from ÒExploring the French revolutionÓ
Source: http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/chap1a.html
Center for History and New
Media (George Mason University) and American Social History Project (City
University of New York),
Poverty
Observed: Journal of a Country Priest
Village
priests served as community leaders in a variety of respects, including keeping
a register of births, marriages, and deaths. One such curate, the abbŽ
Lefeuvre, also included in his register impressions of life during the severe
winter of 1709, which give a sense of the difficult and fragile lives of the
poor in rural towns in the eighteenth century.
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The cold began
to be felt at the end of October 1708, on the evening of the Feast of the
Apostles Saint Simon and Jude, 28 October 1708. The wind shifted to the north,
the rain that had been falling all day long turned into ice and snow, and one
saw therein a warning of what was to happen later on because the snow, having
frozen in the trees, weighed on them so heavily that branches as heavy as men
were seen to succumb under the burden and fall to the ground, and I am an
eyewitness that most of the oak trees of the parish were badly damaged.
Nothing
withstood this cold; many men died of it, but to tell the truth not in the
immediate vicinity; almost no birds remained; partridge were taken by hand or
were found dead, together with other game, either as a result of the cold or
because the ground was always covered with snow. But if only that had been the
greatest evil! Wheat died and vines dried up; none of the large trees, neither
the oaks nor the fruit trees, could withstand it; and the chestnut and walnut
trees were especially ill treated. When one had confidence to venture out, one
could hear the oaks breaking apart, and I have seen some open to a width of
three fingers from top to bottom.
Finally, after
three weeks of this cold, which increased continually, the thaw came. Its sad
effects were not yet known. Work was begun on the vines in the usual manner,
but this soon became impossible because the cold began again at the start of
Lent toward the middle of February and lasted fifteen days in the same violent
manner. The sun, however, was stronger and made the cold more bearable to men
during the day, but much more damaging to what remained of the produce of the
earth, which could not resist the terrible nights that caused almost everything
to die, so that it was scarcely possible to gather enough to provide for next
year's seed.
Wheat was soon
at 28 livres the
septier, and wine at 100 francs the pipe. It was hardly possible even for those who knew how, to
find money, when there wasn't any. The number of poor people increased
incredibly because the continuing rains of the previous year, 1708, had been
very bad and had damaged the grain crops. . . . The poor of the countryside
were destitute of any aid, no longer possessing a cabbage or a leek in their
gardens, so they crowded into the cities to take part in the liberalities of
the inhabitants, which were very considerable, at least in NantesÑfor I cannot
speak of other cities.
But they were
soon begrudged the only help they had. They were forced, by the threat of great
penalties, to return to their homes, and there soon appeared the most beautiful
edicts in the world to help them, which, however, served only to increase their
misfortune. Each parish was supposed to feed its own poor; but for this it
would have been necessary for the poor to feed the poor. So these lovely edicts
were without effect, and the only way to help the poor, by decreasing the taxes
with which they were burdened, was never put into practice. On the contrary,
they were increased.
Source: Jeffry
Kaplow, ed., France on the Eve of Revolution: A Book of Readings (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1971),
9Ð12. This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Poverty
in Auvergne
The
difficulty of life in rural regions led some to leave home and seek a better
life elsewhere, particularly in the growing cities. Such migration worried some
observers, who feared villages would be emptied and no one would be left to
work the land. In the excerpt below, a local government official in the Auvergne
region comments on the causes and effects of emigration.
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This land
produces grain, but everything else is lacking. And even the sale of this
produce is uncertain due to the variability of the harvest, which is reduced
considerably by too much drought or too much rain. The sale of young cattle,
which the inhabitants pursue with all possible industriousness, is the only
sure source of income. And as it is insufficient to pay the taxes, they
supplement it by annual emigration. They go to work on a part of the forests
throughout France, to do road work, or to work in the carrying trade. After
that, they go to do the harvest work in Languedoc and Burgundy and then return
home for their own harvest, and to replant the land that their wives have
cultivated during the good season.
Thus it is that
with the greatest sobriety and the most arduous work these men bring back each
year the money necessary to pay the taxes of their district and even of the
valley, which they do to exchange part of the money earned outside the province
for wine, hemp, iron, and other goods that they don't have at home and which
the valley furnishes them either from its soil or through its trade.
Those who have
the most intelligence or are accustomed to the work, hire others and make a
profit from their labor. These entrepreneurs have some money left over each
year after they have paid their taxes.
Because they
have little property, they buy up one after another the fields cultivated by
their families or others that are within their reach.
This picture
shows to what extent emigration is necessary in all these districts and how
villages pay more in taxes than their soil can produce. It is astonishing that
this emigration is not total, and that need and the sight of misery does not
destroy among the people the feeling that ties men to the place of their birth.
For a long time
the inhabitants of the Cantal region have been engaged in the boilermaker's
trade. The boiler factory established in Aurillac favors them in this kind of
industry, which takes them even beyond the frontiers of the kingdom. The
greatest number return each year and bring to the tax collectors and to their
families the money they have earned. At last, repelled by these long trips,
accustomed to an easier life, and disgusted with agriculture, they take their
whole family and move to the place where they have spent their winters, either
abandoning their land or giving it away at the lowest price.
The Limagne is
the place where indigence is greatest. The inhabitants do not even have the
cruel resource of seeking a living for their families elsewhere for part of the
year, because the vines demand constant care. They cannot neglect them for one
year without harming the harvests of following years. Some travelers who have
crossed both the mountains and the valley have been struck by the external
differences they see. In the mountains, especially to the west and south of the
province, men are big and strong, their bearing and their confident air depict
a well-developed character and seem to indicate that they know that there is no
real difference between one man and another. In the Limagne, on the contrary,
they are small, ugly, bent and present only the image of men ground down by
slavery, threatened by the least illness that may happen to them to be forced
to have recourse to beggary, pursued without respite by need. They seem even to
be ignorant of their superiority over the animals. The observer cannot recover
from his astonishment when he sees all the signs of poverty surrounding him in
a country that is so pleasing to the eye on account of its varied forms and of
the wealth that nature has lavished there. . . . He sees people live on bread
made of rye mixed with barley whose bran has not even been removed. It is
without any doubt the worst bread eaten in France. . . . Never does the peasant
go to the butcher shop, and he eats a few pieces of salted pork four or five
times a year only. He sells good grain and green beans he has raised in order
to live on black beans, which are used elsewhere only as fodder for livestock.
He sells his
wine and throws water on the residue of his vat to make his best drink. If
nature has given him several daughters, he employs them to gather in grass in
the grain fields and limits his ambition to having a cow so as to cut down his
work by coupling it to the plow together with his neighbor's cow. The butter he
gets from it is sold and his soup and his vegetables are seasoned only with the
same walnut oil that feeds his lamp at night.
Source: Jeffry
Kaplow, ed., France on the Eve of Revolution: A Book of Readings (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1971),
25Ð32. This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The
SaintÐMarcel Neighborhood
The
writer LouisÐSŽbastien Mercier recorded in his Portrait of Paris detailed and witty
commentaries on many aspects of life among the common people. In this article
on the SaintÐMarcel neighborhood, he comments on the difficulties faced by
urban workers.
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For the houses
here, there is no other clock than the sun. The people are three centuries
behind in terms of skills and customs. Every private fight becomes public as
women, unhappy with their husbands, plead their cases in the peoples' court
[the street], rounding up all the neighbors to tell them her man's scandalous
confession. Every kind of discussion ends in a fist fight, but by evening they
have reconciled, even though one of them has had their face covered with
scratches.
There, a man
holes up in a garret, evades the police and the hundred eyes of their stool
pigeons, almost like a tiny insect escapes the most concentrated effort to find
him.
An entire family
occupies a single room with four bare walls, where straw mattresses have no
sheets and kitchen utensils are kept with the chamber pots. All together the
furniture is not worth twenty crowns and every three months, the inhabitants,
thrown out for owing back rent, must find another hole to live in. So they
wander, taking their miserable possessions from refuge to refuge. They own no
shoes, and only the sound of wooden clogs echo in the stairwells. Their naked
children sleep helter-skelter.
On Sunday, the people
from this area go to Vaugirard for its many cabarets, for men must try to
forget their troubles. There, men and women, dancing without shoes and swirling
without stop, raise so much dust that within an hour they can no longer even be
seen.
With a terrible,
confused din and a vile odor, everything keeps you far away from this horribly
crowded place. Here, the masses drink a wine as disagreeable as their
surroundings and engage in other suitable pleasures.
Source:
Louis-SŽbastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, vol. 1 (Amsterdam, 1783), 112Ð14.