The Ancient Regime. Taine Hippolyte

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СКАЧАТЬ monks are "the fathers of the poor." In the diocese of Auxerre, during the summer of 1789, the Bernardines of Rigny "stripped themselves of all they possessed in favor of the inhabitants of neighboring villages: bread, grain, money and other supplies, have all been lavished on about twelve hundred persons who, for more than six weeks, never failed to present themselves at their door daily … Loans, advances made on farms, credit with the purveyors of the house, all has contributed to facilitating their means for relieving the people." I omit many other traits equally forcible; we see that the ecclesiastical and lay seigniors are not simple egoists when they live at home. Man is compassionate of ills of which he is a witness; absence is necessary to deaden their vivid impression; they move the heart when the eye contemplates them. Familiarity, moreover, engenders sympathy; one cannot remain insensible to the trials of a poor man to whom, for over twenty years, one says good-morning every day on passing him, with whose life one is acquainted, who is not an abstract unit in the imagination, a statistical cipher, but a sorrowing soul and a suffering body.—And so much the more because, since the writings of Rousseau and the economists, a spirit of humanity, daily growing stronger, more penetrating and more universal, has arisen to soften the heart. Henceforth the poor are thought of, and it is esteemed an honor to think of them. We have only to read the registers of the States-General1311 to see that spirit of philanthropy spreads from Paris even to the chateaux and abbeys of the provinces. I am satisfied that, except for a few country squires, either huntsmen or drinkers, carried away by the need of physical exercise, and confined through their rusticity to an animal life, most of the resident seigniors resembled, in fact or in intention, the gentry whom Marmontel, in his moral tales, then brought on the stage. Fashion took this direction, and people in France always follow the fashion. There is nothing feudal in their characters; they are "sensible" people, mild, very courteous, tolerably cultivated, fond of generalities, and easily and quickly roused, and very much in earnest. For instance like that amiable logician the Marquis de Ferrières, an old light-horseman, deputy from Saumur in the National Assembly, author of an article on Theism, a moral romance and genial memoirs of no great importance; nothing could be more remote from the ancient harsh and despotic temperament. They would be glad to relieve the people, and they try to favor them as much as they can.1312 They are found detrimental, but they are not wicked; the evil is in their situation and not in their character. It is their situation, in fact, which, allowing them rights without exacting services, debars them from the public offices, the beneficial influence, the effective patronage by which they might justify their advantages and attach the peasantry to them.

But on this ground the central government has taken their place. For a long time now have they been rather feeble against the intendant, unable to protect their parish. Twenty gentlemen cannot not assemble and deliberate without the king's special permission.1313 If those of Franche-Comté happen to dine together and hear a mass once a year, it is through tolerance, and even then this harmless group may assemble only in the presence of the intendant. Separated from his equals, the seignior, again, is further away from his inferiors. The administration of the village is of no concern to him; he is not even tasked with its supervision. The apportionment of taxes, the militia contingent, the repairs of the church, the summoning and presiding over a parish assembly, the making of roads, the establishment of charity workshops, all this is the intendant's business or that of the communal officers whom the intendant appoints or directs.1314 Except through his justiciary rights, so much curtailed, the seignior is an idler in public matters.1315 If, by chance, he should desire to act in an official capacity, to make some reclamation for the community, the bureaus of administration would soon make him shut up. Since Louis XIV, the higher officials have things their own way; all legislation and the entire administrative system operate against the local seignior to deprive him of his functional efficiency and to confine him to his naked title. Through this separation of functions and title his pride increases, as he becomes less useful. His vanity deprived of its broad pasture-ground, falls back on a small one; henceforth he seeks distinctions and not influence. He thinks only of precedence and not of government.1316 In short, the local government, in the hands of peasants commanded by bureaucrats, has become a common, offensive lot of red tape. "His pride would be wounded if he were asked to attend to it. Raising taxes, levying the militia, regulating the corvées, are servile acts, the works of a secretary." He accordingly abstains, remains isolated on his manor and leaves to others a task from which he is excluded and which he disdains. Far from protecting his peasantry he is scarcely able to protect himself or to preserve his immunities. Or to avoid having his poll-tax and vingtiémes reduced. Or to obtain exemption from the militia for his domestics, to keep his own person, dwelling, dependents, and hunting and fishing rights from the universal usurpation which places all possessions and all privileges in the hands of "Monseigneur l'intendant" and Messieurs the sub-delegates. And the more so because he is often poor. Bouillé estimates that all the old families, save two or three hundred, are ruined.1317 In Rouergue several of them live on an income of fifty and even twenty-five louis, (1000 and 500 francs). In Limousin, says an intendant at the beginning of the century, out of several thousands there are not fifteen who have twenty thousand livres income. In Berry, towards 1754, "three-fourths of them die of hunger." In Franche-Comté the fraternity to which we have alluded appears in a humorous light, "after the mass each one returning to his domicile, some on foot and others on their Rosinantes." In Brittany "lots of gentlemen found as excisemen, on the farms or in the lowest occupations." One M. de la Morandais becomes the overseer of an estate. A certain family with nothing but a small farm "attests its nobility only by the pigeon-house; it lives like the peasants, eating nothing but brown bread." Another gentleman, a widower, "passes his time in drinking, living licentiously with his servants, and covering butter-pots with the handsomest title-deeds of his lineage." All the chevaliers de Châteaubriand," says the father, "were drunkards and beaters of hares." He himself just makes shift to live in a miserable way, with five domestics, a hound and two old mares "in a chateau capable of accommodating a hundred seigniors with their suites." Here and there in the various memoirs we see these strange superannuated figures passing before the eye, for instance, in Burgundy, "gentlemen huntsmen wearing gaiters and hob-nailed shoes, carrying an old rusty sword under their arms dying with hunger and refusing to work."1318 Elsewhere we encounter "M. de Pérignan, with his red garments, wig and ginger face, having dry stone wails built on his domain, and getting intoxicated with the blacksmith of the place;" related to Cardinal Fleury, he is made the first Duc de Fleury. Everything contributes to this decay, the law, habits and customs, and, above all, the right of primogeniture. Instituted for the purpose of maintaining undivided sovereignty and patronage it ruins the nobles since sovereignty and patronage have no material to work on. "In Brittany," says Châteaubriand, "the elder sons of the nobles swept away two-thirds of the property, while the younger sons shared in one-third of the paternal heritage."1319 Consequently, "the younger sons of younger sons soon come to the sharing of a pigeon, rabbit, hound and fowling-piece. The entire fortune of my grandfather did not exceed five thousand livres income, of which his elder son had two-thirds, three thousand three hundred livres, leaving one thousand six hundred and sixty-six livres for the three younger ones, upon which sum the elder still had a préciput claim."1320 This fortune, which crumbles away and dies out, they neither know how, nor are they disposed, to restore by commerce, manufactures or proper administration of it; it would be derogatory. "High and mighty seigniors of dove-cote, frog-pond and rabbit-warren," the more substance they lack the more value they set on the name. Add to all this winter sojourn in town, the ceremonial and expenses caused by vanity and social requirements, and the visits to the governor and the intendant. A man must be either a German or an Englishman to be able to pass three gloomy, rainy months in a castle or on a farm, alone, in companionship with peasants, at СКАЧАТЬ