The Eve of the French Revolution

by Edward J. Lowell

Artists, artisans, and journeymen, in their various degrees, formed classes of great importance, for Paris was famous for many sorts of manufactures, and especially for those which required good taste. But it was noticed that on account of the abridgment of the power of the trade-guilds, and the consequent rise of competition, French goods were losing in excellence, while they gained in cheapness; so that it was said that workmanship was becoming less thorough in Paris than in London.

The police of Paris was already remarkable for its efficiency. The inhabitants of the capital of France lived secure in their houses, or rode freely into the country, while those of London were in danger of being stopped by highwaymen on suburban roads, or robbed at night by housebreakers in town. From riots, also, the Parisians had long been singularly free, and for more than a century had seen none of importance, while London was terrified, and much property destroyed in 1780 by the Gordon riots. In spite of the forebodings of some few pessimists, people did not expect any great revolution, but rather social and economic reforms. It was believed that the powers of repression were too strong for the powers of insurrection. The crash came, at last, not through the failure of the ordinary police, but from demoralization at the centre of government and in the army. While Louis still reigned in peace at Versailles, the administration of Paris went on efficiently. Correspondence was maintained with the police of other cities. Criminals and suspected persons, when arrested, could be condemned by summary process. The Lieutenant General of Police had it in his discretion to punish without publicity. The more scandalous crimes were systematically hidden from the public; a process more favorable to morality than to civil liberty. For the criminal classes in Paris arbitrary imprisonment was the common fate, and disreputable men and women Were brought in by bands.[Footnote: Mercier, vi. 206. Monier, 396.]

The liability to arbitrary arrest affected the lives of but a small proportion of the citizens after all. To most Parisians it was far more important that the streets were safe by day and night; that fire-engines were provided, and Capuchin monks trained to use them, while soldiers hastened to the fire and would press all able-bodied men into the service of passing buckets; that small civil cases were promptly and justly disposed of.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 197, 210, ix. 220, xii. 162 (Jurisdiction consulaire).]

The increase of humane ideas which marked the age was beginning in the course of this reign to affect the hospitals and poor-houses as well as the prisons, and to diminish their horrors. At the Hotel Dieu, the greatest hospital in Paris, six patients were sometimes wedged into one filthy bed. Yet even, there, some improvement had taken place. And while Howard considered that hospital a disgrace to Paris, he found many other charitable foundations in the city which did it honor. Here as elsewhere there was no uniformity.[Footnote: Mercier, vii. 7, iii. 225. Howard, State of the Prisons, 176, 177. Babeau, La Ville, 435. Cognel, 88. A horrible description of the Hotel Dieu, written in 1788 by Tenon, a member of Academy of Sciences, is given in A. Franklin, L'Hygiène, 181.]

In the medical profession, the regular physicians held themselves far above the surgeons, many of whom had been barbers' apprentices; but it would appear that the science of surgery was better taught and was really in a more advanced state than that of medicine. More than eight hundred students attended the school of surgery. In medicine, inoculation was slowly making its way, but was resorted to only by the upper classes. Excessive bleeding and purgation were going out of fashion, but the poor still employed quacks, or swallowed the coarse drugs which the grocers sold cheaper than the regular apothecaries, or relied on the universal remedy of the lower classes in Paris, a cordial of black currants.[Footnote: It was called Cassis. Mercier, xii. 126, vii. 126.]

Near the Hotel Dieu was the asylum for foundlings, whither they were brought not only from Paris, but from distant towns, and whence they were sent out to be nursed in the country. They were brought to Paris done up tightly in their swaddling clothes, little crying bundles, packed three at a time into wadded boxes, carried on men's backs. The habit of dressing children loosely, recommended by Rousseau, had not yet reached the poor; as the habit of having babies nursed by their own mothers, which he had also striven to introduce, had been speedily abandoned by the rich. The mortality among the foundlings was great, for two hundred of them were sometimes kept in one ward during their stay at the asylum.[Footnote: Mercier, iii. 239, viii. 188. Cognel found the asylum very clean. Cognel, 87.]

Although some falling off in the ardor of religious practices was noticed as the Revolution drew near, the ceremonies of the church were still visible in all their splendor. On the feast of Corpus Christi a long procession passed through the streets, where doors and windows were hung with carpets and tapestry. The worsted pictures, it is true, were adapted rather to a decorative than to a pious purpose, and over-scrupulous persons might be shocked at seeing Europa on her bull, or Psyche admiring the sleeping Cupid, on the route of a religious procession. Such anomalies, however, could well be disregarded. Around the sacred Host were gathered the dignitaries of the state and the city in their robes of office, marshaled by the priests, who for that day seemed to command the town. In some cases, it is said, the great lords contented themselves with sending their liveried servants to represent them. Soldiers formed the escort. The crowd in the street fell on its knees as the procession passed. Flowers, incense, music, the faithful with their foreheads in the dust, all contributed to the picturesqueness of the scene. A week later the ceremony was repeated with almost equal pomp. On the Sunday following, there was another procession in the northern suburbs. Naked boys, leading lambs, represented Saint John the Baptist; Magdalens eight years old, walking by their nurses' side, wept over their sins; the pupils of the school of the Sacred Heart marched with downcast eyes. The Host was carried under a dais of which the cords were held by respected citizens, and was escorted by forty Swiss guards. A hundred and fifty censers swung incense on the air. The diplomatic corps watched the procession from the balcony of the Venetian ambassador, even the Protestants bowing or kneeling with the rest. [Footnote: Mercier, iii. 78. Cognel, 101.]

From time to time, through the year, these great ceremonies were renewed, either on a regularly returning day, or as occasion might demand. On the 3d of July the Swiss of the rue aux Ours was publicly carried in procession. There was a legend that a Swiss Protestant soldier had once struck the statue of the Holy Virgin on the corner of this street with his sword, and that blood had flowed from the wounded image. Therefore, on the anniversary of the outrage, a wicker figure was carried about the town, bobbing at all the sacred images at the street corners, with a curious mixture of piety and fun. Originally it had been dressed like a Swiss, but the people of Switzerland, who were numerous and useful in Paris, remonstrated at a custom likely to bring them into contempt; and the grotesque giant was thereupon arrayed in a wig and a long coat, with a wooden dagger painted red in his hand. The grammarian Du Marsais once got into trouble on the occasion of this procession. He was walking in the street when one woman elbowed another in trying to get near the statue. "If you want to pray," said the woman who had been pushed, "go on your knees where you are; the Holy Virgin is everywhere." Du Marsais was so indiscreet as to interfere. Being a grammarian, he was probably of a disputatious turn of mind. "My good woman," said he, "you have spoken heresy. Only God is everywhere; not the Virgin." The woman turned on him and cried out: "See this old wretch, this Huguenot, this Calvinist, who says that the Holy Virgin is not everywhere!" Thereupon Du Marsais was attacked by the mob and forced to take refuge in a house, whence he was rescued by the guard, which kept him shut up for his own safety until after nightfall.[Footnote: Mercier, iv. 97. Fournel, 176. This procession was abolished by order of the police, June 27, 1789. Fournel, 177.]

For an occasional procession, we have one in October, 1785, when three hundred and thirteen prisoners, redeemed from slavery among the Algerines, were led for three days about the streets with great pomp by brothers of the orders of the Redemption. Each captive was conducted by two angels, to whom he was bound with red and blue ribbons, and the angels carried scrolls emblazoned with the arms of the orders. There was the usual display of banners and crosses, guards and policemen; there were bands of music and palm-branches. The long march required frequent refreshment, which was offered by the faithful, and it is said that many of the captives and some of the professionally religious persons indulged too freely. A drunken angel must have been a cheerful sight indeed. The object of this procession was to raise money to redeem more prisoners from slavery, for the Barbary pirates were still suffered by the European powers to plunder the commerce of the Mediterranean and to kidnap Christian sailors.[Footnote: Bachaumont, xxx. 24. Compare Lesage, i. 347 (Le diable boiteux, ch. xix). For a procession of persons delivered by charity from imprisonment for not paying their wet nurses, see Mercier, xii. 85.]

Nor was it in great festivals alone that the religious spirit of the people was manifested. On Sundays all shops were shut, and the common people heard at least the morning mass, although they were getting careless about vespers. Every spring for a fortnight about Easter, there was a great revival of religious observance, and churches and confessionals were crowded. But throughout the year, one humble kind of procession might be met in the streets of Paris. A poor priest, in a worn surplice, reverently carries the Host under an old dirty canopy. A beadle plods along in front, with an acolyte to ring the bell, at the sound of which the passers-by kneel in the streets and cabs and coaches are stopped. Louis XV. once met the "Good God," as the eucharistic wafer was piously called, and earned a short-lived popularity by going down on his silken knees in the mud. All persons may follow the viaticum into the chamber of the dying. The watch, if it meets the procession on its return, will escort it back to its church.[Footnote: Ordonnance de la police du Châtelet concernant l'observation des dimanches et fêtes, du 18 Novembre, 1782. Monin, 403.]