie they might be, the seigneurs encouraged enfranchisement as a means of procuring pecuniary resources or an increase of landed property.” *
Before proceeding to the next division of the subjecl we must notice that mainmorte and bordelage were nol the only relies of serfdom that still survived in 1789 In some parts of Brittany a tenure known as quevaist resembled them very closely. If the quevaisier died with out direct heirs living in community with him, his holding reverted to the lord, and he could not sell, concédé, oi alienate it without the latter’s express consent.3 This like mainmorte, was clearly a survival from the tim< when the peasant had no true property of his own. Th< fact that, at the same period, he could not marry whei he wished and was taxable at his lord’s will, obviousl] accounts for other burdens which we find weighing upoi persons in 1789. 4 The restriction upon freedom of mar riage had been reduced to the payment of a money fini at an early date, and this obligation, usually known a formariage, had survived in certain provinces, such a Franche-Comté,5 Brittany, and Auvergne. In the paris] of Caulnes (Brittany), “ each young man who marrie during the year must pay 12 sols for his wife, who i herself obliged to dance for the amusement of the seigneu or his agents.” 6 Elsewhere, the newly-married wer obliged to présent the lord with gloves, or play at quintain or leap a stream, or submit to “ other usages as insultin, as they are absurd.” 7 In one district of Auvergne ;
1 Sagnac and Caron, p. 452. a Aulard, p. 36.
* Sée, Classes rurales, pp. 12—21.
4 In mediæval France, subjection to these rights was a characteristi aign of servile status. Cf. Sée, Moyen Age, p. 173.
‘ Karéiew, p. 25.
• Sée and Lésort, vol. iii. p. 223.
, Champion, p. 140; Dupont, p. 73.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
ue known as corsage was levied on the peasant when is daughter married or his son entered holy orders ; on ne manor this obligation received an extraordinary ^tension, for there the holder of land paid, not only in ne two cases mentioned, but also when his niece, sister, r female cousin married ! 1 To the serfs lack of personal •eedom we must also, no doubt, ascribe the origin of ne rights of bienvenue and chef-feu, of which we find xamples in Champagne and Quercy respectively. The rst was levied on every newcomer to the manor, on those rho took wives from thence, and on women who came aere to marry. These two last categories paid only alf as much as the first.2 The right of chef-feu may est be described by quoting the complaint of the inabitants of Artix who actually paid it. “ The seigneur,” hey wrote in 1789, " exacts from this community a due alled chef -feu which appears to be the most unjust of harges and one which recalls the ancient servitude of he Gauls ; it consists of a levy of three livres seven sols nade upon each head of a household for the simple right f living in the parish. It is paid by simple labourers /ho do not own a hand’s breadth of land, and is exacted rom them with as much rigour as from the richest enants.” 3 The survival of tallage at will is illustrated >y the statement of grievances drawn up in 1789 by the nhabitants of Essey-les-Nancy, in Lorraine, which menions “ a right called charte by the lord’s agent . . . by drtue of which absurd title the lord has power to tax us it will ; this charge varies from 100 to 124 francs for the laut Château, and from 50 to 44 francs for the Château 3as.” 4 Finally, to complété this section, we must îote the persistence of the right of demanding sworn aith and homage. M. Champion mentions an instance >f this in Provence where a seigneur compelled the parish iriest and more than three hundred proprietors, kneeling
1 Mège, pp. 92-3. 2 Porée, p. 287 note.
* Fourastié, p. 14. * Mathieu, p. 315.
bare-headed before him, to take an oath of allegiance on the Scriptures.1
To turn now to the second category of feudal obligations, that is, payments or services, rendered in money or in kind, and charged upon the land held by the cultivator.
In the early Middle Ages the principal service rendered by the tenant to his lord was compulsory labour on the latter’s domain, a species of rent which, owing to the scarcity of workers and of money, formed an indispensable item in the manorial economy. But with the progress of civilisation and of the peasant’s enfranchisement, these corvées, as they were called, were increasingly commuted for fixed payments in money or in kind, known as cens or censives. Sometimes this rent took the form of a specified share of the produce of the land, when it was known as champ art, terrage, or tierce. In the majority of cases it would seem that the cens included payments both in money and in produce. The Abbey of Hambye, for example, received from nine peasants in the parish of Lengronne ii6| demeaux [a local measure] of wheat,
10 fowls, 2 capons, io loaves, 98 eggs, and 2 livres, 7 sols, 7 deniers in money.2 The amount of these rents varied infinitely from manor to manor in 1789 ; in many cases they had not altered for a century or more, and the fall in the value of money had greatly reduced the importance of that portion of them which was actually paid in coin.3 It must not be assumed, however, that this stationary condition was universal. In 1585, to take only one example of the contrary tendency, the parish of Pierre- Moraine, in Champagne, paid 68 bushels of grain to its seigneur ; by 1608 this charge had increased to 1268 bushels and 11 capons ; in 1666 it was 1854 bushels and
11 capons ; in 1735 it rose to 3000 bushels, at which
1 Champion, p. 140 note. a Bridrey, vol. i. p. 399 note.
* Sée, Classes rurales, p. 93, quotes a number of cases where rents had varied very slightly or not at ail between 1622 and 1785.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
îgure it stood in 1789. 1 Nor, of course, does the above remark apply to the champarts, the real value of which ncreased along with the rise in the price of food which ivas so marked in France in the latter part of the eigh- Leenth century. This due was unquestionably much more burdensome in its incidence than the cens. It varied in amount according to the custom of the locality ; rases are to be found where it was as low as one-thirteenth )f the crop ; in others it was as high as one-third.2 But ipart from its amount, the holder of land subjected to :his right suffered from vexatious restrictions on his iberty of action ; to protect the lord’s interests, the jeasants were often forbidden to change their methods >f culture, to sell or hypothecate their land without the ormer’s consent. Renauldon, an eighteenth century vriter on feudal law, States that “ the possessor of land vhich is subject to terrage is not only unable to sell it vithout the lord’s consent, but cannot even pledge or îypothecate it. There are many customs [local feudal :odes] which permit the lord to enter into possession )f the property when it has been uncultivated for three æars and a month. There are others which forbid the :hanging of the crop on land subject to terrage without he lord’s consent.” 3 The very nature of the charge ended directly towards bad cultivation, since the harder he peasant worked and the more he produced, the larger vas the share of his harvest claimed by the lord. It vas a general rule, also, that the cultivator could not eap his crops till the lord’s agents had levied the champart >n the fields ; the carelessness or spite of the latter might esult in the ruin of the whole harvest through bad veather. The injurious results of this right are well Lescribed in a pétition of the inhabitants of Saint-Mauriceur-Fessard, in the Orléanais. “ The levying of this
1 Laurent, p. 498. * Sée, Classes rurales, p. 86.
* Renauldon, Traité historique et pratique des droits seigneuriaux, 765, p. 179.
charge,” they write, “ is burdensome, since it compels the vassal to deliver the product to the seigneur ; he must even carry it to him before removing what remains in his fields, and he cannot do so till the lord or his agent has corne to count it on the spot. But the person charged with the collection of this due has often to oversee five or six parishes, or even more, and he cannot be everywhere at once ; the waiting peasant dare not remove his own grain, because he runs the risk of having as many suits brought against him as there are parcels of land subject to this right. A heavy rain falls, the grain germinates, the straw rots ; this misfortune happens only too frequently and totally discourages the cultivator, so that he takes but little account of land which owes champart. He neglects to enrich it, obtains scarcely anything from it, and spends ail his labour on soil which is exempt.” 1
Other regular payments exacted in several provinces were for commutations of the duty of “ watch and ward,” and for sauvegarde or military protection. Both were relies of a violent âge, when vassals owed armed service to their superiors and received their aid in troubled times. Examples of such survivais were to be found in Brittany, Auvergne, Alsace, Lorraine, Hainaut, Flanders, and Artois.2 In certain Breton manors a species of annual chimney-tax was levied on each tenement ; the inhabitants of Guithen complained in 1789 that they paid “ six bushels of wheat and a fowl per chimney,” a charge equal to eighteen livres for a house that let at three ! Under these circumstances it is not surprising that villages were deserted.3
It must be remembered that for many of these charges there was “ solidarity ” between the holders of seig-
1 Sagnac and Caron, p. 419.
2 Mège, pp. 84 and 104 ; also Mathieu, p. 316, and Sée, Classes rurales, p. 106.
* Sée, Classes rurales, p. 99.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
eurial land, that is, the payments were collective, which teant, of course, that the solvent paid for the insolvent r dishonest. We read of communities where half the ihabitants were ruined by reason of this solidarity.1 . striking picture of its conséquences is given in the ihier of Saint-Jean-de-Béré. “ Almost everywhere there solidarity for payment of the feudal rents, and their istribution gives rise to innumerable disputes. Peter wes the sixty-fourth part of a measure of oats, the thirty- ;cond part of a fowl, the twelfth of a denier, etc. The easants are bewildered by ail these fractions and are bliged to call in a minor agent of the seigneur to collect re rents for them ; they always pay more than they jght, they complain and tear one another to pièces.” a
The corvées or labour-rents tended, as we hâve seen, to isappear, but it would be quite incorrect to suppose lat they were a rarity in 1789 ; they still survived in îany parts of France, though much reduced in severity. n Auvergne, for example, a stronghold of feudalism, tiey were limited to twelve days of labour during the ear, and this seems to hâve been a fairly general rule.3 t is true that we hear of complaints in Champagne and irtois of peasants being obliged to work with ploughs nd draught-beasts for three, and even five days a week n their lord’s land ; but it would seem that such servitudes rere exceptional and confined to spécial periods of the ear, such as the ploughing and harvest seasons.4 A ase probably more typical is that mentioned by Cardial Mathieu in his study of pre-revolutionary Lorraine, 'he inhabitants of Tantonville, Quevilloncourt, and )melmont were obliged to perform the following corvées .uring the year. They had to devote three days to iloughing, one to hay-making, another to carting the hay, nd two more to reaping and carrying the oats. In ddition, they had to transport two cartloads of wood
1 Sée, Classes rurales, p. 91. 1 Sée and Lésort, vol. ii. p. 330.
* Mège, p. 94. 1 Kovalewsky, vol. i. p. 262.
from the forest to the château. The labourers owe fifteen days’ work at different seasons.1 2 There was vast différence between such conditions and those whic had existed in the Middle Ages, or those which sti obtained on the great estâtes of East Prussia, where th peasants laboured for six days in the week on their lord: land and tilled their own wretched fields by moonlight Nevertheless, they were burdensome enough, as can b seen from the contemporary complaints on the subjec' The seigneurs, say the inhabitants of Ormay (Berry ‘ ‘ by multiplied corvées get their crops reaped and carrie whilst their vassals run the risk of losing their own ” they “ compel poor labourers to work for nothing at th time when day-wages are highest ; force those who hav carts to carry quantities of timber ; compel people t beat the walnut-trees and to crack and sift the nuts a the winter ; to pick their grapes ... in a word, d everything that they need.” 3 The peasants of L Beslière complain that they are compelled to cart th materials for the construction and repair of the seigneur’ house, farm and mill, and to carry his hay.4 Sometime lords of manors endeavoured to exact the performanc of forced labour on Sundays, a proceeding which shocke the religious sentiments of the people. “ A seigneur i: the neghbourhood of Tinténiac,” says the cahier of tha parish, “ wished, a short time ago, to compel his vassal to turn hay on a Sunday ; one of them replied that h wanted to go to Mass, when the seigneur flew into a rage covered him with blows, knocked him down and strud out his eye.” 6
The corvées were not confined to manual labour, for th< duty of collecting the dues from the peasants of a lord
1 Mathieu, p. 316.
2 Cavaignac (G.), La Formation de la Prusse contemporaine, vol. : P- 77-
3 Gandilhon, p. 277.
8 Sée and Lésort, vol. iii. p. 187.
4 Bridrey, vol. i p. 158.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
np, known as the devoir de sergentise, may fairly be :cluded under this head. The unfortunate inhabitant vho very probably could neither read nor write) charged ith this irksome task was responsible for correct and mctual payment, with conséquences that are well îscribed in a contemporary document. “ Proprietors ho live a long way off, or are sick, and those who cannot ad or write, are obliged to find a substitute ; for that ley must pay a hundred, a thousand times as much as te rent they owe. ... In general, it may be said that te business of a collector is a rascal’s trade. The dues e, for the most part, calculated in corn ; they are not, )wever, actually paid in produce but by their équivalent money, according to a necessarily variable tariff. The me proprietor often owes corn of several kinds and in fferent quantifies. The calculation always bristles ith fractions, and when the peasant cannot read, write, calculate (which is almost universally the case in the untry districts), the collector takes what he pleases, ves quittance as he pleases, or most often gives none ail. Happy the peasant who is not made to pay veral times in the same year ! ” 1 That frauds of this nd were really practised appears from a number of indidual pétitions attached to the cahier of Saint Péran ; habitant after inhabitant complains that he or she has .id certain charges and has received receipts for much >s than the amount actually paid. Thus Laurent garé, of Garel, complains of having paid the sum of 226 'res, 12 sols, and has been given a receipt for only 8 livres ; Jan Bigaré and his sister Marie hâve paid rtain sums and received quittances for them, but now a rther demand for money has been made. Moreover, cause they could not produce a title in due form a piece land which they hâve enjoyed time out of mind and id rent for, has been taken away. Magdeleine Guiomard s paid 35 livres, 12 sols, and has only been credited with 1 Sagnac and Caron, pp. 398-9.
15 livres, 12 sols, and so on through the whole pitifu catalogue. Nearly half the complainants were unabl< to sign their pétitions.1 It should be added here tha abundant evidence exists to show that the custom o paying rents in produce gave plentiful scope for frauc and peculation on the part of the seigneurs or thei: agents. A favourite device was to pass ail the graii paid in through spécial sieves and reject any that wa not of superfine quality. A still commoner practice wa the use of fraudulent or worn-out measures, which wer< larger than the régulation pattern ; the absolute anarch] in regard to weights and measures under the old régim made this species of deceit particularly easy. Thus th peasants of Saint-Nicholas-de-Peudry, in Angoumois complain that the farmers of the feudal rents use a bushe measure which is “ very old and worn, with a great dea of rotten wood at the bottom ” ; they calculate that it use increases their payments by a sixteenth.2 Th seigneur of Marthon, in the same région, was found b; the municipality in 1790 to be using measures “ con siderably larger than they ought to be,” and the docu ment which tells us this says also that at that momen no less than eighty parishes in the province were at la\ with their lords over similar malpractices. The peasant of Limousis, near Carcassonne, declared in the same yea that they had always paid their dues according to a Ioce measure, but that their seigneur, who had only acquire the manor in 1774, insisted on using the measure c Carcassonne, which was larger by a quarter.3
The charges and services we hâve discussed hithert were regular in their incidence ; those of another clas which must now be described were levied at irregula intervals and were known, in conséquence, as “ casual dues. They were direct survivais from the epoch whe
1 Sée and Lésort, vol. iii. p. 433 et seq.
* Boissonade, p. 281.
3 Sagnac and Caron, pp. 201 and 408.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
e workers on the soil were the lord’s “ men,” and held teir land only at his will and pleasure. Let us conler these in the order in which they affected the average asant during his lifetime.
The peasant's first duty on entering into possession his holding, whether by purchase or inheritance, was render an aveu to his feudal superior, that is, to make formai act of acknowledgment that he owed payment the dues and services with which the land was charged.1 iis acknowledgment had to contain a précisé and itailed statement as to the holding itself ; an exact list ail the servitudes that weighed upon it, and an exbition of the titles by which the new owner had acquired It was of the first importance that the statement ould be correct in every particular, for if within thirty ars of the entry into possession an error were discovered, e aveu was useless and had to be redrawn. As the awing up of this récognition was a costly business, — . Dupont quotes a case where it amounted to 220 livres, id the cahier of Saint-Péran mentions one where the cost is 226 livres, 12 sols,2 — it was a serious matter for the asant if his statement were thus made of no effect. et such was the complicated character of tenures and dues that this frequently happened, and M. Sée menons an instance where the same man suffered twice in is way. He rendered his aveu in 1767 ; ten years ter it had to be “ reformed ” for the first time, and for e second in 1778. 3 A fresh aveu had to be made whener an additional parcel of land was acquired ; “ men ive been known to render aveu nine times in succession r small acquisitions of land,” says the cahier of Issé ; there is a man in this parish who has rendered aveu rt times in less than twenty-two years,” says that of
1 "One of the vassal’s first duties is that of recognising his lord." mtaric, Traité des droits seigneuriaux , 1758, p. 3.
2 Dupont, p. 66 note ; Sée and Lésort, vol. iii. p. 433.
• Sée, Classes rurales, p. 80.
Ruffigné.1 It is not surprising, therefore, to read tha “ the poor vassals tremble at the very name of aveux they are chains of feudal despotism which, so long as the; are not broken, will hold the inhabitants of the countr; in a servitude both degrading and injurious to human ity.” 2 Side by side with this Breton complaint w may put one from Languedoc, which tells a similar storj “ The seigneur or his agents ruin the poor inhabitants c this community by continuai vexations, and the multi plication of the récognitions which the said seigneu exacts from his poor vassals. . . . He has divided hi manor into two, and wishes to force them to recognis two seigneurs, thus ruining them by unjust charges.” 3 At intervals of twenty or thirty years the lords usuall; undertook a general révision of their manor-rolls o terriers, which necessitated a fresh déclaration from ever; inhabitant. These révisions — made, it is to be observed at the cost of the peasants, not of the lords — gave ris to endless opportunities for fraud and extortion. The; were usually undertaken by commissaires à terrier, me; who made a profession of such work, and as their pay ment was often increased in proportion to the amoun they could add to the rent-roll, they had every motiv for swelling the revenues unjustly. Sometimes thés posts were sold to the highest bidder, who, of course hastened to recoup his expenditure at the cost of th vassals.4 Several contemporary documents show ho\ this was effected. “ When the owner of a fief adde< another to it, the more onerous manor-roll became th general law ; if there were a renovation, the old right were extended and new ones created. The vassal ren dered an acknowledgment blindly ; if he resisted, h was ruined and could obtain no justice. ... A commis saire à terrier was not content unless in the general recog
1 Sée, Classes rurales, p. 188 ; Sée and Lésort, vol. ii. p. 384.
a Cahier of Villepot, in Dupont, p. 63.
8 Bligny-Bondurand, vol. i. p. 384. 4 Vernier, vol. i. p. 30S.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
tion of rights he contrived to include ail those of which feudal dictionary could furnish him the names.” 1 A seigneur has recourse to a feudal lawyer in order to ize or bring under his control lands possessed in francleu. 2 This lawyer . . . never fails to lend himself the lord’s ambition. He draws up a form of recogni-
m, seconded by the seigneur’ s notary, which appears be accepted by a few proprietors who cannot write.
one of the parties being présent at the act, . . . riers, rents, and other seigneurial dues which may be nvenient to the lord are included in it at discrétion td according to the quality of the land.” 3 In a pétition the parish of Champigny we read : " During a century, e manor-roll of the domain and lordship of Champigny, veral times renewed, has subjected the inhabitants to e most shameful, humiliating, and arbitrary charges id corvées, and it seems that each seigneur has improved >on the cruelty of his predecessor.” 4 Every separate ticle on the roll had to be paid for, so that it was a mmon practice when a number of persons were collecæly charged with a due to make separate entries for ch of them, thus increasing the fees of the scribe and e expenses of his victims.5 These were bound to be avy enough, in any case, for in many parts of the untry the peasants’ holdings were made up of a number scattered strips or parcels, each of which required Darate mention and separate payment. A cahier of s Pas-de-Calais says, for instance, that “ almost ail 5 parcels of a farm are divided, scattered, and far noved from one another ; often they are found at a arter of a league or more from the centre of habita-
n. ” 6 From an officiai document of 1792, we learn it in Burgundy a typical peasant holding of 30
1 Sagnac and Caron, p. 271.
* See below, p. 56, for an explanation of this term.
* Quoted by Karéiew, p. 98 note. lIbid. p. 99.
* Mège, p. 78. • Loriquet, vol. ii. p. 204.
arpents would be made up of anything between two and three hundred separate parcels, ail divided by othei properties.1 M. Aulard mentions a village in Champagne where, owing to this cause, the holder of 50 arpents oi land was obliged to pay 200 livres for his share of the renovation of the manor-roll.2 The cahier of Paimponl déclarés that such a renovation, which only increasec the lord’s rents by 100 livres, cost the vassals at leasl 7000, and reduced several of them to beggary ; 3 one oi the cahiers of the région of Auxerre calculâtes that, since 1786, the renewal of the terriers had cost more than sh times the total sum of the tallage paid to the royai revenue.4 That extortion on this scale should hâve given rise to endless legal disputes is not surprising ; the renovation which took place in the manor of Pierre- Buffière in 1783 involved the Marquise de Mirabeau ir no less than sixty.5
We hâve spoken above of purchases of land made b 3 the peasants. Such purchases gave occasion for the levying of a fresh charge, that of lods et ventes, a feuda right universal in France before the Révolution. I' consisted of the payment to the lord of a proportion o: the purchase price, a proportion which varied greatb in different districts. In Normandy, it was only a thir teenth, in Brittany an eighth, but it rose in parts o Lorraine and Auvergne to a third or even a half.8 Loca customs also varied as to who actually paid the charge in some districts it was the vendor, in others the purchaser in others again it was shared between them. The in jurious effect of this right on the market in land, b] artificially increasing prices, is obvious, and when it wa: extended, as was sometimes the case, to exchanges, i was directly detrimental to agricultural progress. Where
1 Bourgin, p. 61. 3 Aulard, p. 53.
3 Sée, Classes rurales, p. 188. 4 Kovalewsky, vol. i. p. 266.
6 Ibid. vol. i. p. 27 9.
6 Mège, p. 1x4 ; Sagnac and Caron, p. 64.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
s in Brittany and the areas mentioned above, the holdîgs were usually made up of many scattered strips, the :vying of the dues on exchanges prevented the désirable msolidation of holdings. “ The inhabitants complain,” lys the cahier of Erbray, “ of being obliged to pay the )ds et ventes on the exchanges that they make between lemselves to ameliorate the holdings by consolidation, nd they demand that these dues be suppressed.” 1
M. Kovalewsky has urged that this right, though very exatious to the peasants, brought little profit to the >rds ; but if we may généralisé from the facts concerning irittany this view is quite untenable. The “ Book of îceipts from lods et ventes concerning the lands of Saintirice, Saint-Etienne, Sens, Parigné, Le Solier, La Fonline,” quoted by M. Sée, shows a total income from iis source, from 1764 to 1771, of nearly 20,000 livres. he average annual return in the lordship of Fouesnel etween 1776 and 1784 was over 1100 livres, while in a tiird manor the total sum received from 1776 to 1788 'as a little more than 16,000 livres .2
But the daims of the lord in the matter of sales and urchases did not always end there. Another widely pread right was that of retrait or prélation, by which he ould refuse to acknowledge the sale and himself enter ito possession of the land. In Auvergne he could, by refinement on this custom, enforce a fresh sale to a igher bidder, and daim the différence between the two rices. Frequently this right of retrait was used to xact a payment supplementary to the lods et ventes, and s it could be enforced at any time during thirty years fter the sale, it necessarily produced grave uncertainty nd insecurity in possession. It was a weapon which the eigneurs or their agents could always brandish over he heads of récalcitrant peasants ; as the cahier of Castilm says, it served them “ as a pretext to wage a war of
1 Sée and Lésort, vol. ii. p. 350.
* Kovalewsky, vol. i. p. 252. Sée, Classes rurales, pp. 114-5.
brigandage against their vassals.” “ The seigneurs ,” says the community of Birac (Lot-et-Garonne), “ abuse [the right of prélation .] in a manner as odious as it is unjust ; it has happened in this parish within our recollection that certain persons, who had acquired lands and enjoyed them for more than twenty years, hâve been deprived of them by means of this right.” The cahier of Ansouis points out another abuse. “ If he [the peasant] has not taken the précaution to obtain a receipt for the lods et ventes from the seigneur himself (that of his agent being only valid as an acknowledgment of the actual sum), he may find himself despoiled of his land at the end of ten or twelve years because the lord wishes to retake it for himself or a third party.” 1
Land changed hands by reason of inheritance as well as sale and exchange ; the fief itself passed into fresh ownership on occasion. These mutations of property gave rise to other species of dues, known as rachat, acapte, marciage, quint, and requint, according to locality. They amounted, as a rule, to one year’s revenue from the holding (though a cahier of Quercy speaks of the acapte as fixed at double the annual rent-charge), and M. Seé is of opinion that in Brittany the rachats were more profitable even than the lods and ventes. In the one case for which he provides figures, the receipts from the latter between 1776 and 1788 were rather more than 16,000 livres, and from the former 36, 500. 2
In addition to these widely-spread and highly-profitable rights, other casual dues had survived from the Middle Ages which, though no longer of great importance in 1789, are still worthy of mention. Thus, it is interesting to note that in German Lorraine there survived a custom, corresponding to the old English heriot, which authorised the seigneur to appropriate
1 Mège, pp. 73-4 ; Marion, Bordeaux ; Sagnac and Caron, p. 98 ; Karéiew, p. 47.
2 Mège, p. 120 ; Fourastié, p. 89 ; Sée, Classes rurales, pp. 110-5.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
he second-best chattel of a deceased vassal. Even nore curious is it to find the old feudal reliefs still n existence at the eve of the Révolution. These had >een levied in mediæval times when the lord went on rusade, when he was a prisoner and needed ransom, /hen he or his eldest son was made a knight, and when is eldest daughter married. The cahier of Touzac in )uercy allégés that these rights were still in force there 1 1789, as does that of Pleumeleuc in Brittany, and in wo other provinces at least there is evidence of survival. I. Mège cites two instances of the last named case of elief arising in Auvergne in 1763 and 1777. At Arc-sur 'ille (Côte-d’Or) in 1784, M. de Saulx Tavannes was îade a knight of the Holy Ghost, and immediately laimed a relief from his vassals on the strength of this ecoration. They were unchivalrous enough to refuse nd took the matter to law, but the Parliament decided 1 his favour and they were ultimately obliged to pay ! 1
But exactions such as these were, after ail, no more îan the relies of a vanished âge, vexatious anachronisms ’hich affected a comparatively small number of people. he rights included in our third category, that is, the :udal monopolies, were of a very different character. t is safe to affirm that nothing, save the royal taxes, ïcited more discontent among the rural population in 789. These monopolies may be divided into three .asses, the first and most important of which included îe so-called banalités.
From very early times the lords of manors had ijoyed a monopoly of certain indispensable économie istruments ; the mill, the bakehouse, the presses for ine and oil, and the people on their domains had been )mpelled to use these and no others. Such monopolies 111 existed ail over France at the beginning of the revoluonary era, and were enforced with every circumstance
1 Mathieu, p. 31g ; Fourastié, p. 314 ; Sée and Lésort, vol. iii. p. 343 ; arnier (Noël), Arc-sur-Tille, 1789-1802, pp. 13-4.
of harshness and chicanery. It had become exceptional for the seigneurs themselves to manage the mills and ovens ; they were usually farmed out to the highest bidder, who was often not very scrupulous as to the means by which he extracted his personal profit from his compulsory customers. The bad réputation of the miller was universal in the Middle Ages, and his dishonesty and craft were as proverbial in France at the end of the eighteenth century as they were in Chaucer’s England. He was allowed to claim a certain portion (usually onesixteenth) of the corn ground as his payment, but he was seldom contented with lawful gains. “ The monopoly of mills and bakehouses is a ruinous slavery,” exclaim the inhabitants of Sainte-Solange ; “ the monopoly of mills,” say those of Villeneuve l’Archevêque, “ is a frightful relie of feudal barbarism, by means of which, and in the absence of compétition, the proprietors or their tenants can rob with impunity those who are subject to them.” ” Their [the seigneurs’] cupidity,” says the very radical cahier of Saint-Maugan, “ has invented the secret of farming out their mills at double their value to worthless men, who take from the unhappy vassals a fourth instead of a sixteenth ” of their corn ; “ fraud is clandestine and difficult to prove,” and even if the vassal succeeded in winning a suit against the miller, “ it would only resuit in further loss, the millers being, for the most part, without property on which an execution can be levied, and as no larceny of theirs dispenses the vassal from delivering his substance to their rapacity, he is exposed to be robbed the more when he complains ” ( Cahier of Saint-Lormel).1
Apart from these exactions, the peasants were often compelled to carry their grain for long distances to inconveniently situated mills. Those of Echemines, for instance, complain that they are bound “ to use a mill
1 Gandilhon, p. 466; Porée, p. 513; Sée and Lésort, vol. iii. pp. 400 and 671.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
which is in the middle of a marsh two and a half leagues from our parish.” The lords frequently evaded their responsibilities, and, while they asserted their rights, failed to provide proper accommodation. Though the number of vines had almost doubled in Lorraine in the thirty years before 1788, the number of winepresses had remained stationary, and there were not half as many as were needed. The inhabitants of the community of Broves each paid a due of four baskets of corn for permission to light fires in their houses although no seigneurial oven or bakehouse existed in the village. There was no mill at Le Mole ; nevertheless, the lord :ollected a tax called florinage, paid by the inhabitants to be free from the monopoly of a mill which did not exist ! A.t Sainte-Maxime the people had constructed ovens of their own, and paid dues to the Abbey of Thorouet for the right to use them. Nevertheless, the monks levied 1 second due every year, which was intended to replace he revenue they should hâve deri ved from their monopoly. Lhe unfortunate consumers thus paid twice for the same )bject. There was neither mill nor oven at Cabri ères T Aigues, but the lord still demanded a twelfth of the Deasant’s flour and one loaf in every forty. In order to mforce his monopoly he compelled the people to carry heir produce to another village at a league’s distance, vhere he did possess both mill and bakehouse. Finally, t must be said that the monopolies were maintained vith odious harshness and disregard for human rights.
‘ Let posterity ignore if it can,” says the Third Estate of bennes in its cahier, “ that in recent times Breton feudal yranny, armed with judicial powers, has not blushed to rneak hand-mills, and to sell annually to unhappy wretches :he right of grinding a measure of barley between two .tones.” The frequent complaints as to the prohibition )f the use of hand-mills in the Breton parish cahiers jrove that this outburst was justified. “ We complain,” iays that of Cuguen, “ of the frauds and pilferings of the
millers, who, not content with grinding our corn badly, levy twice, three times, or four times the charge accorded them by the customary law ; who even, though their mills are not in a condition to grind our black corn, demand 20, 30, sometimes 40 sols and even more, from each consumer, for the liberty of grinding their black corn in hand-mills.” 1
These monopolies were a profitable item in the feudal budgets. From his two mills in the parish of Brienonsur-Armançon, the Archbishop of Sens derived a revenue of 2808 livres ; his ovens and presses brought in 950 more. M. Sée shows that the value of the mills rose steadily throughout the eighteenth century, particularly in the latter half. Between 1694 and 1730 the revenue from the mills at Glanettes and Hautbois rose from 330 to 550 livres ; the mill at Faucherais was farmed out for 500 livres in 1716, by 1745 the annual rent had risen to 660. That at Haye-Dix brought 100 livres in 1771 and 350 in 1787, and the yearly revenue from that at Pont- Dauphin rose from 450 to 800 livres between 1771 and I783-2
Another class of monopolies very injurious to the peasants was the exclusive possession by their superiors of hunting and fishing rights, and of the right to keep pigeon-houses. The cultivât ors were forbidden to kill the game which ravaged their crops, and had no effective protection against the hunts and the swarms of pigeons which descended on the newly-sown fields. The chief, perhaps the only pleasure of the noblesse de campagne was the chase, and they did not hesitate to terrorise the people in order to secure its unrestricted enjoyment. The royal ordinances which forbade hunting in the cultivated fields and vineyards were universally ignored, and the privilège of sport was sometimes made the excuse for
1 Porée, p. 269 ; Mathieu, p. 306 ; Mireur, pp. 78, 319, 415 ; Kovalewsky, vol. i. p. 228 ; Giffard, p. 273 ; Sée and Lésort, vol. ii. p. 623.
9 Porée, p. 120; Sée, Classes rurales, pp. 135-6.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
ompelling the peasants to act as beaters, and even for aising a fax from them for the upkeep of packs of hunting ogs ! Solicitude for the game often led to grave restricions upon the peasant’s liberty of action. In many laces he was forbidden to weed his fields or mow his hay t certain seasons lest he should disturb the partridges r destroy their eggs. “ The peasant cannot clear his eld of weeds or mow his meadows before the 24Ü1 June, ven though his hay is perishing, and ail on account of he partridge eggs,” says one cahier ; “ will it be believed hat we often lose a portion of our hay so as not to disturb he partridges, which are reared for our ruin ? ” exclaims nother. Another resuit of this monopoly was that the ards strove by every means to disarm the people, thus aaving them without defence against thieves or wild ieasts. That these last were sometimes a real danger idll be apparent when it is remembered that in May 1785 .0 less than forty-two wolves were killed in the neighbourood of Quimperlé. A royal decree of the same year iermitted the offering of rewards for the destruction of hese animais, which, it would seem, especially infested he Cevennes. The inhabitants of Québriac complained a 1789 that the servants of their seigneur had carried off heir firearms while they were in church ! 1
The pigeons must hâve formed an important item in he manorial economy, especially in the case of the poorer Lobles. The cahier of Breuvery notes that the seigneurs arried on a considérable commerce in pigeons, which /ere bought up by traders who visited the district every ear. It is certain that they were often kept in enormous .umbers ; M. Gandilhon mentions a proprietor of a fief a Berry who owned a colombier which accommodated nore than two thousand birds. To add to the exasperaion of the peasants, wealthy farmers and townsmen who ield lands in the manors frequently (and illegally) took
1 Sée, Classes rurales, pp. 152-3; Karéiew, p. 63; Bligny-Bonduand, vol. ii. p. 440 note ; Sée and Lésort, vol. iii. p. 178.
to themselves the right of maintaining pigeon-cotes, so that a single village might find itself the victim of several of these pests. The cahier of Savigny, for example, States that in that parish “ there are six fiefs which each hâve a pigeon-house and that of the seigneur makes the seventh.” The inhabitants estimated that the hungry birds carried off at least one-fifth of their crops.1
It would be easy to fill many pages with extracts from the cahiers dealing with these two grievances, but a few examples must suffice. “ Shall we always see our sowings carried off, and our harvests ravaged by the pigeons whose numbers are allowed to increase to infinity ? Their proprietor knows well enough how to pursue without mercy anyone who tries to drive them away by firing over them, but does he ever dream of repairing the serious damage they cause ?” “A cote filled with pigeons may bring in 400 livres to its owner every year. . . . From the ist June till the month of September, such a pigeonhouse damages the crops of the cultivators to an extent which we estimate at 3000 livres.” “ If a peasant lias the misfortune to kill a hare that eats his cabbages, a ruinous suit is brought against him, but he has no right to complain when a noble . . . hunts in his corn with thirty dogs. ... A noble, for a word said by a peasant to a lackey who hunts in a sown field, sends or goes himself to kill the peasant’s dog at his door, and if the man complain he is beaten or even thrown into prison.”
That an honest cultivator should be attacked and deprived of his gun without payment ; that he should incur the pain and shame of prison for daring to kill a rabbit 01 a pigeon, when he ought to receive compensation for the damage he has suffered, that is a cruel injustice and a murderous tyranny. We complain that the seigneurs, their gamekeepers and their servants, hunt with dogs across our sown fields, destroy our fairest hopes, and threaten to fire on us if we dare to protest.” “ The 1 Laurent, p. 100 ; Gandilhon, pp. 29 and 342,
FEUDALISM IN 1789
’Àgneurs and others who hâve hunting rights allow a irge quantity of game to accumulate in their forests, rhich game ravages the country and does incalculable amage when the corn begins to ripen. We hâve often Dunted herds of twenty and thirty stags and hinds ralking at broad daylight in the middle of a field of corn, tioosing the best ears. If we estimate the annual amage at a sixth of the crops, we take the lowest figure.” 1 In the third class of feudal monopolies must be iniuded those rights which permitted the lords of fiefs to :vy taxes of different kinds upon trade and commerce, here were, in the first place, the péages or tolls imposed a commodities passing along roads and over fords, :rries, and bridges. Thus, since the fifteenth century, toll on goods passing to the town of Sens over or under îe bridges across the Yonne had been levied for the rofit of three seigneurs. Other varieties of this right ere known as pontonnage, levied at bridges, and pul- ’.rage, a charge upon each head of cattle passing through îe lordship. The rights known as hallage, minage, mteillage, étalage, mesurage, were taxes on commodities, :reals, and wine sold in fairs and markets, on the stalls om which they were sold, and on the weights and easures used by the vendors. A brief description of te feudal rights actually enforced at Villeneuvearchevêque will illustrate this category of seigneurial onopolies. They included a right of weights and easures on ail merchandise sold ; a right of minage on 1 corn sold ; a right of raclage on ail grain and peas cposed for sale in the market by the inhabitants of the >wn and suburb ; rights of étalage charged upon ail the erchants, whether inhabitants or not, doing business in ie town ; similar rights on ail drapers, weavers, and îtchers ; and, finally, a comprehensive tax on ail merîandise of whatever kind “ sold in Villeneuve or its
1 Gandilhon, p. 29; Bloch, vol. i. p. 712; Sée and Lésort, vol. iii. 401, and vol. ii. p. 624 ; Bridrey, vol. ii. p. 304 ; Etienne, p. 146.
suburbs.” This feudal control over fairs and markets sometimes led to strange abuses. Seigneurs arrogated to themselves the royal right of creating them and then compelled their vassals to deal there. Thus, when in 1765 new fairs were established at Grandchamps and Malgolérian, the inhabitants of ail the parishes depending on the lordship of Largouet were ordered to take there ail the commodities they had for sale.1
The injurious effects of these private taxes hardly need to be pointed out. They must inévitable hâve increased priées, diminished demand, and thus injured both producer and consumer. The fact that in some parts of the country ecclesiastics and nobles were exempt from them, only made them appear the more odious to the peasants and townspeople. The government made spasmodic efforts to control or abolish them, but these attempts met with no great success. Turgot, as part of his campaign for free trade in corn, procured the issue of an edicl calling upon ail seigneurs who claimed these rights of taj and toll to produce the title-deeds on which they were based, but fell from power before this reform could be carried through. His failure was one more proof of the impossibility of serious social change under the olc régime.
Closely allied to the class of rights just described were those which gave the seigneurs a privileged position ir their own économie dealings. Such were the banvins anc bans de vendanges, which secured for the nobles the powei to sell their wine before their vassals. The period fixée by these rights seems to hâve varied a good deal ; ir Burgundy, according to De Tocqueville, the lord hac the advantage of only a single day, but elsewhere of £ month or even forty days.2
Finally, to make this section complété, we must refei
1 Porée, pp. 3 and 500 ; Sé«, Classes rurales, part iii. chaps. viii and ix.
a Tocqueville, p. 299.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
riefly to the honorific rights still enjoyed by many of lie seigneurs. These generally included a spécial bench 1 the church (often constructed at the expense of the lebeian parishioners), with which went the right to be ae first to receive the holy water and the consecrated read, to be incensed the first, and to take the lead at the ffering. Other rights were those of announcing the fête f the patron saint and of permitting dances and games. hese privilèges were of no économie importance, but rey caused great irritation among the deeply religious opulations of the countryside, who objected to this Ltrusion of secular rank into the solemn rites of the hurch.1
We corne now to the last category of feudal privilèges -the judicial powers of the seigneurs. Much as these ad suffered from the encroachments of the royal lawaurts, much as the central government had hedged bout and limited them, they still remained in vigorous ristence, and formed, to use the striking metaphor of [. Sée, the keystone of the feudal édifice. Into the rigin of these rights, whether they resulted naturally om the powers wielded over their slaves by the owners t villas in Gallo-Roman times, or whether they repremted the usurpation by private individuals of state irisdiction, we cannot here stay to inquire. Nor need e concern ourselves with the highly technical problem : the different degrees of power possessed by the lords ho administered high, low, and middle justice. The ûnts which directly affect our inquiry are the scope îd character of the feudal jurisdictions, and their relaan to the économie System.
Though the feudal tribunals still took cognisance of iminal cases, and lords of fiefs still possessed their private bbets, the encroachments of the state courts had gone rther in this department than in any other. Such ses brought no revenue to the judicial officers of the * Mathieu, pp. 299-300,
seigneurs, and were costly to themselves, since they were obliged to discharge in advance the cost of conducting prisoners before the higher courts when appeals to these had been made. They had to bear, moreover, the expenses of executions. They therefore saw their powers diminished without regret, and, it would seem, fulfilled such functions as were left them in regard to criminal justice with increasing négligence. Nevertheless, the number of causes which came before their courts was very great ; in Brittany, about nine-tenths of the total for the province.1 “ In the rural provinces,” says M. Sée1 " the seigneurial officers are, in a sense, the only persons invested with official authority ; they regulate, ir sovereign fashion, questions of public health, commerce industry, victualling, and morals ; they présidé over the parish assemblies.” 2 They dealt, in addition, with £ great mass of civil business, and last, but most importanl from our point of view, they handled ail cases of a feuda' character. If a peasant refused the payment of a due or endeavoured to évadé a monopoly, or broke the régulations concerning game, it was with the judicial officer; of the manor that he had to do. It was they who exactec the aveux, directed the corvées, examined contracts of sale and exchange so as to secure the proper imposition o: the charge of lods et ventes. In a word, it was their busi ness, and lay within their powers, to secure the efficieni working of the System of agrarian feudalism.
Under the most favourable circumstances, this con dition of affairs would hâve made grave abuses possible Under those which in fact existed such abuses wer< inévitable. These petty officers of justice were verj numerous, ill-paid, and often of bad character. M. Dupon mentions a Breton parish in which sixteen seigneur. had rights of justice, and another in which there wer< eight separate jurisdi étions. 3 Many contemporary com
1 Giffard, p. 104. 2 Sée, Classes rurales, p. 124.
3 Dupont, p. 96.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
>laints accuse these officers of fomenting disputes, of ippression and corruption ; they robbed the widow and he orphan, practised fraud in their financial dealings, nd inserted unjustifiable charges on the manor-rolls. ' It would be very désirable,” says the cahier of Courceaux, r seriously to examine into the abuses committed in the ourts of the seigneurs. One must live in the rural disricts to form a just idea of the frauds and vexations that he officers, greedy for the substance of widows and rphans, commit there every day with impunity.” 1 tppointed by favour of the lords and holding their positions at pleasure, these men lacked ail independence ffiere their masters’ interests were concemed. M. liffard notes that in ail their correspondence with their mployers they speak like servants and are so addressed.* I. Jacques Flach sums up his indictment of them by aying that “ the evil, in the System of feudal justice, ffinitely outweighed the good, and the abuses the services mdered,” and this severe judgment is supported by Dntemporary comment and criticism. Here, for example,
; the opinion of the inhabitants of Coligny, in Chamagne. “ Justice,” they déclaré, " is badly rendered 1 the country districts ; the seigneurial officers hâve o knowledge of the laws, and whether from ignorance r cupidity, often pass iniquitous sentences. It is rare >r the poor man to obtain easy access to the inferior ibunals. The seigneurs, so skilful and so severe in iforcing their rights against their vassals, are full ot idulgence when there is a question of punishing some one : their own expense ; their judges are usually men ïvoted to their interests ; either from greed or respect : persons they cast out ail sentiment of justice to make iom for favouritism and the vilest spirit of revenge.” 3 We hâve now described in broad outline the principal atures of the System of agrarian feudalism as it existed France in 178g. They formed, it will be seen, a mass 1 Porée, p. 165. 2 Giffard, p. 242. 1 Laurent, p. 173.
of proprietary rights which permitted one class to levj tribute on the labour of another, rights which were enforced in the first instance by law-courts that were privah property, and in the last resort by the whole power oi the state-system. Before proceeding farther, we musl ask : what proportion of the product of the peasant’s labour passed into the hands of the privileged class by reason of the feudal dues ? It would be most desirabk to hâve an answer to this question, but, unfortunately, none of a précisé and definite character can be given, Taine wrote that the feudal dues amounted to one-seventh of the cultivator’s net revenue, or slightly more thari 14 per cent, but he did not give statistics or the grounds on which he based his opinion.1 M. Marcel Marion, in the excellent study of économie conditions in the Bordelais to which reference has alrèady been made, puts forward an estimate to the effect that in the area investigated by him the feudal dues amounted to 11 01 12 per cent of the peasant’s income. He is careful to point out, however, that this figure is only “ vague and hypothetical.”
In fact, the materials for a definite answer to this question are not now available, and only a minute study of the national and local archives of France could supply them. Conditions varied infinitely from province to province, still more from parish to parish and manor to manor. It is entirely unsafe to généralisé from particular instances, and this fact can easily be demonstrated by a few examples. The inhabitants of Espère (Quercy) drew up in 1789 a sort of balance-sheet for their village, the total gross income of which they valued at 26,400 livres. Of this the tithes carried off 2200 livres, the direct taxes 4197 livres, 10 sols, and the feudal dues only 961 livres. If we founded our opinion on an isolated case of this character we should conclude that the dues were a comparatively trivial item in the peasant’s budget, 1 Ancien Régime, vol. ii. p. 323.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
ess than 2 livres per head per annum. The case of another larish in the same province, however, shows that such a inclusion would be quite erroneous. The total income >f this second parish — Catus — was 44,000 livres, of which he tithes took 3920, the taxes 11,930, and the feudal lues 5112. In this last figure the casual charges are not ncluded, so it is really an understatement of the true inancial position.1 Nor does the case of Catus stand >y itself, as the following table will show. The parishes nentioned are ail in the Cotentin.2
Direct Taxes.
Livres.
Bourey .... 1786
Bréhal .... 6694 Colombe .... 9010 Mesnil-Garnier . . 6266
Montaigu-les-Bois . . 3436
Trelly .... 9820
Feudal Dues.
Livres.
In certain of these cases it will be seen that the dues early equal the taxes ; in others, they amount to more han one-half of them. The dues paid by the parish of luffigné, in Brittany, actually exceeded the taxes in mount, the former being 3793 livres and the latter only 365. 3 The inhabitants of Bourbriac, in the same proince, calculated that a peasant proprietor whose total icome was 300 livres would be obliged to expend 53 on 1e tithes and 140 on the feudal charges of ail kinds.4 [. Marcel Marion States that there were parishes in the gênais where the dues equalled the royal tallage ; but iis, it must be added, was exceptional ; as a rule, they ere less than the tithe, still more so than the taxes, he cens of 3000 bushels of grain paid by the village of ierre-Morains, in Champagne, amounted to more than quarter of its average annual product of corn of ail
1 See the cahiers of these parishes in Fourastié’s collection.
* See the notes to their cahiers in Bridrey, vol. i.
* Sée and Lésort, vol. ii. p. 382. 1 Dupont, p. 42.
kinds. The people of Montferrat, in Dauphiné, calculated that the feudal dues cost them one-third of their annual revenue. The cahier of Palluaud estimâtes them as amounting to between a quarter and a third of the product of the land, and that of Loupiac asserts that they equal the direct taxes in value.1
It is clear, then, that we cannot safely généralisé and say that a certain percentage of the peasant’s income was absorbed by his feudal obligations. But it is equally clear that these were often a heavy burden, a burden which was the more resented since it was imposed in peculiarly vexatious and irritating ways ; as M. Marion says, when describing the popular attitude towards feudalism in 1789, “if it imposes lighter sacrifices than the royal fiscal System or the tithe, those that it does impose are more frequent, more disagreeable,more vexatious, and perhaps, ail things considered, more unpopular.” 2 The foregoing discussion, inconclusive though it may seem, has given us at least some insight into the économies of agrarian feudalism. It has also served to remind us that in addition to the dues and the taxes, a third charge — the tithe — weighed upon the peasant’s labour. Though radically different in origin from the dues, it formed, as M. Aulard says,3 a part of the complexum feudale ; and as the revolutionary législation in regard to it was intimately bound up with that on the feudal rights, we may consider them together for the purposes of this book.
“ The tithe,” says M. Henri Marion, “ was a charge, generally paid in kind, which was levied upon cattle and the produce of the soil, for the threefold purpose of assuring the subsistence of ministers of religion, of maintaining the fabrics of churches, and of assisting the poor.” 4 This description was theoretically as true in 1789 as in
1 Marion, Bordeaux ; Laurent, p. 498 ; Sagnac and Caron, p. 254 ;
Boissonade, p. 214 ; Fourastié, p. 220.
a Marion, Bordeaux. * Aulard, p. 158.
4 Marion, Dîme ecclésiastique, p. xi.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
the days of Charlemagne ; actually, it no longer corresponded to the real facts of the situation. The tax itself was the same, but the purposes to which its product was applied had altered. To begin with, many lay persons had usurped a property in the tithes and levied them in the same manner as a feudal due, whence their name of infeudated tithes. In this case, of course, the product was applied to purely secular purposes. In addition to this process of usurpation — which still went on in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — the right to levy tithes had tended to become the monopoly of the tiigher ranks of the clergy, of the bishops and the great îcclesiastical corporations. It seems to hâve been îxceptional for a parish priest to own ail the tithes of his :ure. The impoverishment of the lower clergy went so Par that the central government was obliged to intervene, ind by two edicts of 1768 and 1786 to raise the “ fitting portion ” of the tithes handed by the impropriator to :he curé from a theoretical minimum of 300 livres to 700. \nd it seems clear that the second edict was never proaerly applied. The unfortunate lower clergy were )bliged to add to their scanty incomes by charging fees :or the performance of ceremonies — which aroused lively ■esentment in the breasts of their parishioners — and the îpkeep of the churches and the assistance of the poor jecame, to a large extent, charged upon the general oublie. The great majority of the tithe-owners were, in .hort, in the same position as absentee landlords ; they evied tribute upon the labour of communitiès they never .aw, and for whom they performed no visible service, rhe parishes saw the cream of their harvests carried iway by the agents of wealthy ecclesiastics or décadent nonastic bodies, while they sank into debt under the mrden of maintaining the churches in repair.
The tithe was essentially a tax upon the produce of he soil, and as such it was quite exceptional for it to be )aid in money. The usual procedure was for the agents
of the owners or of those to whom they had farmed the tithes (a common practice) to visit the fields at harvest time and carry off their lawful share of the crops. The amount of that share was not, as its name would imply, a tenth of the whole ; the proportion of the harvest claimed by the tithe-owners varied infinitely from parish to parish, even from field to field. Moreover, different crops were charged at different^ rates ; the tithe of wine, for example, was usually a smaller fraction than that of corn. In some provinces the tithe was very small ; in Savoy, for instance, a fiftieth or sixtieth. Elsewhere, it was as high as a fifth or a sixth. Between these two extremes every conceivable figure was to be found, and M. Marion, after a detailed examination of the facts, décidés that the average proportion for the whole country was a thirteenth.1 As regards the value of the total product, an estimate of 1790 gave the figures of 123 million livres for the ecclesiastical, and 10 millions for the infeudated tithes. The modem calculations approximate more or less closely to this estimate ; M. Marion thinks that “ we may adopt the figures 100 to 110 milhons, but with ail the caution necessary for a valuation founded on no very secure basis.” 2
This charge — heavier, it should be noted, than any one of the direct taxes — was by no means the whole social cost of the tithe. In this must be included the expenses of its collection, and the waste of money and effort on the innumerable lawsuits to which it gave rise. There were so many uncertainties in regard to it, so many opportunities for disputes, that conflicts between those who received and those who paid were incessant. One fruitful source of trouble was the question as to whether newly introduced crops were or were not subject to the charge. A good example of this type of dispute is furnished by the cahier of Nadillac, in Quercy. The principal crop raised in the parish was maize, but its 1 Marion, Dîme ecclésiastique, p. 72. 2 Ibid. p. 116.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
itroduction had been comparatively recent ; three enerations before, the inhabitants alleged, it was absoltely unknown. The tithe-owner, however, demanded is share of the new crop, and the peasants, “ for the ake of peace or from religious principles,” acceded to his claim. The owner was willing at first to accept beir voluntary offerings, but finally changed front and emanded a proportion fixed by himself ; the peasants sfused, and at the time the cahier was drawn up a iwsuit was in progressé The more enlightened members f the clérical order themsclves recognised the injurious ssults of this method of raising church revenues. “ The ithes, which were long the securest patrimony of the hurches, are to-day a continuai cause of conflict and be most embarrassed portion of their revenue. The îethod of levying them, their amount, the crops on diich they ought to be charged, are subjects of discussion efore ail the tribunals.” 2 When, in 1788, a bishop 1 the Assembly of Notables defined the tithe as “ a oluntary offering, drawn from the piety of the faithful,” re Duc de Larochefoucauld flung back the answer, “ A oluntary offering which is at this moment the cause of 0,000 lawsuits !” 3 Round numbers such as this are ever to be taken literally ; still, the anecdote bears itness to the widespread confusion and discontent rused by the tithes, discontent of which we shall see 'esh evidence in a later chapter.
One final question remains before we bring this long escription of agrarian feudalism to a close : was this fstem worsening during the génération which preceded îe Révolution ? Was there, in brief, a “ feudal région ” ? The theory that there was dates from the ublication of Boncerf’s historié pamphlet, Les inmvénients des droits féodaux, in 1776. “ Feudal
1 Fourastié, p. 250.
2 Cahier of the Clergy of Poitou, in Mège, p. 38.
8 Madelin (L.), La Révolution, p. 6.
42 THE FALR OF FEUDALISM IN FRANCE
tyranny,” he wrote, “ awakes furious after a century of slumber and of silence ” ; and such modem authorities as Chérest, Sagnac, Mège and Loutchisky hâve supported this view.1 Their arguments may be briefly summarised as follows. In the last third of the eighteenth century the privileged classes generally began to enforce their rights with increasing harshness. Many of them were crippled with debts ; ail felt the steady increase of prices which seems to hâve been a marked feature of the économie life of Western Europe at this period. Their real incomes were declining with the fall in the value of money. Spurred on by need, they exacted the last penny of their dues, demanded arrears of rents (there was no prescription for twenty-nine years), revised their manor-rolls, and obtained fresh aveux from their dependents, whose charges, both regular and casual, were thus heavily iricreased at the moment when they, too, were suffering from the rise in the cost of living.
M. Aulard has recently subjected this hypothesis to vigorous criticism. He urges that if feudalism excited more complaints in this than in the preceding period, it was because the current of ideas was setting steadily against it. The views of such writers as Turgot, Voltaire, and Boncerf had filtered slowly down to the mass of the people, whose natural dislike of the charges which weighed upon them was thus sharpened by criticism of their rationality and justice. Thus the undoubted fact that the cahiers abound with complaints as to exactions of arrears of rents and of the chicanery of the agents who used false measures for testing the dues paid in kind, cannot be regarded as décisive evidence. “ There is no certainty,” he writes, “ as to the degree of aggravation of feudalism under Louis XVI, if, indeed, such aggravation took place at ail.” 2 This criticism is valuable so far as
1 Cf. Chérest, vol. i. p. 49 ; Sagnac, p. 65 ; Mège, p. 77 ; Lontchisky, Classes agricoles, p. loi.
* Aulard, p. 69.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
t goes, but cannot be held to answer our original question a the négative. Concrète tacts may be brought forward n both sides of the discussion. On the one hand, there re those previously cited as to the fixity of the cens ver very long periods ; on the other, the evidence as to he remarkable increases in the revenues derived from signeurial monopolies. Both these sets of statistics, owever, refer to a single province, Brittany, and it is esirable to extend the range of our inquiry.
Now it is possible to bring together from the cahiers nd other contemporary documents a number of instances
1 which lords of fiefs are seen increasing their dues or ndeavouring to enforce rights for which they hâve no :gal title. These facts, as will be seen, are drawn from
large number of different régions. Thus, in 1790, the îunicipalities of two Provençal villages, Peypin-d’Aigues nd Saint-Martin-de-la-Brasque, when describing their ;udal burdens to the National Assembly, mentioned rat a particular due had been doubled in fifty years. he cens on a piece of land had originally been fixed at
2 sols ; ten years later it was raised to 16, twenty years fter that it was raised to 20, “ and a few years since it ras levied at 24 sols.” In the same year, the inhabitants f Germeville, in Angoumois, gave very definite parculars of a case of usurpation. The principal products f the district were flax and hemp, which were worked p by the inhabitants and “ furnished a very considérable ranch of commerce.” From time immémorial they ad enjoyed the right of steeping their raw material in a heet of water in order to separate the fibres and préparé ; for manufacture. The father of the existing seigneur ad compelled three of the inhabitants to pay him an nnual due in flax and hemp of the value of 5 livres )r the enjoyment of this right, but bis son, “ still more evoured by the immoderate thirst for gold, endeavoured d treble this tyrannical charge. Several of his congneurs, shocked by the injustice of this demand, gave
consent to the free use of the water, but Sieur Robert Faure, who ne ver releases his prey, summoned sixteen of the unhappy cultivators before the court at Poitiers. . . . He has used every kind of chicanery to lengthen the suit and augment the mass of charges.” It had already cost more than 5000 livres. The inhabitants of another village near Montmédy, in Lorraine, protested that the local lord had endeavoured to levy a right of terrage on certain lands vvhich formed an enclave in the manor, although a legal decision, given as long ago as 1604, had declared these properties to be free from the charge in question. The commune of Limousis, near Carcassonne, was accustomed to pay the tasque (a kind of champart) for certain lands at the rate of a twentysecond part of the crop. When the lordship changed hands in 1774, the new seigneur immediately renewed his manor-roll and doubled the charge. In this case it seems probable that the lord had a legal right to the increased due, but it is mentioned here as an example of that revival of dormant rights which is alleged to hâve been so marked a feature of the feudal reaction.1
Passing to other sources of information we note that the community of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger (Champagne) in its cahier declared that it had always paid a due to its lord for every butt of wine sold in the place. The amount was fixed at 5 sols in 1768, but in 1779 the charge was arbitrarily raised to 7 sols, 6 deniers, an increase of 50 per cent. When the cahier was drawn up in 1789 the resulting lawsuit was still in progress. In the cahier of Nuisementsur-Coole in the same province, we read that the seigneur has attempted to enforce a right of terrage upon eleven of the inhabitants ; neither he nor his ancestors had ever levied this due before, and he has no title to show for it. There seems little doubt as to the truth of this last allégation, for when, in 1775, the tribunal of the bailliage of Chalons ordered Lelarge d’Eaubonne, the lord in 1 Sagnac and Caron, pp. 267, 366, 370, 407.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
[uestion, to produce his title-deeds, he refused and ppealed to the Parliament. The same worthy also ndeavoured to obtain an increase in the rate at which he lods et ventes were levied. Both these matters had ieen before the courts for fifteen years in 1789 ! 1 M. Covalewsky cites the case of a village near Alençon /here a proprietor had been in the habit of demanding
sous from each inhabitant for every bushel of flour ooked in the seigneurial oven. He raised the charge to ’ sous, after which the domain changed hands, and he new proprietor immediately increased it to 9, ivoking the higher cost of fuel as his excuse.2 M. Caréiew, who is a strong supporter of the theory of a gudal reaction, gives some interesting facts in support f it. “ Eight years before the Révolution,” he says, many properties in the bailliage of Nemours paid hampart (which they had escaped up till that date) for he first time, the only reason being that the lands which urrounded them were subjected to it. In the same ear and for the same reason, a seigneur of Touraine inroduced the terrage at the rate of a ninth of the harvest.” 'he same authority cites the pétition of the inhabitants f the manor of Montjoye-Vaufrey, who declared that formerly, the gardens, houses, and orchards were xempt from mainmorte ; now, the seigneur lays hands n everything in the case of death without the necessary eirs. . . . Within the last ten years he has arrogated 3 himself the right of retenue on the greater part of the roperties sold in this domain.” “ Towards the middle f the eighteenth century,” continues M. Karéiew, “ the irmer of seigneurial dues in the manor of La Molle imosed a spécial tax on cattle, and this tax, in a period of etween thirty and forty years, was increased one and
half times for the lesser beasts, and twice for the reater.” 3 Since the fifteenth century a feudal toll had
1 Laurent, pp. 390, 484-5. 2 Kovalewsky, vol. j. p. 224.
8 Karéiew,|p. gô^et seq.
been levied on commodities passing under or over the bridges of the Yonne to the town of Sens. In 1772 these charges began to be levied at the gates of the town also, an obviously illégal extension of the ancient privilège, and denounced as such by contemporary opinion.1 In its cahier the Breton parish of Laillé alleged that the fumage or feudal chimney-tax had been imposed “ in the last twenty or thirty years on many villages which had always been free from it,” and MM. Sée and Lésort quote a document of 1744 which shows that this statement was not without foundation, since it describes this right as being constantly extended to an increasing number of tenements.2 In view of these facts, it is difficult to dismiss the theory of the reaction as entirely without foundation, even if they be judged insufficient to establish its truth beyond dispute.
As far as the renovation of the terriers is concerned, there seems little doubt that the movement in this direction, which had already begun in 1750, was greatly strengthened after 1780 ; both MM. Mège and Loutchisky agréé as to this date. Such renovations were, as we hâve seen, both costly and vexatious to the peasant class. Finally, it must be said that the theory of a feudal reaction does certainly fit in with the tendency towards strengthening the position of the nobility in the Church and the Army which was so apparent under Louis XVI. Perhaps the safest position to adopt in the présent state of our knowledge is that of M. Marion, who, while expressing some doubt as to the general character of the alleged reaction, déclarés that it is impossible to deny that there is some foundation for belief in its existence. “ The principal cause,” he writes, “ appears to us to hâve been the marked progress in agriculture realised during the second half of the eighteenth century ; the notable rise in the price of agricultural commodities,
1 Porée, p. 5.
* Sée and Lésort, Vol.ii. p. 211, and note to p. 182.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
pecially of corn, and the general increase in the rents
farms. Many seigneurs, hard pressed for money, any middle-class men who had acquired estâtes and gre quite naturally tempted to obtain as much as possible Dm their new possessions, wished to profit by the inease of revenue with which the general condition of the arket provided them. They revived old rights that Ld fallen into disuse ; hunted out forgotten titles ; paid ore attention to their manor-rolls, demanded acknowdgments more frequently than in the past . , . and oceeded with greater punctuality to levy the feudal jhts which had been singularly neglected in the course the eighteenth century.” 1
One effect of this increase in prices and of progress the technique of agriculture is worth particular notice, îce it affords an interesting comparison with conmporary events in England. There, the movement wards the enclosure of open fields and common lands is the direct outcome of these two causes, and its sastrous conséquences for the labourers and small rmers hâve been admirably described by Mr. and Mrs. immond.* In France, also, such a movement arose, be checked abrupt ly by the Révolution. Throughout e country there were to be found woods, pastures, and iste lands over which the peasants had customary rights. >r the rural population these were of capital importance, t only because they supplemented the products of their ldings, but because they made the cultivation of the ;ter possible. “ The possession of pastures,” says :. R. H. Tawney in his book on the English peasantry the sixteenth century, '* was not only a source of subliary income, but also quite indispensable to the main- Dance of the arable holding. . . . It is a mistake to ink of the engrossing of commons ... as affecting s peasant only in so far as he was a shepherd or a
^Marion, Bordeaux ,
2 See their Village Labourer, also Levy, Large and Small Holdings.
grazier. On the contrary, it struck a blow at an indispensable adjunct of his arable holding, an adjunct withoul which the ploughland itself was unprofitable ; for te work the ploughland one must hâve the wherewithal te feed the plough beasts.” 1 The same considérations helc good in France two centuries later ; their commor rights were vitally necessary to the peasants. The} held them on various grounds, which gave very differeni degrees of security. Sometimes it was by express titl< or charter, sometimes in actual property ; sometime; they had only a right of usage sanctioned by long standing custom. Throughout the eighteenth centurj these rights were attacked by the seigneurs with increasinj vehemence. A royal edict of 1669 had facilitated th< putting into operation of triages or partitions of th< woods and commons by which lords of manors receivec full rights of property over a portion of the whole. Bu this procedure was hedged about by too many restrictions and was not sufficiently profitable to the seigneurs accordingly, in Brittany at any rate, they preferred t< use a method of partition known as cantonnement, b] which they received two-thirds instead of one-third o the land or woods divided. The jurisprudence of thi Parliaments — those strongholds of privilège — went evei farther, and in Brittany declared rights founded 01 “ prescription and long usage ” to be of no effect ; when no express title existed the lords were at liberty to enclos' the commons. Many seigneurs adopted the expédient o leasing out the common land to farmers, mostly middle class persons, who could afford heavy rents and th< expenses of putting the land into cultivation. Evei legal titles and charters sometimes failed to protect tb peasants. A parish in the neighbourhood of Alençoi enjoyed chartered rights of pasture over 400 arpents o land. Nevertheless, the agents of the Duc de Provenu (the future Louis XVIII) leased this land to two or thre< t Tawpey, Jhe Agrarùm Probfem in the Sixtsevgh Çentury, p. 240.
FEUDALISM IN 1789
dividuals, and thus, by a stroke of the pen, deprived e inhabitants of a valuable property.1 Ail over the untry we find this movement in progress, as the cahiers id other contemporary documents show.
“ The seigneurs ,” says the Third Estate of Bar-surine, “ hâve seized the communal lands of their parishes, id by means of their personal influence and of the fear ey inspire, hâve stifled the complaints of the proietors and overbome their opposition.” 2 The cahier La Ferrière-Bochard describes very well the importance the commons for the peasants, and the damage that sulted from their loss. “ The use of the commons,” it ys, “ is an important matter for the inhabitants of the ral districts ; there is scarcely a parish which does not issess them. For some they serve as pastures for the aught beasts ; for others, as a means of feeding a few ttle from which they dérivé their subsistence and that their families. But it occurs that proprietors of fiefs ke to themselves the right of seizing these commons ; ey thus deprive the neediest class of its sole resource, îry often, also, they plant hedges on them, and these dges harbour an infinity of vermin which dévastâtes operties.” 3 That these complaints were not merely eoretical is shown by the case of the parish of Ponthole.
1742 it possessed 6000 sheep ; by 1764 this number d been reduced to 300 ; in the interval it had been prived of its common pastures.4 At Auxey-le-Grand, Burgundy, the seigneur enclosed a considérable extent pasture over which the inhabitants had long enjoyed right of usage, and at the same time engrossed the azing ground which belonged to the parish. He also >sed several rights of way by which the peasants had ached their fields, “ so that they are obliged to carry
1 Kovalewsky, vol. i. p. 133. Se also, Sée, Classes rurales, pt. iii.
ip. xv.
3 Kovalewsky, vol. i. p. 133.
3 Duval, p. 157.
4 Karéiew, p. 622.
their crops in their arms round these walls and to go altogether a quarter of a league farther than they were wont.” Loyette, another Burgundian parish, had foi centuries had the use of certain lands for pastures, in return for which it paid an annual rent in grain. The seigneur, some years before the Révolution, suddenly thought fit to lease out this land to three individuals, thus depriving the rest of the inhabitants of their rights, When they contested the matter, the Parliament of Dijon decided against them, so that they found themselves saddled with the costs of the proceedings, “ which were so heavy that they are ail plunged into the deepest poverty.” 1 At Montjoye-Vaufrey the greed of the lord “ leads him to appropriate ail the communal forests which he sells for his own profit.” a
The case of Maumusson, in Brittany, is interesting enough to be worth describing in some detail. In 1696 the inhabitants concluded a transaction with the lorc of the manor by which they acquired the right to use certain waste lands and woods in the parish in returr for an annual payment of 32 livres, 10 sols. The seignem reserved to himself the right of triage, which, if put inte force, would give him another large portion of commor land. This right, however, was not exercised, and the ren was regularly paid until 1768, when the then lord threat ened to make use of it for the purpose of letting out hi: portion, unless the vassals renounced their daims unde: the agreement of 1696. The inhabitants, as a whole, wer< hostile, but “ four rich bourgeois, proprietors of som< pièces of land in the parish, agents of the seigneur, ane guided by their own interests,” called a parish meeting to agréé to the lord’s demands ; 150 persons were présent but only nine of them were willing to sign a declaratioi in support of this proposai. Nevertheless, the lorc entered into a fresh transaction with this handful o people by which it was agreed “ that the parishioner:
1 Sagnac and Caron, pp, 567 and 583. * Karéiew, p. 83.
FEUDALISM IN 1789 51
f Maumusson cede to their seigneur ail the woods tuated on the common, and that after he shall hâve xploited them for his own profit, he will lease the said Dmmon to the inhabitants in lots proportionate to their roperty.”
This agreement was put into force ; the woods, worth îore than 40,000 livres, were eut down and a leasing-out f the common land took place. But this was not rranged in the manner specified. The people had been :d to believe that in addition to the land they had always ijoyed the seigneur would include the portion which :11 to him under the right of triage. Not only did he iil to do this, but instead of partitioning the land piitably he accorded it to the wealthiest inhabitants, îe “ four rich bourgeois ” naturally receiving the lion’s îare. The rest of the inhabitants carried the matter ïfore the courts, but the suit was so long drawn out and îe expenses so heavy, that they were finally compelled ) abandon it. What followed is best desciibed in their vn words. “ Of ail those who dared to claim their ghts, not one has escaped the seigneur’ s vengeance ; >me hâve been ruined and live in the most frightful lisery ; others hâve died of the hardships they endured l captivity, and others again hâve lost theij; reason irough their sufferings and the spectacle of their Natives in prison.” 1
The résistance of the peasants was nearly as universal > the usurpations. Usually they carried their grievances Tore the courts, very often with ruinous results to lemselves, as we hâve just seen ; sometimes they ;spaired of justice and resorted to more violent exîdients. They broke down the enclosures and reaped ie crops of the new tenants ; in one case we hear of the îgrosser’s farmhouse being burnt.2
It is clear, then, whether or not we employ the rather
1 Sagnac and Caron, pp. 578-80.
1 Sée, Classes rurales, pp. 231-3.
vague terni of " feudal reaction,” that both économie and psychic forces were at work in the latter part of the eighteenth century to produce an increasing resentment against the whole System of agrarian feudalism. The purpose of this chapter has been to make the causes of that resentment compréhensible ; those that follow will be conecrned with its conséquences.
