The Ancient Regime. Taine Hippolyte

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СКАЧАТЬ he taxes for these, or forces their use. If he is intelligent and a good manager of men, if he seeks to derive the greatest profit from his ground, he gradually relaxes, or allows to become relaxed, the meshes of the net in which his peasants and serfs work unprofitably because they are too tightly drawn. Habits, necessity, a voluntary or forced conformity, have their effect. Lords, peasants, serfs, and bourgeois, in the end adapted to their condition, bound together by a common interest, form together a society, a veritable corporation. The seigniory, the county, the duchy becomes a patrimony which is loved through a blind instinct, and to which all are devoted. It is confounded with the seignior and his family; in this relation people are proud of him. They narrate his feats of arms; they cheer him as his cavalcade passes along the street; they rejoice in his magnificence through sympathy.1113 If he becomes a widower and has no children, they send deputations to him to entreat him to remarry, in order that at his death the country may not fall into a war of succession or be given up to the encroachment of neighbors. Thus there is a revival, after a thousand years, of the most powerful and the most vivacious of the sentiments that support human society. This one is the more precious because it is capable of expanding. In order that the small feudal patrimony to become the great national patrimony, it now suffices for the seigniories to be combined in the hands of a single lord, and that the king, chief of the nobles, should overlay the work of the nobles with the third foundation of France.

III. Services and Recompenses of the King.

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Kings built the whole of this foundation, one stone after another. Hugues Capet laid the first one. Before him royalty conferred on the King no right to a province, not even Laon; it is he who added his domain to the title. During eight hundred years, through conquest, craft, inheritance, the work of acquisition goes on; even under Louis XV France is augmented by the acquisition of Lorraine and Corsica. Starting from nothing, the King is the maker of a compact State, containing the population of twenty-six millions, and then the most powerful in Europe.—Throughout this interval he is at the head of the national defense. He is the liberator of the country against foreigners, against the Pope in the fourteenth century, against the English in the fifteenth, against the Spaniards in the sixteenth. In the interior, from the twelfth century onward, with the helmet on his brow, and always on the road, he is the great justiciary, demolishing the towers of the feudal brigands, repressing the excesses of the powerful, and protecting the oppressed.1114 He puts an end to private warfare; he establishes order and tranquility. This was an immense accomplishment, which, from Louis le Gros to St. Louis, from Philippe le Bel to Charles VII, continues uninterruptedly up to the middle of the eighteenth century in the edict against duels and in the "Grand Jours."1115 Meanwhile all useful projects carried out under his orders, or developed under his patronage, roads, harbors, canals, asylums, universities, academies, institutions of piety, of refuge, of education, of science, of industry, and of commerce, bears his imprint and proclaim the public benefactor. Services of this character challenge a proportionate recompense; it is allowed that from father to son he is wedded to France; that she acts only through him; that he acts only for her; while every souvenir of the past and every present interest combine to sanction this union. The Church consecrates it at Rheims by a sort of eighth sacrament, accompanied with legends and miracles; he is the anointed of God.1116 The nobles, through an old instinct of military fealty, consider themselves his bodyguard, and down to August 10, 1789, rush forward to die for him on his staircase; he is their general by birth. The people, down to 1789, regard him as the redresser of abuses, the guardian of the right, the protector of the weak, the great almoner and the universal refuge. At the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI "shouts of Vive le roi, which began at six o'clock in the morning, continued scarcely interrupted until after sunset."1117 When the Dauphin was born the joy of France was that of a whole family. "People stopped each other in the streets, spoke together without any acquaintance, and everybody embraced everybody he knew."1118 Every one, through vague tradition, through immemorial respect, feels that France is a ship constructed by his hands and the hands of his ancestors. In this sense, the vessel is his property; it is his right to it is the same as that of each passenger to his private goods. The king's only duty consists in being expert and vigilant in guiding across the oceans and beneath his banner the magnificent ship upon which everyone's welfare depends. Under the ascendancy of such an idea he was allowed to do everything. By fair means or foul, he so reduced ancient authorities as to make them a fragment, a pretense, a souvenir. The nobles are simply his officials or his courtiers. Since the Concordat he nominates the dignitaries of the Church. The States-General were not convoked for a hundred and seventy-five years; the provincial assemblies, which continue to subsist, do nothing but apportion the taxes; the parliaments are exiled when they risk a remonstrance. Through his council, his intendants, his sub-delegates, he intervenes in the most trifling of local matters. His revenue is four hundred and seventy-seven millions.1119 He disburses one-half of that of the Clergy. In short, he is absolute master, and he so declares himself.1120—Possessions, freedom from taxation, the satisfactions of vanity, a few remnants of local jurisdiction and authority, are consequently all that is left to his ancient rivals; in exchange for these they enjoy his favors and marks of preference. Such, in brief, is the history of the privileged classes, the Clergy, the Nobles, and the King. It must be kept in mind to comprehend their situation at the moment of their fall; having created France, they enjoy it. Let us see clearly what becomes of them at the end of the eighteenth century; what portion of their advantages they preserved; what services they still render, and what services they do not render.

      1101 (return) [ "Les Moines d'Occident," by Montalembert, I. 277. St. Lupicin before the Burgundian King Chilperic, II. 416. Saint Karileff before King Childebert. Cf. passim, Gregory of Tours and the Bollandist collection.]

      1102 (return) [ No legend is more frequently encountered; we find it as late as the twelfth century.]

      1103 (return) [ Chilperic, for example, acting under the advice of Fredegonde after the death of all their children.]

      1104 (return) [ Montalembert, ibid., II. book 8; and especially "Les Forêts de la France dans l'antiquité et au Moyen Age," by Alfred Maury. Spinoe et vepres is a phrase constantly recurring in the lives of the saints.]

      1105 (return) [ We find the same thing to day with the colonies of Trappists in Algiers.]

      1106 (return) [ "Polyptique d'Irminon," by Guérard. In this work we see the prosperity of the domain belonging to the Abbey of St. Germain des Près at the end of the eighth century. According to M. Guérard's statistics, the peasantry of Paliseau were about СКАЧАТЬ