The Parliament of Brittany, in defence of its jurisdictional privileges, refused to enregister the decree which had for object the foundation of a company trading with the Indies, “for the general trade between the West and the East,” a grand idea of Richelieu’s, the seat of which was to be in the roads of Morbihan; the company, already formed, was disheartened, thanks to the delays caused by the Parliament, and the enterprise failed. The Parliament of Grenoble, fearing a dearth of corn in Dauphiny, quashed the treaties of supply for the army of Italy, at the time of the second expedition to Mantua; it went so far as to have the dealers’ granaries thrown open, and the superintendent of finance, D’Emery, was obliged to come to terms with the deputies of Dauphiny, “in order that they of the Parliament of Grenoble, who said they had no interests but those of the province, might have no reason to prevent for the future the transport of corn,” says Richelieu himself in his Memoires.
The Parliament of Rouen had always passed for one of the most recalcitrant. The province of Normandy was rich, and, consequently, overwhelmed with imposts; and several times the Parliament refused to enregister financial edicts which still further aggravated the distress of the people. In 1637 the king threatened to go in person to Rouen and bring the Parliament to submission, whereat it took fright and enregistered decrees for twenty-two millions. It was, no doubt, this augmentation of imposts that brought about the revolt of the Nu-pieds (Barefoots) in 1639. Before now, in 1624 and in 1637, in Perigord and Rouergue, two popular risings of the same sort, under the name of Croquants (Paupers), had disquieted the authorities, and the governor of the province had found some trouble in putting them down. The Nu-pieds were more numerous and more violent still; from Rouen to Avranches all the country was a-blaze. At Coutances and at Vire, several monopoliers and gabeleurs, as the fiscal officers were called, were massacred; a great number of houses were burned, and most of the receiving-offices were pulled down or pillaged. Everywhere the army of suffering (armee de souffrance), the name given by the revolters to themselves, made, appeal to violent passions; popular rhymes were circulated from hand to hand, in the name of General Nu-pieds (Barefoot), an imaginary personage whom nobody ever saw. Some of these verses are fair enough.
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TO NORMANDY. “Dear land of mine, thou canst no more What boots it to have served so well? For see! thy faithful service bore This bitter fruit—the cursed gabelle. Is that the guerdon earned by those Who succored France against her foes, Who saved her kings, upheld her crown, And raised the lilies trodden down, In spite of all the foe could do, In spite of Spain and England too? “Recall thy generous blood, and show That all posterity may know— Duke William’s breed still lives at need: Show that thou hast a heavier hand Than erst came forth from Northern land; A hand so strong, a heart so high, These tyrants all shall beaten cry, ‘From Normans and the Norman race Deliver us, O God of grace!’” |
The tumult was more violent at Rouen than anywhere else, and the Parliament energetically resisted the mob. It had sent two counsellors as a deputation to Paris to inform the king about the state of affairs. “You may signify to the gentlemen of the Parliament of Rouen,” said Chancellor Seguier, in answer to the delegates, “that I thank them for the trouble they have taken on this occasion; I will let the king know how they have behaved in this affair. I beg them to go on as they have begun. I know that the Parliament did very good service there.”
In fact, several counsellors, on foot in the street and in the very midst of the revolters, had, at the peril of their lives, defended Le Tellier de Tourneville, receiver-general of gabels, and his officers, whilst the whole Parliament, in their robes, with the premier president at their head, perambulated Rouen, amidst the angry mob, repairing at once to the points most threatened, insomuch that the presidents and counsellors were “in great danger and fear for their skins.” [Histoire du Parlement de Normandy, by M. Floquet, t. iv.] It was this terror, born of tumults and the sight of an infuriated populace, which, at a later period, retarded the Parliament in dealing out justice, and brought down upon it the wrath of the king and of the cardinal.
Meanwhile the insurrection was gaining ground, and the local authorities were powerless to repress it. There was hesitation at the king’s council in choosing between Marshal Rantzau and M. de Gassion to command the forces ordered to march into Normandy. “That country yields no wine,” said the king “that will not do for Rantzau, or be good quarters for him.” And they sent Colonel Gession, not so heavy a drinker as Rantzau, a good soldier and an inflexible character. First at Caen, then at Avranches, where there was fighting to be done, at Coutances and at Elbeuf, Gassion’s soldiery everywhere left the country behind them in subjection, in ruin, and in despair. They entered Rouen on the 31st of December, 1639, and on the 2d of January, 1640, the chancellor himself arrived to do justice on the rebels heaped up in the prisons, whom the Parliament dared not bring up for judgment. “I come to Rouen,” he said, on entering the town, “not to deliberate, but to declare and execute the matters on which my mind is made up.” And he forbade all intervention on the part of the archbishop, Francis de Harlay, who was disposed, in accordance with his office of love as well as the parliamentary name he bore, to implore pity for the culprits, and to excuse the backward judges. The chancellor did not give himself the trouble to draw up sentences. “The decree is at the tip of my staff,” replied Picot, captain of his guards, when he was asked to show his orders. The executions were numerous in Higher and Lower Normandy, and the Parliament received the wages of its tardiness. All the members of the body, even the most aged and infirm, were obliged to leave Rouen. A commission of fifteen councillors of the Parliament of Paris came to replace provisionally the interdicted Parliament of Normandy; and, when the magistrates were empowered at last to resume their sitting, it was only a six months’ term: that is, the Parliament henceforth found itself divided into two fragments, perfect strangers one to the other, which were to sit alternately for six months. “A veritable thunderbolt for that sovereign court, for by the six months’ term,” says M. Floquet, “there was no longer any Parliament, properly speaking, but two phantoms of Parliament, making war on each other, whilst the government had the field open to carve and cut without control.”
“All obedience is now from fear,” wrote Grotius to Oxenstiern, chancellor of Sweden; “the idea is to exorcise and annihilate hatred by means of terror.” “This year,” wrote an inhabitant of Rouen, “there have been no New Year’s presents [etrennes], no singing of ‘the king’s drinking-song [le roi boit], in any house. Little children will be able to tell tales of it when they have attained to man’s estate; for never, these fifty years past, so far as I can learn, has it been so.” [Journal de l’Abbe de la Rue.] The heaviest imposts weighed upon the whole province, which thus expiated the crime of an insignificant portion of its inhabitants. “The king shall not lose the value of this handkerchief that I hold,” said the superintendent Bullion, on arriving at Rouen. And he kept his word: Rouen alone had to pay more than three millions. The province and its Parliament were henceforth reduced to submission.
It was not only the Parliaments that resisted the efforts of Cardinal Richelieu to concentrate all the power of the government in the hands of the king. From the time that the sovereigns had given up convoking the states-general, the states-provincial had alone preserved the right of bringing to the foot of the throne the plaints and petitions of subjects. Unhappily few provinces enjoyed this privilege; Languedoc, Brittany, Burgundy, Provence, Dauphiny, and the countship of Pau alone were states-districts, that is to say, allowed to tax themselves independently and govern themselves to a certain extent. Normandy, though an elections-district, and, as such, subject to the royal agents in respect of finance, had states which continued to meet even in 1666. The states-provincial were always convoked by the king, who fixed the place and duration of assembly.