Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

France was not alone in her suffering; all Europe was in the same plight. The fifteenth century was a century of misery. In his “Public Alimentation under the Ancient Monarchy,” M. Charles Louandre remarks, with reason, that the impossibility of living, of bringing up a family, of paying taxes and dues, inspired a passion for discovery. There was a general competition as to who should undertake the most distant journeys, the most perilous enterprises. Every unknown land seemed to be an El Dorado. People whispered to one another in the evening, beside the hearth without a fire, of countries beyond the seas where the mountains were of pure gold, where the rivers were of milk, where the animals answered to the voice of man. A search was instituted for these enchanted islands, where there was neither hunger, nor poverty, nor oppression. Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Cortez, Pizarro, opened new paths through which languorous, exhausted, worn-out Europe might be able to reach a happier state. Each province was at that time treated as a separate state, with its own particular frontiers; and each frontier had its custom-house, where duties were levied on all goods imported. Thus, supposing that wheat had been landed at Marseilles, in view of Paris, it would, before reaching the capital, have to pay for the right of passage at six different frontiers, without counting special levies on the way. As for Marseilles itself, however rich the harvest might be in the North of France, the great city on the Mediterranean never profited by it. Even in the last century, Marseilles received all its grain from the Barbary States. On the famous night of the 4th of August, 1789, when the abolition of all the privileges existing in France was decreed,[{312}] 1,569 places of toll were done away with, 400 on the rivers, and 1,169 on roads. Of the total number 1,426 belonged to the nobility and clergy; the remainder to the towns or to the Government.

Henry IV. was the first king who, thanks to the enlightenment of his minister Sully, took steps for abolishing the impediments to circulation on road and river. By letters patent, dated 1595, corn was to be allowed everywhere to pass free.

A SEINE STEAMBOAT.

Richelieu, whose theory of government, cynically avowed, was that the poorer the nation the easier it would be to govern, re-established, under penalty of death, the old prohibitory edicts. The consequences were what might have been expected, and they are well expressed in a complaint made public by the Parliament of Normandy in 1633:—

“We have seen peasants harnessed to the share like beasts of burden, ploughing the land, munching the grass, and living on roots.” A manifesto from the Duke of Orleans of about the same time set forth that scarcely one-third of the inhabitants of the kingdom ate ordinary bread; one-third lived on oat-bread, while the remainder was dying of hunger, devouring grass and acorns, like animals, or, worse still, bran steeped in blood from the gutters of the slaughter-houses.

To the horrors of famine must be added those of civil war. Such was the misery, that even the most servile courtiers could not remain blind to it. Take, for instance, the memoirs of P. de la Porte, valet de chambre to Louis XIV., which contained the following: “Besides the misery of the soldiers, that of the common people was frightful; and wherever the Court was staying the poor peasants rushed thither, thinking they would find security, because elsewhere the army was devastating the country. They brought their cattle with them, which at once died of hunger, because it was impossible to take them outside for pasture. When their cattle were dead, they themselves died incontinently; for they had nothing more to depend upon but the charity of the Court, which was of the most moderate kind, everyone thinking of himself before all others. The mothers being dead, the children died soon afterwards; and I saw, on the bridge of Melun, three children lying beside their helpless mother, one of whom was still at the breast.”

Louis XIV. was neither more intelligent nor more humane than Richelieu. By his order, free circulation was again punished with death (1693-98). If, during the seventeenth century, there were a few attempts in the way of commercial liberty, these essays were exceptional and limited to particular localities, severely circumscribed. The peasant was more sat upon than ever. It was ordered in 1660 that no labourer should pass from his parish to another without paying double dues during a period of two years; and in 1675 Lesdiguières wrote that the labourers of the Dauphiné had nothing to eat but the grass of the meadows or the bark of trees. Under the great monarch the misery of the nation was excessive; and St. Simon did not exaggerate when he wrote this terrible phrase: “Louis XIV. drew blood from his subjects without distinction: he squeezed it out to the last drop.”

“Two great and benevolent men,” says M. Ducamp, “without any previous understanding on the subject, each published, in the year 1701,[{313}] a book which might well have opened the eyes of the king and converted his ministers. The “Détail de la France,” by Bois Guilbert, and the “Projet de Dime Royale,” by Vauban, the famous military engineer, are two slight volumes which showed how the safety of the monarchy might be ensured. Both authors had seen misery close at hand. Struck by the misfortunes they had contemplated, they sought a remedy for it, found it, placed it before everyone, but were not listened to.” “The common people,” said Bois Guilbert, “would consider themselves fortunate if they could have bread and water, which is about all they want, but which they scarcely ever get. The products of China and Japan, when delivered in France, cost only about three times their original price; but the liquids which pass from one province of France to another, even though they be adjacent, increase in price twenty-fold, and even more. The wines sold in Anjou and the Orleans country at one sou the measure are sold for twenty and twenty-four in Picardy and Normandy.” Vauban declared that in order to avoid the payment of exorbitant dues levied by the provincial authorities, peasants cut down their apples-trees and tore up their vines.