The infinite number of police reports from the constables, which are still to be found amongst the records of any intendancy, all relating to the pursuit of refractory militia-men or deserters, suffice to prove that this force was not raised without obstacles. It seems, indeed, that no public burden was more insupportable to the peasantry than this: to evade it they frequently fled into the woods, where they were pursued by the armed authorities. This is the more singular, when we see the facility with which the conscription works in France in the present times.
This extreme repugnance of the peasantry of France before the Revolution to the militia was attributable less to the principle of the law than to the manner in which the law was executed; more especially from the long period of uncertainty, during which it threatened those liable to be drawn (they could be taken until forty years of age, unless they were married)—from the arbitrary power of revision, which rendered the advantage of a lucky number almost useless—from the prohibition to hire a substitute—from disgust at a hard and perilous profession, in which all hope of advancement was forbidden; but, above all, from the feeling that this oppressive burden rested on themselves alone, and on the most wretched amongst themselves, the ignominy of this condition rendering its hardships more intolerable.
I have had means of referring to many of the returns of the draft for the militia, as it was made in 1769 in a large number of parishes. In all these returns there are some exemptions: this man is a gentleman’s servant; that, the gamekeeper of an abbey; a third is only the valet of a man of inferior birth, but who, at least, ‘lives like a nobleman.’ Wealth alone afforded an exemption; when a farmer annually figured amongst those who paid the largest sum in taxes, his sons were dispensed from the militia; that was called encouragement of agriculture. Even the economists, who, in all other points, were great partisans of social equality, were not shocked by this privilege; they only suggested that it should be extended, or, in other words, that the burden of the poorest and most friendless of the peasants should become more severe. ‘The low pay of the soldier,’ said one of these writers, ‘the manner in which he is lodged, dressed, and fed, and his entire state of dependence, would render it too cruel to take any but a man of the lowest orders.’
Down to the close of the reign of Louis XIV. the high roads were not repaired, or were repaired at the cost of those who used them, namely, the State and the adjacent landowners. But about that time the roads began to be repaired by forced labour only, that is to say, exclusively at the expense of the peasantry.[63] This expedient for making roads without paying for them was thought so ingenious, that in 1737 a circular of the Comptroller-General Orry established it throughout France. The Intendants were armed with the right of imprisoning the refractory at pleasure, or of sending constables after them.[64]
From that time, whenever trade augmented, so that more roads were wanted or desired, the corvée or forced labour extended to new lines, and had more work to do. It appears from the Report made in 1779 to the Provincial Assembly of Berri, that the works executed by forced labour in that poor province were estimated in one year at 700,000 livres. In 1787 they were computed at about the same sum in Lower Normandy. Nothing can better demonstrate the melancholy fate of the rural population; the progress of society, which enriched all the other classes, drove them to despair, and civilisation itself turned against that class alone.
I find about the same time, in the correspondence of the Intendants, that leave was to be refused to the peasants to do their forced labour on the private roads of their own villages, since this labour was to be reserved to the great high roads only, or, as they were then called, ‘the King’s highway.’ The strange notion that the cost of the roads was to be defrayed by the poorest persons, and by those who were the least likely to travel by them, though of recent date, took such root in the minds of those who were to profit by it, that they soon imagined that the thing could not be done differently.[65] In 1766 an attempt was made to commute this forced labour into a local rate, but the same inequality survived, and affected this new species of tax.
Though originally a seignorial right, the system of forced labour, by becoming a royal right, was gradually extended to almost all public works. In 1719 I find it was employed to build barracks. ‘Parishes are to send their best workmen,’ said the Ordinance, ‘and all other works are to give way to this.’ The same forced service was used to escort convicts to the galleys and beggars to the workhouse;[66] it had to cart the baggage of troops as often as they changed their quarters, a burden which was very onerous at a time when each regiment carried heavy baggage after it. Many carts and oxen had to be collected for the purpose.[67] This sort of obligation, which signified little at its origin, became one of the most burdensome when standing armies grew more numerous. Sometimes the Government contractors loudly demanded the assistance of forced labour to convey timber from the forests to the naval arsenals. These peasants commonly received certain wages, but they were arbitrarily fixed and low.[68] The burden of an impost so ill-assessed sometimes became so heavy as to excite the uneasiness of the receivers of the taille. ‘The outlay required of the peasants on the roads,’ said one of these officers in 1751, ‘is such, that they will soon be quite unable to pay the taille.’
Could all these new oppressions have been established if there had been in the vicinity of these peasants any men of wealth and education, disposed and able, if not to defend them, at least to intercede for them, with that common master who already held in his grasp the fortunes of the poor and of the rich?
I have read a letter of a great landowner, writing in 1774 to the Intendant of his province, to induce him to open a road. This road, he said, would cause the prosperity of the village, and for several reasons; he then went on to recommend the establishment of a fair, which would double, he thought, the price of produce. With excellent motives, he added that with the assistance of a small contribution a school might be established, which would furnish the King with more industrious subjects. It was the first time that these necessary ameliorations had occurred to him; he had only thought of them in the preceding two years, which he had been compelled by a lettre de cachet to spend in his own house. ‘My exile for the last two years in my estates,’ he candidly observed, ‘has convinced me of the extreme utility of these things.’