In vain would we seek for words describing better the horrible condition of the Common People, and the tremendous extent of the assumption of a superiority upon the part of the nobles, than in the foregoing picture so ably portrayed by Charles Dickens. Such a condition of the social life in France could produce but one result. The harvest was ripe for the sickle. The people had witnessed an illustration of the might of the Common People of America when opposed to the representatives of “caste” in the British army. That the storm should have burst that so long had been hovering over the heads of the French nobles is not a matter of surprise, in view of the fact that Dickens is historically correct in his picture of the oppressed condition of the poor in France. The only wonder to us Anglo-Saxons is that brave men, as the Frenchmen are, should have borne so long the cruel, heartless oppression of the rich nobility.
Duruy says: “The French Revolution was the establishment of a new order of society, founded on justice, not privileges. Such changes never take place without causing terrible suffering. It is the law of humanity that all new life shall be born in pain.”
When Louis XVI. ascended the throne, in 1774, revolution was in the air. The outward splendor of Versailles, as Carlyle intimates, was the rainbow above Niagara: beneath was destruction.
There was a general feeling that a crisis was at hand. The spirit of free inquiry aroused by the leading writers and thinkers was ominous. Government, religion, social institutions, were all burned in the crucible, and a new order of things was inevitable. The country was hopelessly deep in the mire of debt; the tax agents were brutal, and the peasants ground to the lowest depths of misery and suffering.
The power of the nobles over the peasants living on their estates was absolute. Large tracts of land were declared game-preserves, where wild boars and deer roamed at pleasure. To preserve the game with its flavor unimpaired, the starving peasants were not allowed to weed their little plots of ground. The nobility and clergy, who owned two-thirds of the land, were nearly exempt from taxation.
The peasant must grind his corn at the lord’s mill; bake his bread in the lord’s oven, and press his grapes at the lord’s wine-press, paying whatever the lord chose to charge. If the wife of the seigneur fell ill, the peasants must beat the neighboring marshes all night to prevent the frogs from croaking, and so disturbing the lady’s rest.
French agriculture had not advanced beyond the tenth century, and the plow in use was the same as that used before the Christian era. The picture of rural wretchedness is completed by the purchase and sale of 150,000 serfs with the land on which they were born.
Louis desired to redress the wrongs of his country, but did not know how. Ministers came and went in a continuous procession, Turgot, Necker, Colonne, Brienne, and Necker again, tried to solve the problem, and gave up in despair.