THE French Revolution can be understood only by a careful examination of the political, economic, and social conditions from which it sprang. It did not appear, first to convulse France, and then to confound the entire world, because France was more miserably afflicted by public ills than other quieter nations. On the contrary, it was precisely because the French were probably, all things considered, the most progressive, enlightened, and in general fortunate people of Continental Europe, that they were the first who dared to throw aside the great barriers which mediævalism still erected in the way of human development. If we examine the condition of average sections of Germany, Austria, Italy, or Spain as compared with France, those conditions would have seemed decidedly worse; old abuses and hoary tyrannies much more obnoxious; the governed still more severely exploited by the governing classes; the traces of popular liberty even less in evidence. But while Italians, Spaniards, Germans, etc., were as a people too helpless and ignorant to do more than mutter in despair, hopeful at best of a "good king" and a slight mitigation of the worst abuses, in France a great fraction of the people were becoming keenly alive to two great facts: (1) that very many things in the body politic were absolutely wrong; (2) that, as men of energy and intelligence, it was alike their right and their duty to take the remedy into their own hands. These specific evils and this consciousness of both the need and the power to remedy the evils: to which, it should be added, the whole philosophic temper of the age, which predisposed men to an optimistic faith in "reason" and in the perfectibility of human nature by merely changing its environment, led as a consequence to drastic but wholly untested schemes for reform. The result was to produce the French Revolution, the most far-reaching political and social explosion in all European history.
In 1789 France presented the utterly anomalous picture of a great kingdom, of nearly 25,000,000 inhabitants, leading the world in most of the civilized refinements and luxuries of life, and numbering a high proportion of high-spirited, educated, and well-intentioned men, but which nevertheless was cursed with political and economic institutions which had been growing threadbare ever since Louis XI. In its heyday Capetian royalty had been an enormous asset to France. It had been the kings who had rescued the land from feudal chaos. In the olden days the King and the lower classes had more or less made common cause against their common enemy and oppressor – the barons. Only by the loyalty and the unfeigned consent of the lower classes had French royalty been able to rise to power. Often had the King fought against his dukes, counts, and seigneurs, but very seldom against the burghers of his "good towns" or the peasants of his villages. But when the victory had been won, the monarchy had promptly kicked aside its humble helpers. Louis XIV had no more intention of asking the Third Estate to aid in his government than he had of sharing his throne with a Condé or a Bouillon.
The Monarchy in 1661 had seemed to be absolute and owing no duty to any Frenchman, save the general duty of governing with responsibility "only to God" the people with which Heaven had entrusted it. The monarchical theories of Louis XVI we have already seen. We have seen, too, the circumstances, especially the disastrous and disgraceful wars, which undermined the prestige of the Monarchy both with the world at large, and with its own subjects. Nevertheless, in 1789, in legal theory, Louis XVI possessed a power not a whit less absolute than his several-times grandfather Louis XIV. That earlier monarch had said, "All the State rests in me: the will of the entire people is shut up within myself." In 1787 Louis XVI had said, "This thing is legal – because I wish it!" and again, "I am answerable only to God for the use of the supreme power." The "States General," that feeble attempt at a legislature which had developed in the later Middle Ages, had not been convoked since 1614; and very few men, until shortly before 1789, claimed that this half-forgotten body had possessed much more than consultative powers. The King could make war, make peace, spend the public revenues as he would, and also make new laws, all by his own arbitrary fiat. In theory, and partially in practice, too, he held authority over the very lives and thoughts of his subjects. No book, no paper, could appear without the consent of his censor. The King could confiscate a man's entire property without obligation to give payment.
Worse still, he could take away his liberty without any process of law. In the days of Louis XVI, even as in the days of Richelieu or of Louis XIV, the usage remained of issuing the famous lettre de cachet (literally "sealed letter") which was simply a royal order to seize and lock up the special individual named in the document in some designated fortress – the Bastile at Paris, Pierre-Ancise at Lyons, Pignerol in the Alps, etc. No crime had to be mentioned; no period set for the imprisonment. It was all "at the King's pleasure." Louis XIV had thus kept the unhappy Duke of Lauzun in close custody for ten years. Other victims had probably languished longer. Under Louis XV these notorious documents seem sometimes to have been solicited by noble families for locking up and bringing to repentance unruly sons who were on the point of contracting imprudent marriages. Under Louis XVI, probably, they were not often issued save for dealing with very unworthy persons who deserve scant sympathy; but issued they still were, over a thousand of them between 1774 and 1788. The mere fact that the King could use them proves the "first gentleman of Europe" to have been essentially a despot, only a little more varnished and self- restrained than the Sultan at Constantinople. There was, however, this important difference. Turkey was described as a "despotism tempered by assassination." France was now surely a "despotism tempered by inefficiency." The royal power was wearing thin in places. The King's commands were being only imperfectly executed. The amount of inertia the monarch had first to overcome in order to execute any unwelcome change was inconceivably great. Whatever the theory of his authority, long before 1789 the King of France had to take into very serious account two forces – the wishes of the court around him, his family and noble intimates; and also the trend of public opinion in France. For the ruin of the Monarchy these two forces seldom failed to collide. This "absolute" King in the end was to be destroyed largely because of the practicalweakness of his power.
Versailles was still the center of the court and of its royal master. Here were some eighteen thousand persons directly in the service of the reigning family, or at least eating of the King's bounty. About half were in the "military household," a guard corps which had perhaps been a little reduced since the days of Louis XIV; the remainder were in the "civil household" which had grown rather than diminished. Besides the King's host of attendants there were the households of the Queen (at least five hundred souls), those of his children, his brothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, aunts, and cousins – each with an establishment worthy of a second-class sovereign.
The court was extremely luxurious and with an utterly disorderly type of luxury. There were nineteen hundred horses in the royal stables and two hundred carriages. To maintain the King's stables required annually the modern sum of $4,000,000. The service of the royal table (after certain very unpopular economies had been ordered!) cost some $1,400,000 per annum. The waste and downright embezzlement was incalculable. Every one of the highly salaried and seldom employed servants had his or her special line of well-defined perquisites. Thus the group of "first waiting-women" between them added fully $30,000 per year to their incomes by disposing of the partly burned candles used in lighting the palace. Queen Marie Antoinette required (according to the royal account-books) four new pairs of shoes each week – but probably no such number ever touched the royal feet. It was notorious also that everything sold to the King was charged at a far higher price than when sold to humbler mortals. Thanks to utter lack of management, "graft," and downright pilfering, in 1789 the total cost of the royal household, civil and military, it is alleged, mounted to the equivalent of nearly $17,000,000.
Yet the cost to the King did not really stop here. His Majesty was expected constantly to make "royal gifts" on a scale corresponding with his greatness; also to award pensions to favorite courtiers, and to friends of the Queen; for example, to families of noble harpies like the Polignacs who had particularly the Queen's ear. Between 1774 and 1789 the able finance minister Necker calculated that the King had thus given away to his family or courtiers what amounted to $114,000,000. Already under Louis XV it had been said, "The court is the tomb of the nation." This was still more true under his well-meaning successor.
The Government of which this court was the axis was still the same in form as under Louis XIV. Great ministers and royal councils were at Versailles, and France at large was divided into thirty-six généralités each under its omnipotent intendant, who, taken from the bourgeois class, found himself a petty king in all governmental matters so long as his lord and master deigned to keep him in office.
One royal minister, however, was standing out beyond all the others. The Controller-General of the Finances was coming more and more to be the chief servant of the Monarchy. His salary was over $112,000 per annum. He was gaining power, because the one test of successful administration in France was coming to be the ability to satisfy the insatiable demands of the treasury. Without money the "Very Christian King" was helpless.
In the généralités the provincial regions were subdivided into smaller districts usually known as "elections," and each was ruled by the intendant's appointee and direct agent, the "subdelegate." The power of these petty officials was very great. They could override every other kind of local authority, but in turn had to refer almost every variety of question to their intendant and he often to Versailles. If a bridge was to be repaired, the roof of a public building retiled, a prison made secure or habitable, the papers usually had to go a weary way to the King's court and come back again. Delays were interminable and all governmental agencies seemed strangled with red tape. France thus was a highly centralized monarchy, but there was none of the prompt efficiency which can characterize the less iniquitous forms of despotism.
France was also, if a centralized monarchy, anything but a unified monarchy. Within the kingdom were all the economic barriers and variations which one would expect to-day when passing across a dozen separate nations. Thus the weights and measures differed radically going from district to district. In Paris a "perch" implied the equivalent to thirty-four square meters, but it was fifty-one meters in some provinces; and it was forty-two meters in still others. France was divided into at least seven customs districts, each with its own barriers and special tariff, as if between unfriendly kingdoms. There were also seven different groups of territories (each with its own sets of rates) for the obnoxious and notorious salt tax. In a minor fraction of the provinces, pays d'États (literally "Countries with Estates"), there were local bodies which partially represented the people and which had something to say about the levying of taxes. In the rest of the provinces, pays d'Élection all this lay directly with the agents of the King.
There was also no legal unity in France. Practically all the southern half of the realm was subject to the so-called "Written law," to a system based very directly upon the old Roman codes. In the northern half there was the "Customary law," "a confused jumble of 295 different codes" derived from old feudal usage, and traceable in theory back to Frankish times. Going across France, therefore, as Voltaire well said, "one changed the laws as one changed post-horses." This line of legal differences cut across France in a most arbitrary manner, and especially the great province of Auvergne was split in twain by the distinction, one city, Aurillac, being under the civil law of the South and the next, Clermont, under the customary law, though both towns would be subject to the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris as their high court.
These divergences had originally arisen because the Capetians, in making their conquests, had wisely refrained from treading on local customs while their own power was just consolidating. But long after the reasons for any such tenderness had vanished, inertia on the part of the Government and the influence of magnates interested in the old systems, had kept the latter in vogue. Despite their harmfulness, many districts were proud of the barriers that cut them off from their neighbors, and even up to 1789 they strove to maintain their provincial insularity. As Mirabeau was to say in a striking phrase, France was, up to the Revolution, "an unconstituted aggregation of disunited peoples."
If the laws were complicated, the administration of the same also left much to be desired. There were still plenty of remains of the old seigneurial justice of the Middle Ages. In most villages, petty crimes and complaints went before a judge named by the old feudal lord of the manor. His jurisdiction, however, was subject to appeal to the king's courts in all important cases. The only practical effect, therefore, of the feudal courts was to delay the final decision, and to make extra pickings for the insignificant seigneurial judge. Once a case, however, was in the royal courts, it was caught in a perfect network of tribunals. The ordinary superior judges were known as "presidents," about one hundred in number. It was complained there were not enough of them to attend to the legal business of the realm, and consequently every kind of litigation was grievously delayed. Above the presidents were the parlements. The most dignified and honored of these parlements was the famous one of Paris, but really it was the supreme court for only about one third of France. There were twelve other parlements each acting for some province or group thereof or subdivision of the realm. They were less esteemed than the Paris tribunal, but not subject to it. If there was any higher jurisdiction, it could come only directly from the councils of the King.
All the high judicial magistrates held office on a basis incredible if not diabolical to modern ears. They gained their posts either by inheritance – for example, a son inheriting his father's position as judge – or by downright purchase, one incumbent selling his position to an aspirant. This rule of venality of positions applied as a matter of fact to a multitude of high governmental posts. There were some required precautions to prevent notoriously unfit men from securing places which it would ruin the King to have them administer; nevertheless the fact remained that under the "absolute kingship" the monarch could not prevent a great judicial office from changing owners like a country house. Another set of grotesque customs made it incumbent on litigants to present a regular gift to their judges: the only thing expected was that these "spices" should be fixed in an equal amount for each side.
The methods of these courts were, as might have been expected, often abominable. The criminal law was terribly severe. The hangman punished many "crimes" which to-day would be settled by a small fine. The penalties for poaching on hunting rights approximated those for arson and murder. As was complained in 1789, "the life of a rabbit was balanced off against that of a man." Torture was a regular feature of a criminal trial. In 1780, by a great reform the "preparatory" torture, before condemnation, was given up; but until 1789 the "preliminary question" – that is, use of the rack after condemnation and before execution – was carefully retained to extort from the wretch some facts about his accomplices. The sight of the gallows, with corpses hanging in chains and with the carrion crows busy around them, was terribly familiar in every region in France. Condemnation to the galleys (a living death in life) was only a pretense at mercy. Really serious crimes would be punished by breaking on the wheel, drawing and quartering, and every other refinement of cruelty which had lived on from the truly "dark" ages.
The Achilles heel of all this strange and evil polity, or rather demi-chaos, was the financial system. It must never be forgotten that the immediate reason why the Absolute Monarchy broke down was because the Lieutenant of God could not pay his own most necessary debts. Had the King of France remained decently solvent his old government might have survived some years longer.
In 1789 the financial situation was briefly this: The annual expenses came to about $965,000,000; the receipts to $238,000,- 000, and the interest on the public debt came to $105,000,000 (well on to half the total receipts!) Under Louis XVI alone the public debt had increased by $570,000,000 (2,850,000,000 francs present French money). This deplorable situation was not due alone to the blunders of Louis XVI and of his ministers. It was traceable back to the policy of every French king since Francis I, save only Henry IV and Louis XIV during the golden days of Colbert. The whole spirit of the royal policy, however, had been summed up by the Count of Artois (brother of Louis XVI and himself the later unhappy Charles X): "The expenses of the King ought not to be governed by his receipts, but his receipts by his expenses!"
A deficit was the standing situation in the treasury department. The only way to meet this deficit was by such doubtful expedients as the creation and sale of new offices or privileges, or by the regular contraction of a greater debt. The situation as to taxes was so bad that almost any proposal to augment them would have shaken the nation. The "Absolute Monarch" could not arbitrarily increase a poll-tax lest the consequences destroy his throne. Therefore the drift to bankruptcy continued.
The existing taxes were numerous and most of them of long standing. The chief direct tax was the famous taille. It was traceable back to at least the Hundred Years War with England. In the South Country it was usually levied on lands and houses; in the rest of France it was personal, levied on the presumed fortune of the tax-payer, whatever its origin. In any case it was wholly arbitrary and was imposed without any rational basis for the assessment. The sight of a few hen feathers at a wretched peasant's door, implying that he was acquiring more than a starving living, was in itself enough sometimes to increase the poor wight's taille. Such acts, of course, put a deliberate discount on the habits of thrift.
The taille was the roturier's (non-noble's) tax. It fell only on peasants, craftsmen, and bourgeois. The lands and incomes of the noblesse and the Church (the two wealthiest classes) were proudly exempt. The noblemen paid the King by their "blood" when they served in battle; the ecclesiastics paid by their prayers. They were not to be subject to this grievous impost which was in itself a sign of inferiority.
There were, however, two other taxes which the nobles and the clergy were supposed to pay along with the peasantsdespite much groaning. These were the "capitation tax," and the "Twenty" (vingtième). The first tax was a proportional levy of so much per head, according to the twenty-three classes into which all the King's subjects were assigned. The first class was headed by the Dauphin, who was taxed in theory about $1000. The poor folk of the twenty-third class paid nothing. The "Twenty" was supposed to be a general income tax of five per cent. Such was the letter of the law. In usage, however, the privileged classes received almost wholesale exemption. With the upper bourgeois the chances of exemption would vary. The clergy "redeemed" their taxes by a "free gift" to the King, much less than their lawful share. As for the nobility, their quotas were always estimated with calculated leniency. The "Princes of the Blood," who should have paid about $1,200,000 as their total "twentieths," actually paid only about $90,000. In the region around Paris, when a marquis was levied for $200 in place of his just $1250, a bourgeois was held for $380 in place of his just $35.
These taxes were levied so harshly upon those they struck, and the exemptions of wealth and privilege were so wholesale, that it is reckoned that fifty per cent of the entire earnings of the non-noble classes were swept in by the taille, the capitation tax, and the "Twenty" alone – and yet that was by no means all for which the tax-gatherer stretched out his hands!
Besides the direct taxes there went the elaborate indirect taxes. What made these worse was the fact that they were regularly "farmed out" – that is, the privilege of collecting them was sold to "farmers," speculators, who paid a lump sum to the King, then levied as much as they could stretch the law to allow them in order to get a fat profit. This was a sinister revival of the "publicans" who disgraced ancient Rome, and who were justly execrated in New Testament Palestine.
The gabelle, the salt monopoly, was open perhaps to the most grievous abuses. Every subject above the age of seven was legally obliged to purchase at least seven pounds of salt annually. Not to purchase this was almost as serious a crime as perjury or house-breaking. This salt had to be used exclusively in cooking or on the table. To use such a supply for salting provisions implied a fine equal to at least $150. The agents of the public salt-dealers frequently would search dwellings from attic to cellar to make sure that no unauthorized stores were therein secreted. They could easily tell the government salt – it was of such very inferior quality! Naturally there was a great trade in contraband salt. The risks were great, but the legal price of the article was so high that it paid to take chances. In 1787 a high official (Calonne) asserted that 30,000 persons were arrested per year for breaking the salt laws and 500 were condemned to the galleys or gallows for contraband salt running. Of course a small army of detectives and revenue officers had constant employ, enforcing this gabelle alone. All this did nothing to increase the respect of the lower classes for the laws against genuine crimes.
The aides were petty taxes almost as intolerable as the gabelle. They struck various articles, but especially wine – in France a staple of consumption such as Americans can hardly understand. Wine was subject to a small tax when it was manufactured; another when it was sold to its first handler; and then again, while in transit, at every possible halting-place on the road (thirty-five to forty separate places in going from Languedoc to Paris); again when it entered a city; again when it passed to the retailer. A cask of wine worth 150 francs ($30) in Montpellier in the South had paid out 122 francs in these small taxes before it was drunk in Paris. Most vexatious of all was the check kept upon the consumer. Every family, whatever its size, was entitled to four puncheons of wine per year, without extra tax. If they needed more, however, it had to pay a surtax; this on the principle that the extra wine might be sold sub rosa and the Government cheated.
The aides and the gabelle alike were most unequal over France. In some regions the salt tax was so small as to constitute no serious grievance. In others, it was almost the chief public burden. As for the aides, we find certain parishes on opposite sides of a river; on one bank the inhabitants were subject to a heavy aide on their wine, on the other they were wholly exempt.
The evils of this taxation system were so patent that no one attempted to defend them. Even the privileged classes recognized that these fiscal iniquities were the source of a large proportion of the violent unrest which was afflicting the country and threatening the whole social order. No finance minister dared propose heavier taxes until a better system could be devised, and yet the system could not be changed without touching the whole edifice of social and financial privilege upon which the French upper classes doted. The absurd situation was therefore presented of an "absolute monarch," with a realm well able to pay much larger taxes than actually existed (provided they were evenly adjusted), but not daring to add a fraction to the imposts already laid upon his people, and therefore himself drifting into bankruptcy. The statement would be comical had not the results been tragic. Behind the shadow of the deficit was rising the guillotine.
The abuses in taxation were inextricably tied up with the abuses in personal privilege. The kings had stripped the nobility of their political authority, but they had done anything but establish a dead level of subjects all under one common master. Inequality was the principle of French society, and all the na- tion was legally and avowedly divided into three great orders – the Clergy, the Noblesse, and the Third Estate. The first two orders were styled "The Privileged." Their precious rights varied from that of preferred admission to the royal court to mere exemption from the taillewhich smote all the lower classes. So far as numbers went, the privileged orders were in a glaringly small minority. The whole population was then about 25,000, 000. The two noble orders each reckoned about 130,000 to 140,000 members; say 275,000 "nobles" in all. To these, in fairness, should be added about 300,000 bourgeois who held official positions and enjoyed exemptions and prestige far above most of their contemporaries. In all not over 600,000 Frenchmen were thus singled out by law and custom for a position highly enviable as compared with 24,000,000 less fortunate fellows.
The clergy nominally ranked higher than the noblesse since the affairs of God took precedence over the dignities of man. Rather less than half of the clergy were "regular" – that is monks and nuns under the monastic "rule"; the majority were "secular," bishops and parish priests mingling with the laity, and having the "cure of souls." These two branches of the clergy had a well-defined organization; sending deputies to an assembly which met every five years to deliberate on the interests of their order, and to vote "free gifts" to the King in lieu of ordinary taxation. The clergy, too, if involved in the courts, were entitled to a judgment by their own ecclesiastical tribunals. They were of course in theory subject to the Pope, but actually – in view of the Concordat of Francis I and the vigorous assertion of the "Gallican liberties" under Louis XIV – a wise Pontiff would let the affairs of the French Church pretty strictly alone; and the King was more influential in most ecclesiastical matters than the Holy Father.
The Crown was justified in taking a keen interest in matters religious. It was reckoned that one fifth of the whole soil of France belonged in one way or another to the Church. In the province of Artois the clergy controlled three quarters of the entire real estate. Besides the regular revenues of these wide lands, the Church received a "tithe" on all agricultural products everywhere; also the income from many "feudal rights" levied upon the inhabitants of the Church estates. The whole revenues of the French Church in 1789 are set at over $100,- 000,000 modern money.
Some of this huge income was indeed spent on hospitals, orphanages, the upkeep of churches, and legitimate alms to the poor. The "free gifts" of the Church to the King, and such other taxes as the clergy were willing to bear, came to about $6,000,- 000 (30,000,000 francs) per year. The rest of the revenues were distributed far otherwise.
Splitting the French Church asunder, in a manner ruinous to all its spiritual weal, was the division between the higher clergy and the lower clergy. The higher clergy were recruited almost exclusively from the noblesse. The younger son of a ducal house would seek a bishopric while his elder brother took the family château. The archbishops, bishops, abbots, canons, etc., reckoned together about 5000 or 6000 persons. They monopolized by far the greater share of all the Church revenues. Few bishops struggled along in "apostolic poverty" with less than $50,000 (250,000 francs) income per annum. Many were far happier. The Cardinal-Bishop of Strasbourg enjoyed $300,000 per year. At his palace at Saverne he could entertain two hundred guests at once. One hundred and eighty fine horses champed in his stables. The greater abbots were sometimes more lucky than the poorer bishops. The Abbot of Clairvaux displayed his monastic indigence by taking an income of $190,000 per year. Very few members of this "higher clergy" were not of noble birth. It was almost impossible for a base-born monk or priest – whatever his learning, practical abilities, or devout piety – to cross the magic line which admitted him to the great dignities of the Church.
Under this higher clergy were at least 60,000 poor curés and "vicars," recruited from the Third Estate. Often, indeed, the nominal occupancy of the parish would belong to some absent ecclesiastic of rank, who was perhaps busy pushing his fortunes at court. The regular parish duties would be discharged by some humble assistant who received a mere fraction of the income wrung out of the neglected tithe-payers. The legal pay of these parish priests was pitiful – $350 (1750 francs) for the curés, $175 (875 francs) for the still less exalted vicars. Even these poor stipends were not always paid completely. The upper clergy mulcted them at every turn, and threw on them the greater share of the "free gifts" and other payments of the clergy to the King. Between the curé and the bishop there was therefore little love to be lost. When the Revolution came and the Church was to need the support of all its sons, not merely was the curé to be found refusing to sustain his old superiors in their privileges: it would be lucky if he were not egging on the peasants of his parish to some gross act of insurrection.
In this French Church there were many devout and pious souls in whom burned the spirit of true Christianity. But they were not in power. There were almost none of them among the higher clergy. Worldliness, irreligion, if not downright infidelity were the order of the day among the luxury-loving bishops and abbots who fluttered around the court, and who seemed to differ from the secular noblesse only by a variety in their gorgeous costumes and an inability to have legal wives. The Huguenots had been reduced to a persecuted minority, but it had never come home to the complacent French churchmen that while driving out the demon of heresy, their idle and utterly "secular" lives were giving room for the seven greater devils of open hostility to all forms of religion whatever. French Christianity to this day is paying the penalty for the utter lack of spirituality in its life during the eighteenth century. Louis XVI once feebly protested, when asked to name a certain candidate as bishop, that "He thought a bishop should really believe in God!" And when the bishops as a body were urging a revival of the anti-Huguenot laws, and a well-informed Paris ecclesiastic was asked, "did they really believe the doctrines they were insisting on?" he promptly replied, "There may be four or five [out of one hundred and thirty-one]."
Such a Church, wealthy, socially divided, and deliberately ignoring its divine mission, was to prove veritable dry tinder for the flame of Revolution once the latter was started in France.
The noblesse were less hypocritical, but not less vulnerable than the high churchmen. They were, in the first place, subdivided into the two great fractions of the "noblesse of the sword" and the "noblesse of the robe."
The noblesse were all of them exempt from the ignoble taille, the chief direct tax. As already seen, they were partially exempt from the other direct taxes. Also, although they had lost all their political power as feudal lords, they had kept the right to make certain levies upon the peasants upon their former dominions: thus they could hold the peasantry to tolls for the use of bridges and roads which the lords were supposed once to have constructed for the benefit of the community; and for the privilege of using the local grist-mill, which at one time every lord had built to grind his peasants' meal. They had frequently the "right of the dove-cote" – to keep swarms of pigeons – which the peasants could not shoot however much they devoured the crops, and the "hunting right" – that is, of following the fox, with hounds and horses, over a wide range of country to the infinite ruin of the standing grain. All of the order had thus certain general rights; but above the run of the "nobles of the sword" was the "high noblesse," numbering not over one thousand persons who were far more honored.
The "high noblesse" were the descendants of the once mighty feudal lords who had measured strength with the King. Since Louis XIV's time they had lived almost exclusively at the court, "in ruinous luxury and idleness." A few bearers of great names lived, indeed, in their ancestral châteaux and tried to take honest care of their great landed properties – but they were very few. Only when poverty-stricken or under royal displeasure would a great nobleman, as a rule, quit Versailles. They were the companions of the King and had to live on a corresponding scale. Many of them were accordingly deep in debt, even if their master awarded gifts and steady pensions. We hear of a Prince of the Blood who had a nominal fortune of $28,000,000, but who actually owed more than half of this. One could therefore prosper only by constant intrigues for royal favor. The King's bounty would rescue the mortgaged domains! The higher noblesse, therefore, stood as a rule for the perpetuation of all the old abuses in the government.
This upper nobility was none too well liked by the less fortunate lower nobility, not to mention the bourgeoisie and the peasants. The insatiable demands for money by life at Versailles made the great lords merciless in enforcing payment for the rents, feudal dues, etc., on the country estates which they seldom visited, and if they "farmed out" their rights to speculators, they, of course, became still more unpopular. There were, indeed, some great nobles who held very enlightened views, patronized the "philosophers," and assented to proposals for "a new order." The Marquis of Lafayette belonged to the gilded circle itself. Nevertheless as a class the great noblesse were among the most vulnerable defenders of the Old Régime.
Under them, were about 100,000 "noblesse of the province." These were country gentlemen, often with meager incomes down to $600 to $800 per year. They had large families, and since in France every son and daughter of a lord was "noble" also (and the younger did not become a mere commoner as in England), the task of providing for them so that they could live without vulgar trade was often a sore problem for their parents. In some regions, especially in the West of France, these lesser nobles treated their peasants well, and tried to improve the condition of the countryside. They were therefore fairly popular. Elsewhere they were merely grasping, discontented lords of the manor, anxious to sweep in enough money to be able to depart and push their fortunes at Versailles – hated by the peasants and deserving the hatred. In the main, however, being in closer touch with the lower classes, they were as a body less outrageous landlords than the great noblesse, and more open to liberal suggestions. Between the great noblesse and this "noblesse of the province" there was all the jealousy between rich and poor cousins. When the crash came, the dukes and marquises were to look in vain for real aid to most of the country barons and "sires"; although the latter were, as a class, profoundly loyal to the Church and to the person of the King.
Besides these two great sections of the "noblesse of the sword" there stood the "noblesse of the gown." They reckoned about 40,000. They were looked down upon by their nominal equals, because many of them had struggled up from the bourgeoisie and in almost every case they had owed their status originally to wealth and not to ancestry. They were men who themselves (or their forbears) had won the various official posts which carried with them "nobility" – membership in the King's councils, "presidentships" in the law courts, and other governmental positions – positions which (as seen) were often hereditary. Besides, a very rich and successful bourgeois could often invoke enough influence at Versailles to get some kind of a patent of nobility. Many of these "nobles of the robe" were arrogant, self-seeking, and grossly incompetent in the public offices to which they clung: as a class, however, they were far more enlightened than the old-line nobility, more willing to dabble with "philosophy" and to praise the daring of Voltaire and the violent theories of Rousseau. When it came to actually surrendering some of their beloved privileges, however, these nobles of the courts and "parlements" were hardly less obstinate and pigheaded than were the princes and dukes who snubbed them. The French reformers in the end were to owe them very little.
To sum up the noblesse, it should be said that a French nobleman of the eighteenth century was likely to be a man of charming social manners to his equals, much personal intelligence, chronically in debt, extremely lax in personal morality, though with a high sense of "honor" in such matters as cheating at cards. He had, indeed, a keen contempt for physical danger whether on the battle-field, or, in days to come, before the guillotine. But taken as a class, from him was to come not one constructive idea for the salvation of France, and very little willingness to sacrifice his privileges for the general public weal. He was the ornament of his royal master's court, but a great nation was not to be saved by faultless bows and delicate compliments to high-born ladies. The noblesse did little else beyond these to justify its existence, and it shared the speedy ruin which was to sweep down upon enfeebled King and degenerate Church.
The bulk of the nation was comprised in the "Third Estate." This great mass of people was, of course, split up into very distinct groups. We may at once block out the bourgeoisie, the artisan class and the peasants. Each group had its peculiar problems and grievances.
The bourgeois had certainly risen and enriched themselves in the eighteenth century. Despite the misgovernment and disastrous wars of Louis XV, commerce and trade had often prospered, because of the great natural ability of French merchants. The gain had all been to the bourgeoisie. The King had come to depend on the great capitalists to "farm" his revenues and to advance huge loans when the revenues were insufficient. Without them he would have been helpless, and they had to be paid – indirectly at least – by honors and exemptions despite the grumbling of the old-line nobility. The rich, intelligent bourgeois, however, detested the existing system by which they were still subjected to the taille, and to many unfair laws, and also were still treated with social frigidity by the noblesse. They constantly dreaded lest the royal finances fall into complete bankruptcy to their own direct ruin. They were, therefore, cheerful advocates of elaborate political reforms.
These rich folk were likewise the very best pupils of the new "philosophers." Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, and the "economists" were nowhere read so eagerly as in the parlors of great bankers and merchants. The new doctrine of "equality" was also never more welcome than with persons who had the wealth, breeding, and ideas of true ladies and gentlemen, but who would be snubbed, set off at a "second table," or treated with deliberate rudeness by a bankrupt and immoral count.
Such great bourgeois, with their high claims to consideration, of course, tapered down into the "middle" and "lower middle" classes (to use an English expression) of worthy tradesmen, shopkeepers, and small manufacturers – good folk with just social pretensions enough to expect to be called "Monsieur" and "Madame" – till one reached the regular artisan class in the towns. Outside of Paris there were few sizable cities in France, and the rural element still formed the great bulk of the population; however, the artisans reckoned say 2,500,000, about one tenth the whole French nation. They were grouped in guilds and trade corporations of the mediæval style, institutions which had long outlived their usefulness. It was highly difficult for any but the son, or son-in-law of a member – for example, of the wig-makers' guild – to be admitted as an authorized wig-maker in a given city; and the law gave a monopoly of the craft to the guild members. They in turn were strictly prohibited from engaging in anything but a very narrow line of trade. For the "ladies' shoemakers" of Paris to have ventured to make and sell children's or men's shoes would have occasioned instant outcry and a ruinous lawsuit. Enlightened men recognized how numbing, how ruinous to the true development of industry, this régime was, which stifled competition and all kinds of initiative, but to abolish the system seemed impossible. Turgot, the great finance minister of Louis XVI, had attempted to abolish the guilds, and the turmoil evoked ruined his schemes and drove him from office, although he declared he was fighting "for the first and the most undeniable of all rights – the right to work!"
The industrial class, therefore, in France was under sore handicaps and added its own problems to the general problems of the nation.
But we come at length to the real backbone of the French people. Nearly nine tenths of the population, over 21,000,000, lived by agriculture. About a million of these were still legally serfs, but the bulk were reckoned "free." The great ambition of a French peasant was to possess unencumbered land; but only about 500,000 had reached the happy state of actual ownership. Some of the rest were "colons" engaged on the great estates by the year, in return for clothes, food, lodging, and a very small wage; some "day-workers" toiling at a pittance of sometimes only twenty-five cents per day; some metayers working an estate assigned them by the great owner on shares, but sharing also the taxes, which were likely to be enormous. The remainder were likely to possess little farms which, indeed, they called their own, but which paid to the local seig- neur a perpetual rent, extremely heavy, in addition to the numerous, "feudal dues." These were the unlucky cens payers – among the most unhappy of all the peasants. As stated, the real freeholders, self-respecting farmers subject only to the ordinary taxation, were in a great minority.
According to Cardinal Richelieu the peasant was "the mule of the State!" This had been true in 1630. It remained pitifully true in 1789. Every kind of public burden was shifted upon his much-enduring back. Even the bourgeoisie and the artisans could usually throw off the brunt of severe taxes by increasing the price of their wares. The peasant was helpless. He had to pay the King, as Turgot reckoned, more than fifty-five per cent of his receipts. He had to pay his "tithe" to the curé, or more exactly to the Church tax-gatherer, who would probably be the agent of the distant and luxury-loving bishop. He had to pay all the aforementioned "seigneurial dues" – the "banality" (special tax) – of the mill, the olive press, etc., and to pay these even when no real service was rendered; for example, when the mill was out of order or non-existent. He had, of course, also to pay the salt tax, and many indirect taxes on staple commodities. All in all, responsible students have estimated that eighty per cent of the whole income of the average peasant was swept away by King, priest, or seigneur. No wonder there were misery and bitterness throughout the land. The least misfortune – bad crops, sickness, or even lack of extreme thrift – meant instant ruin for a peasant family. It would have no savings, no protection. It is a witness to the plodding conservatism and inherently law-abiding qualities of the peasantry that as a rule they had suffered for generations in silence. They were, of course, in most cases deplorably ignorant. There was no free school system. In many poverty-stricken villages, the curé might be the only literate inhabitant. In a dumb, ignorant way the peas- ants might obey the outward teachings of religion, and honor the name of the King; but the sense of misery, injustice, and oppression was penetrating deep into their souls.
In 1789 conditions were peculiarly ready to produce an explosion among the French lower classes. The harvest of 1788 had been very poor. The winter of 1788 – 89 was unusually severe. The rivers froze. The cities had never seen so much ice. "The peasants," wrote the Archbishop of Paris, "are reduced to the last extremities of poverty." Sturdy beggars, tramps, and absolute robbers multiplied on all the roads. The population of Paris was then about 700,000; of these 120,000 were reckoned as being in direct want. Of course, much of this misery could never be abolished by merely enacting statutes, but only by a careful process of uplift and reform; yet naturally, when the peasants were summoned to tell their desires and griefs to the States General in 1789, the cry was very great. "If you could see the poor cabins we inhabit," wrote the peasants of Champagne, in one of their bills of complaint (cahiers), "the wretched food we eat, you would be touched – that would tell better than our words, which we cannot make more, and which we ought to make fewer."
The peasants had no fine political theories: they wanted directly two things: abolition of the feudal dues and a great lightening of taxes. Behind these lay an intense desire to get direct control of more land, especially the seigneur's land and the bishop's land. The moment the opportunity was given, they were ready to strike.
The above is a very imperfect picture of some of the complex woes of the Old Régime in France. Obviously here was an enormous amount of gunpowder, bound to shake the world when once the match was applied. And yet the imminent danger was recognized by few or none. It was generally believed that there would be reforms, yes – but by very gentle and painless processes. "With no regret for the past," wrote a French nobleman, after the stunning event, "and no apprehensions for the future, we danced gayly along a carpet of flowers stretched over an abyss."
And so Clergy, Noblesse, and Third Estate came to 1789.