An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 57

General Reading.--For the French in America, PARKMAN, _The Pioneers of France in the New World_ (Little, Brown & Co., $2.00), also _A Half Century of Conflict_ (same publisher, 2 vols., $6.00). For India, MALLESON, _Clive_ (Oxford, University Press, 60 cents), and Macaulay's Essay on Clive. For the growth of the British Empire, H.

DE B. GIBBINS, _History of Commerce in Europe_ (The Macmillan Company, 90 cents), and SEELEY, _The Expansion of England_ (Little, Brown & Co., $1.75).

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

209. When we meet the words "French Revolution," they are pretty sure to call up before our mind's eye the guillotine and its hundreds of victims, the storming of the Bastile, the Paris mob shouting the Ma.r.s.eillaise hymn as they parade the streets with heads of unfortunate "aristocrats" on their pikes. Every one knows something of this terrible episode in French history. Indeed, it has made so deep an impression on posterity that we sometimes forget that the Reign of Terror was _not_ the French Revolution. Mere disorder and bloodshed never helped mankind along; and the Revolution must a.s.suredly have produced some great and lasting alteration in France and in Europe to deserve to be ranked--as it properly is--with the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, as one of the three most momentous changes of the last six hundred years. The Reign of Terror was, in fact, only a sequel to the _real_ Revolution.

[Sidenote: The _Ancien Regime_.]

The French Revolution, in the truest sense of the term, was a great and permanent reform, which did away with many absurd and vexatious laws and customs, and with abuses of which the whole nation was heartily tired, from the king down to the humblest peasant. Whenever a Frenchman, in the eighteenth century, seriously considered the condition of his country, most of the inst.i.tutions in the midst of which he lived appeared to him to be _abuses_, contrary to reason and humanity. These vicious inst.i.tutions,--relics of bygone times and outlived conditions,--which the Revolution destroyed forever, are known by the general name _Ancien Regime_, that is, "the old system." Whole volumes have been written about the causes of the French Revolution. The real cause is, however, easily stated; the old system was bad, and almost every one, both high and low, had come to realize that it was bad, and consequently the French did away with it and subst.i.tuted a modern and more rational order for the long-standing disorder.

[Sidenote: France not a well-organized state in the eighteenth century.]

Of the evils which the Revolution abolished, none was more important than the confusion due to the fact that France was not in the eighteenth century a well-organized, h.o.m.ogeneous state whose citizens all enjoyed the same rights and privileges. A long line of kings had patched it together, adding bit by bit as they could. By conquest and bargain, by marrying heiresses, and through the extinction of the feudal dynasties, the original restricted domains of Hugh Capet about Paris and Orleans had been gradually increased by his descendants until, when Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, he found himself ruler of practically the whole territory which makes up France to-day.

Some of the districts which the kings of France brought under their sway, like Languedoc, Provence, Brittany, and Navarre, were considerable states in themselves, each with its own laws, customs, and system of government. When these provinces had come, at different times, into the possession of the king of France, he had not changed their laws so as to make them correspond with those of his other domains. He was satisfied if his new provinces paid their due share of the taxes and treated his officials with respect. In some cases the provinces retained their local a.s.semblies, and controlled, to a certain extent, their own affairs. The provinces into which France was divided before the Revolution were not, therefore, merely artificial divisions created for the purposes of administrative convenience, like the modern French departments,[376] but represented real historical differences.

[Sidenote: Various systems of law.]

While in a considerable portion of southern France the Roman law still prevailed, in the central parts and in the west and north there were no less than two hundred and eighty-five different local codes of law in force; so that one who moved from his own to a neighboring town might find a wholly unfamiliar legal system.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Provinces of France in the Eighteenth Century, showing Interior Customs Lines]

[Sidenote: Interior customs lines.]

Neither was France commercially a single state. The chief customs duties were not collected upon goods as they entered French territory from a foreign country; for the customs lines lay within France itself, so that the central provinces about Paris were cut off from the outlying ones as from a foreign land.[377] A merchant of Bordeaux sending goods to Paris would have to see that the duties were paid on them as they pa.s.sed the customs line, and, conversely, a merchant of Paris would have to pay a like duty on commodities sent to places without the line.

[Sidenote: Inequalities of taxation ill.u.s.trated by the salt tax.]

The monstrous inequalities in levying one of the oldest and heaviest of the taxes, i.e., the salt tax, still better ill.u.s.trates the strange disorder that existed in France in the eighteenth century. The government raised this tax by monopolizing the sale of salt and then charging a high price for it. There would have been nothing remarkable in this had the same price been charged everywhere, but as it was, the people in one town might be forced to pay thirty times as much as their neighbors in an adjacent district. The accompanying map shows how France was arbitrarily divided. To take a single example: at Dijon, a certain amount of salt cost seven francs; a few miles to the east, on entering Franche-Comte, one had to pay, for the same amount, twenty-five francs; to the north, in Burgundy, fifty-eight francs; to the south, in the region of the little salt tax, twenty-eight francs; while still farther off, in Gex, there was no tax whatever. The government had to go to great expense to guard the boundary lines between the various districts, for there was every inducement to smugglers to carry salt from those parts of the country where it was cheap into the land of the great salt tax.

[Sidenote: The privileged cla.s.ses.]

210. Besides these unfortunate local differences, there were cla.s.s differences which caused great discontent. All Frenchmen did not enjoy the same rights as citizens. Two small but very important cla.s.ses, the n.o.bility and the clergy, were treated differently by the state from the rest of the people. They did not have to pay one of the heaviest of the taxes, the notorious _taille_, and on one ground or another they escaped other burdens which the rest of the citizens bore. For instance, they were not required to serve in the militia or help build the roads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing the Amount paid in the Eighteenth Century for Salt in Various Parts of France[378]]

[Sidenote: The Church.]

We have seen how great and powerful the mediaeval Church was. In France, as in other Catholic countries of Europe, it still retained in the eighteenth century a considerable part of the power that it had possessed in the thirteenth, and it still performed important public functions. It took charge of education and of the relief of the sick and the poor. It was very wealthy and is supposed to have owned one fifth of all the land in France. The clergy still claimed, as Boniface VIII had done, that their property, being dedicated to G.o.d, was not subject to taxation. They consented, however, to help the king from time to time by a "free gift," as they called it. The church still collected the t.i.thes from the people, and its vast possessions made it very independent.

Those who did not call themselves Roman Catholics were excluded from some of the most important rights of citizens.h.i.+p. Since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes no Protestant could be legally married or have the births of his children registered, or make a legal will.

[Sidenote: The clergy.]

A great part of the enormous income of the church went into the pockets of the higher clergy, the bishops, archbishops, and abbots. These were appointed by the king,[379] often from among his courtiers, and they paid but little attention to their duties as officers of the church and were generally nothing but "great lords with a hundred thousand francs income." While they amused themselves at Versailles, the real work was performed--and well performed--by the lower clergy, who often received scarcely enough to keep soul and body together. We shall see that, when the Revolution began, the parish priests sided with the people instead of with their ecclesiastical superiors.[380]

[Sidenote: The privileges of the n.o.bility.]

The privileges of the n.o.bles, like those of the clergy, had originated in the mediaeval conditions described in an earlier chapter.[381] A detailed study of their rights would reveal many survivals of the conditions which prevailed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the great majority of the people were serfs living upon the manors.

While serfdom had largely disappeared in France long before the eighteenth century, and the peasants were generally free men who owned or rented their land, the lords still enjoyed the right to collect a variety of time-honored dues from the inhabitants living within the limits of the former manors.

The privileges and dues enjoyed by the n.o.bles varied greatly in different parts of France. It was quite common for the n.o.ble landowner to have a right to a certain portion of the peasants' crops; occasionally he could collect a toll on sheep and cattle driven past his house. In some cases the lord maintained, as he had done in the Middle Ages, the only mill, wine press, or oven within a certain district, and could require every one to make use of these and pay him a share of the product. Even when a peasant owned his land, the neighboring lord usually had the right to exact one fifth of its value every time it was sold. The n.o.bles, too, enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of the hunt.

The game which they preserved for their amus.e.m.e.nt often did great damage to the crops of the peasants, who were forbidden to interfere with hares, deer, pigeons, etc.

All these privileges were vestiges of the powers which the n.o.bles had enjoyed when they ruled their estates as feudal lords. Louis XIV had, as we know, induced them to leave their domains and gather round him at Versailles, where all who could afford it lived for at least part of the year. The higher offices in the army were reserved for the n.o.bles, as well as the easiest and most lucrative places in the church and about the king's person.[382]

[Sidenote: The third estate.]

211. Everybody who did not belong to either the clergy or n.o.bility was regarded as being of the _third estate_. The third estate was therefore nothing more than the nation at large, which was made up in 1789 of about twenty-five million souls. The privileged cla.s.ses can scarcely have counted altogether more than two hundred and seventy thousand individuals. A great part of the third estate lived in the country and tilled the soil. Most historians have been inclined to make out their condition as very bad indeed. They were certainly oppressed by an abominable system of taxation and were irritated by the dues which they had to pay to the lords. They also suffered frequently from local famines. Yet there is no doubt that the evils of their situation have been greatly exaggerated. When Thomas Jefferson traveled through France in 1787 he reports that the country people appeared to be comfortable and that they had plenty to eat. Arthur Young, a famous English traveler who has left us an admirable account of his journeys in France during the years 1787-1789, found much prosperity and contentment, although he gives, too, some forlorn pictures of dest.i.tution.

[Sidenote: Favorable situation of the peasant in France compared with other countries.]

[Sidenote: Rapid increase of population in the eighteenth century.]

The latter have often been unduly emphasized by historical writers; for it has commonly been thought that the Revolution was to be explained by the misery and despair of the people who could tolerate the old system no longer. If, however, instead of comparing the situation of the French peasant under the old regime with that of an English or American farmer to-day, we contrast his position with that of his fellow-peasant in Prussia, Austria, or Italy, it will be clear that in France the agricultural cla.s.ses were really much better off than elsewhere on the continent. In Prussia, for example, the peasants were still serfs: they had to work three whole days in each week for their lord; they could not marry or dispose of their land without his permission. Moreover, the fact that the population of France had steadily increased from seventeen million after the close of the wars of Louis XIV to about twenty-five million at the opening of the Revolution, indicates that the general condition of the people was improving rather than growing worse.

[Sidenote: Popular discontent, not the exceptionally miserable condition of the French people, accounts for the Revolution.]

The real reason why France was the first among the European countries to carry out a great reform and do away with the irritating survivals of feudalism was not that the nation was miserable and oppressed above all others, but that it was sufficiently free and enlightened to realize the evils and absurdities of the old regime. Mere oppression and misery does not account for a revolution, there must also be active _discontent_; and of that there was a great abundance in France, as we shall see. The French peasant no longer looked up to his lord as his ruler and protector, but viewed him as a sort of legalized robber who demanded a share of his precious harvest, whose officers awaited the farmer at the crossing of the river to claim a toll, who would not let him sell his produce when he wished, or permit him to protect his fields from the ravages of the pigeons which it pleased the lord to keep.[383]

[Sidenote: France still a despotism in the eighteenth century.]

212. In the eighteenth century France was still the despotism that Louis XIV had made it.[384] Louis XVI once described it very well in the following words: "The sovereign authority resides exclusively in my person. To me solely belongs the power of making the laws, and without dependence or cooperation. The entire public order emanates from me, and I am its supreme protector. My people are one with me. The rights and interests of the nation are necessarily identical with mine and rest solely in my hands." In short, the king still ruled "by the grace of G.o.d," as Louis XIV had done. He needed to render account to no man for his governmental acts; he was responsible to G.o.d alone. The following ill.u.s.trations will make clear the dangerous extent of the king's power.

[Sidenote: The king's control of the government funds.]

In the first place, it was he who levied each year the heaviest of the taxes, the hated _taille_, from which the privileged cla.s.ses were exempted. This tax brought in about one sixth of the whole revenue of the state. The amount collected was kept secret, and no report was made to the nation of what was done with it or with any other part of the king's income. Indeed, no distinction was made between the king's private funds and the state treasury, whereas in England the monarch was given a stated allowance. The king of France could issue as many drafts payable to bearer as he wished; the royal officials must pay all such orders and ask no questions. Louis XV is said to have spent no less than seventy million dollars in this fas.h.i.+on in a single year.

[Sidenote: _Lettres de cachet._]

But the king not only controlled his subjects' purses; he had a terrible authority over their persons as well. He could issue orders for the arrest and arbitrary imprisonment of any one he pleased. Without trial or formality of any sort, a person might be cast into a dungeon for an indefinite period, until the king happened to remember him again or was reminded of him by the poor man's friends. These notorious orders of arrest were called _lettres de cachet_, i.e., sealed letters. They were not difficult to obtain for any one who had influence with the king or his favorites, and they furnished a particularly easy and efficacious way of disposing of an enemy. These arbitrary orders lead one to appreciate the importance of the provision of Magna Carta which establishes that "no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned except by the lawful sentence of his peers and in accordance with the law of the land." Some of the most distinguished men of the time were shut up by the king's order, often on account of books or pamphlets written by them which displeased the king or those about him. The distinguished statesman, Mirabeau, was imprisoned several times through _lettres de cachet_ obtained by his father as a means of checking his reckless dissipation.[385]

[Sidenote: Limitations placed upon the power of the French king.]

213. Yet, notwithstanding the seemingly unlimited powers of the French king, and in spite of the fact that France had no written const.i.tution and no legislative body to which the nation sent representatives, the monarch was by no means absolutely free to do just as he pleased. He had not the time nor inclination to carry on personally the government of twenty-five million subjects, and he necessarily and willingly left much of the work to his ministers and the numerous public officials, who were bound to obey the laws and regulations established for their control and guidance.

[Sidenote: The _parlements_ and their protests.]

Next to the king's council the most important governmental bodies were the higher courts of law, the _parlements_. These resembled the English Parliament in almost nothing but name. The French _parlements_--of which the most important one was at Paris and a dozen more were scattered about the provinces--did not, however, confine themselves strictly to the business of trying lawsuits. They claimed, and quite properly, that when the king decided to make a new law he must send it to them to be registered, else they would have no means of knowing just what the law was of which they were to be the guardians. Now, although they acknowledged that the right to make the laws belonged to the monarch, they nevertheless often sent a "protest" to the king instead of registering a law of which they disapproved. They would urge that the ministers had abused His Majesty's confidence. They would see, too, that their protest was printed and sold on the streets at a penny or two a copy, so that people should get the idea that the _parlement_ was defending the nation against the oppressive measures of the king's ministers.

When the king received one of these protests two alternatives were open to him. He might recall the distasteful decree altogether or modify it so as to suit the court; or he could summon the _parlement_ before him and in a solemn session (called a _lit de justice_) command it with his own mouth to register the law in its books. The _parlement_ would then reluctantly obey, but as the Revolution approached it began to claim that a decree registered against its will was not valid.