“At the approach of summer their employments are multiplied every day by new fatigues. All the ballast, which is composed of little stones about the size of pigeon’s eggs, is taken out and handed up from the hold in little wicker baskets from one to the other, till they are heaped upon the quay opposite the galley. Here two men are to pump water upon them till they become as clean as possible; and when dry they are again replaced. This, and cleaning the vessel, takes up seven or eight days’ hard labor. Then the galley must be put into proper order before it puts to sea. First, necessary precautions must be taken with respect to the cordage that it be strong and supple; and what new cordage may be necessary is to be supplied by the slaves by passing it round the galley. This takes up some days to effect. Next the sails are to be visited, and if new ones are necessary, the comite cuts them out and the slaves sew them. They must also make new tents, mend the old in like manner, prepare the officers’ beds, and everything else, which it would be impossible to particularise. This bustle continues till the beginning of April, when the Court sends orders for putting to sea.
“Our armament begins by careening the galleys. This is done by turning one galley upon another so that its keel is quite out of the water. The whole keel is then rubbed with rendered tallow. This is perhaps one of the most fatiguing parts of a slave’s employments. After this the galley is fitted up with her masts and rigging and supplied with artillery and ammunition. All this is performed by the slaves, who are sometimes so fatigued that the commander is obliged to wait in port a few days till the crew have time to refresh themselves.”
Galleys as warships fell into disuse about the time that our Protestant prisoners were released. The improvement in the sailing qualities of ships and the manifest advantages enjoyed by those skilfully handled, as were the English, gradually brought about the abandonment of the oar as a motive power, and the galleys are only remembered now as a glaring instance of the cruelties practised by rulers upon helpless creatures subjected to their tender mercies.
[CHAPTER X]
THE DAWN OF REVOLUTION
State of France—Bad harvests—Universal famine—Chronic disturbances—Crime prevalent—Cartouche—His organized gang—His capture, sentence and execution—Pamphleteers and libelists in the Bastile—Lenglet-Dufresnoy—Roy—Voltaire—His first consignment to the Bastile—His release and departure for London—Cellamare-Alberoni conspiracy—Mlle. De Launay, afterwards Madame de Staal—Remarkable escapes—Latude and Allégre.
Dark clouds hovered over France in the latter years of the reign of Louis XIV: an empty exchequer drained by the cost of a protracted and disastrous war; the exodus of many thousands of the most industrious producers of wealth, flying from religious intolerance; a succession of bad harvests, causing universal famine and chronic disturbance. The people rose against the new edicts increasing taxes upon salt, upon tobacco and on stamped paper, and were repressed with harshness, shot down, thrown into prison or hanged. The genuine distress in the country was terrible. Thousands of deaths from starvation occurred. Hordes of wretched creatures wandered like wild beasts through the forest of Orleans. A Jesuit priest wrote from Onzain that he preached to four or five skeletons, who barely existed on raw thistles, snails and the putrid remains of dead animals. In the Vendomois, the heather was made into bread with an intermixture of sawdust, and soup was made with roots and the sap of trees. Touraine, once the very garden of France, had become a wilderness. The hungry fought for a morsel of horse flesh, torn from some wretched beast which had died a natural death. Four-fifths of the inhabitants of the villages had become public beggars. In one village of four hundred houses, the population had been reduced to three persons.
Never in the history of France had robberies been so numerous or so varied in character as during this period. Paris was filled with the worst criminals and desperadoes. The provinces were overrun with them. The whole country was ravaged and terrorised. Prominent among this dangerous fraternity, whose name was legion, is one name, that of Cartouche, the most noted evil doer of his or indeed any time. Others might have excelled him in originality, intelligence and daring. That which gave him especial distinction was his power of organisation, his nice choice of associates and the far-reaching extent of his nefarious plans. The devoted and obedient band he directed was recruited from all sources, and included numbers of outwardly respectable persons even drawn from the police and the French guards. He had agents at his disposal for all branches of his business; he had spies, his active assistants to deal the blows, his receivers, his locksmiths, his publicans with ready shelter and asylums of retreat. The forces controlled by Cartouche were extraordinarily numerous, and the total was said to exceed a couple of thousand persons of both sexes.