At Peronne and at Ham, the order having come to restore the toll-houses, the people destroy the soldiers' quarters, conduct all the employees to their homes, and order them to leave within twenty-four hours, under penalty of death. After twenty months' resistance Paris will end the matter by forcing the National Assembly to give in and by obtaining the final suppression of its octroi.[1326]—Of all the creditors whose hand each one felt on his shoulders, that of the exchequer was the heaviest, and now it is the weakest; hence this is the first whose grasp is to be shaken off; there is none which is more heartily detested or which receives harsher treatment. Especially against collectors of the salt-tax, custom-house officers, and excisemen the fury is universal. These, everywhere,[1327] are in danger of their lives and are obliged to fly. At Falaise, in Normandy, the people threaten to "cut to pieces the director of the excise." At Baignes, in Saintonge, his house is devastated and his papers and effects are burned; they put a knife to the throat of his son, a child six years of age, saying, "Thou must perish that there may be no more of thy race." For four hours the clerks are on the point of being torn to pieces; through the entreaties of the lord of the manor, who sees scythes and sabers aimed at his own head, they are released only on the condition that they "abjure their employment."—Again, for two months following the taking of the Bastille, insurrections break out by hundreds, like a volley of musketry, against indirect taxation. From the 23rd of July the Intendant of Champagne reports that "the uprising is general in almost all the towns under his command." On the following day the Intendant of Alençon writes that, in his province, "the royal dues will no longer be paid anywhere." On the 7th of August, M. Necker states to the National Assembly that in the two intendants' districts of Caen and Alençon it has been necessary to reduce the price of salt one-half; that "in an infinity of places" the collection of the excise is stopped or suspended; that the smuggling of salt and tobacco is done by "convoys and by open force" in Picardy, in Lorraine, and in the Trois-Évêchés; that the indirect tax does not come in, that the receivers-general and the receivers of the taille are "at bay" and can no longer keep their engagements. The public income diminishes from month to month; in the social body, the heart, already so feeble, faints; deprived of the blood which no longer reaches it, it ceases to propel to the muscles the vivifying current which restores their waste and adds to their energy.
"All controlling power is slackened," says Necker, "everything is a prey to the passions of individuals." Where is the power to constrain them and to secure to the State its dues?—The clergy, the nobles, wealthy townsmen, and certain brave artisans and farmers, undoubtedly pay, and even sometimes give spontaneously. But in society those who possess intelligence, who are in easy circumstances and conscientious, form a small select class; the great mass is egotistic, ignorant, and needy, and lets its money go only under constraint; there is but one way to collect the taxes, and that is to extort them. From time immemorial, direct taxes in France have been collected only by bailiffs and seizures; which is not surprising, as they take away a full half of the net income. Now that the peasants of each village are armed and form a band, let the collector come and make seizures if he dare!—" Immediately after the decree on the equality of the taxes," writes the provincial commission of Alsace,[1328] "the people generally refused to make any payments, until those who were exempt and privileged should have been inscribed on the local lists." In many places the peasants threaten to obtain the reimbursement of their installments, while in others they insist that the decree should be retrospective and that the new rate-payers should pay for the past year. "No collector dare send an official to distrain; none that are sent dare fulfill their mission."—" It is not the good bourgeois" of whom there is any fear, "but the rabble who make the latter and every one else afraid of them;" resistance and disorder everywhere come from "people that have nothing to lose."—Not only do they shake off taxation, but they usurp property, and declare that, being the Nation, whatever belongs to the Nation belongs to them. The forests of Alsace are laid waste, the seignorial as well as communal, and wantonly destroyed with the wastefulness of children or of maniacs. "In many places, to avoid the trouble of removing the woods, they are burnt, and the people content themselves with carrying off the ashes."—After the decrees of August 4th, and in spite of the law which licenses the proprietor only to hunt on his own grounds, the impulse to break the law becomes irresistible. Every man who can procure a gun begins operations;[1329] the crops which are still standing are trodden under foot, the lordly residences are invaded and the palings are scaled; the King himself at Versailles is wakened by shots fired in his park. Stags, fawns, deer, wild boars, hares, and rabbits, are slain by thousands, cooked with stolen wood, and eaten up on the spot. There is a constant discharge of musketry throughout France for more than two months, and, as on an American prairie, every living animal belongs to him who kills it. At Choiseul, in Champagne, not only are all the hares and partridges of the barony exterminated, but the ponds are exhausted of fish; the court of the chateau even is entered, to fire on the pigeon-house and destroy the pigeons, and then the pigeons and fish, of which they have too many, are offered to the proprietor for sale—It is "the patriots" of the village with "smugglers and bad characters" belonging to the neighborhood who make this expedition; they are seen in the front ranks of every act of violence, and it is not difficult to foresee that, under their leadership, attacks on public persons and public property will be followed by attacks on private persons and private property.
VII.—Attack upon private individuals and private property.
Aristocrats denounced to the people as their enemies.
—Effect of news from Paris.—Influence of the village
attorneys.—Isolated acts of violence.—A general rising of
the peasantry in the east.—War against the castles, feudal
estates, and property.—Preparations for other Jacqueries.
Indeed, an outlawed class already exists, they are called "aristocrats." This deadly term, applied at first to the nobles and prelates in the States-General who declined to take part in the reunion of the three orders, is extended so as to embrace all whose titles, offices, alliances, and manner of living distinguish them from the multitude. That which entitled them to respect is that which marks them out as objects of ill-will; while the people, who, though suffering from their privileges, did not regard them personally with hatred, are now taught to consider them as their enemies. Each, on his own estate, is held accountable for the evil designs attributed to his brethren at Versailles, and, on the false report of a plot at the center, the peasants classify him as one of the conspirators.[1330] Thus does the peasant jacquerie commence, and the fanatics who have fanned the flame in Paris are to do the same in the provinces. "You wish to know the authors of the agitation," writes a sensible man to the committee of investigation; "you will find them amongst the deputies of the Third-Estate," and especially among the attorneys and advocates. "These dispatch incendiary letters to their constituents, which letters are received by municipal bodies alike composed of attorneys and of advocates.... they are read aloud in the public squares, while copies of them are distributed among all the villages. In these villages, if any one knows how to read besides the priest and the lord of the manor, it is the legal practitioner," the born enemy of the lord of the manor, whose place he covets, vain of his oratorical powers, embittered by his power, and never failing to blacken everything.[1331] It is highly probable that he is the one who composes and circulates the placards calling on the people, in the King's name, to resort to violence.—At Secondigny, in Poitou, on the 23rd of July,[1332] the laborers in the forest receive a letter "which summons them to attack all the country gentlemen round about, and to massacre without mercy all those who refuse to renounce their privileges.... promising them that not only will their crimes go unpunished, but that they will even be rewarded." M. Despretz-Montpezat, correspondent of the deputies of the nobles, is seized, and dragged with his son to the dwelling of the procurator-fiscal, to force him to give his signature; the inhabitants are forbidden to render him assistance "on pain of death and fire." "Sign," they exclaim, "or we will tear out your heart, and set fire to this house!" At this moment the neighboring notary, who is doubtless an accomplice, appears with a stamped paper, and says to him, "Monsieur, I have just come from Niort, where the Third-Estate has done the same thing to all the gentlemen of the town; one, who refused, was cut to pieces before our eyes."—"We are compelled to sign renunciations of our privileges, and give our assent to one and the same taxation, as if the nobles had not already done so." The band gives notice that it will proceed in the same fashion with all the chateaux in the vicinity, and terror precedes or follows them. "Nobody dares write," M. Despretz sends word; "I attempt it at the risk of my life."—Nobles and prelates become objects of suspicion everywhere; village committees open their letters, and they have to suffer their houses to be searched.[1333] They are forced to adopt the new cockade: to be a gentleman, and not wear it, is to deserve hanging. At Mamers, in Maine, M. de Beauvoir refuses to wear it, and is at the point of being put into the pillory and felled. Near La F1èche, M. de Brissac is arrested, and a message is sent to Paris to know if he shall be taken there, "or be beheaded in the meantime." Two deputies of the nobles, MM. de Montesson and de Vassé who had come to ask the consent of their constituents to their joining the Third-Estate, are recognized near Mans; their honorable scruples and their pledges to the constituents are considered of no importance, nor even the step that they are now taking to fulfill them; it suffices that they voted against the Third-Estate at Versailles; the populace pursues them and breaks up their carriages, and pillages their trunks.—Woe to the nobles, especially if they have taken any part in local rule, and if they are opposed to popular panics! M. Cureau, deputy-mayor of Mans,[1334] had issued orders during the famine, and, having retired to his chateau of Nouay, had told the peasants that the announcement of the coming of brigands was a false alarm; he thought that it was not necessary to sound the alarm bell, and all that was necessary was that they should remain quiet. Accordingly he is set down as being in league with the brigands, and besides this he is a monopolist, and a buyer of standing crops. The peasants lead him off; along with his son-in-law, M. de Montesson, to the neighboring village, where there are judges. On the way "they dragged their victims on the ground, pummeled them, trampled on them, spit in their faces, and besmeared them with filth." M. de Montesson is shot, while M. Cureau is killed by degrees; a carpenter cuts off the two heads with a double-edged ax, and children bear them along to the sound of drums and violins. Meanwhile, the judges of the place, brought by force, draw up an official report stating the finding of thirty louis and several bills of the Banque d'Escompte in the pockets of M. de Cureau, on the discovery of which a shout of triumph is set up: this evidence proves that they were going to buy up the standing wheat!—Such is the course of popular justice. Now that the Third-Estate has become the nation, every mob thinks that it has the right to pronounce sentences, which it carries out, on lives and on possessions.
These explosions are isolated in the western, central and southern provinces; the conflagration, however, is universal in the east. On a strip of ground from thirty to fifty leagues broad, extending from the extreme north down to Provence. Alsace, Franche-Comté, Burgundy, Mâconnais, Beaujolais, Auvergne, Viennois, Dauphiny, the whole of this territory resembles a continuous mine which explodes at the same time. The first column of flame which shoots up is on the frontiers of Alsace and Franche-Comté, in the vicinity of Belfort and Vésoul, a feudal district, in which the peasant, over-burdened with taxes, bears the heavier yoke with greater impatience. An instinctive argument is going on in his mind without his knowing it. "The good Assembly and the good King want us to be happy, suppose we help them! They say that the King has already relieved us of the taxes, suppose we relieve ourselves of paying rents! Down with the nobles! They are no better than the tax-collectors!"—On the 16th of July, the chateau of Sancy, belonging to the Princesses de Beaufremont, is sacked, and on the 18th those of Lure, Bithaine, and Molans.[1335] On the 29th, an accident which occurs with some fire-works at a popular festival at the house of M. de Mesmay, leads the lower class to believe that the invitation extended to them was a trap, and that there was a desire to get rid of them by treachery.[1336] Seized with rage they set fire to the chateau, and during the following week[1337] destroy three abbeys, ruin eleven chateaux and pillage others. "All records are destroyed, the registers and court-rolls are carried off; and the deposits violated."—Starting from this spot, "the hurricane of insurrection" stretches over the whole of Alsace from Huningue to Landau.[1338] The insurgents display placards, signed Louis, stating that for a certain lapse of time they shall be permitted to exercise justice themselves, and, in Sundgau, a well-dressed weaver, decorated with a blue belt, passes for a prince, the King's second son. They begin by falling on the Jews, their hereditary leeches; they sack their dwellings, divide their money among themselves, and hunt them down like so many fallow-deer. At Bâle alone, it is said that twelve hundred of these unfortunate fugitives arrived with their families.—The distance between the Jew creditor and the Christian proprietor is not great, and this is soon cleared. Remiremont is only saved by a detachment of dragoons. Eight hundred men attack the chateau of Uberbrünn. The abbey of Neubourg is taken by storm. At Guebwiller, on the 31st of July, five hundred peasants, subjects of the abbey of Murbach, make a descent on the abbot's palace and on the house of the canons. Cupboards, chests, beds, windows, mirrors, frames, even the tiles of the roof and the hinges of the casements are hacked to pieces: "They kindle fires on the beautiful inlaid floors of the apartments, and there burn up the library and the title-deeds." The abbot's superb carriage is so broken up that not a wheel remains entire. "Wine streams through the cellars. One cask of sixteen hundred measures is half lost; the plate and the linen are carried off."—Society is evidently being overthrown, while with the power, property is changing hands.
These are their very words. In Franche-Comte[1339] the inhabitants of eight communes come and declare to the Bernardins of Grâce-Dieu and of Lieu-Croissant "that, being of the Third-Estate, it is time now for the people to rule over abbots and monks, considering that the domination of the latter has lasted too long," and thereupon they carry off all the titles to property and to rentals belonging to the abbey in their commune. In Upper Dauphiny, during the destruction of M. de Murat's chateau, a man named Ferréol struck the furniture with a big stick, exclaiming, "Hey, so much for you, Murat; you have been master a good while, now it's our turn!"[1340] Those who rifle houses, and steal like highway robbers, think that they are defending a cause, and reply to the challenge, "Who goes there?" "We are for the brigand Third-Estate!"—Everywhere the belief prevails that they are clothed with authority, and they conduct themselves like a conquering horde under the orders of an absent general. At Remiremont and at Luxeuil they produce an edict, stating that "all this brigandage, pillage, and destruction" is permitted. In Dauphiny, the leaders of the bands say that they possess the King's orders. In Auvergne, "they follow imperative orders, being advised that such is his Majesty's will." Nowhere do we see that an insurgent village exercises personal vengeance against its lord. If the people fire on the nobles they encounter, it is not through personal hatred. They are destroying the class, and do not pursue individuals. They detest feudal privileges, holders of charters, the cursed parchments by virtue of which they are made to pay, but not the nobleman who, when he resides at home, is of humane intentions, compassionate, and even often beneficent. At Luxeuil, the abbot, who is forced with uplifted ax to sign a relinquishment of his seignorial rights over twenty-three estates, has dwelt among them for forty-six years, and has been wholly devoted to them.[1341] In the canton of Crémieu, "where the havoc is immense," all the nobles, write the municipal officers, are "patriots and benevolent." In Dauphiny, the engineers, magistrates, and prelates, whose chateaux are sacked, were the first to espouse the cause of the people and of public liberties against the ministers. In Auvergne, the peasants themselves "manifest a good deal of repugnance to act in this way against such kind masters." But it must be done; the only concession which can be made in consideration of the kindness which had been extended to them is, not to burn the chateau of the ladies of Vanes, who had been so charitable; but they burn all their title-deeds, and torture the business agent at three different times by fire, to force him to deliver a document which he does not possess; they then only withdraw him from the fire half-broiled, because the ladies, on their knees, implore mercy for him. They are like the soldiers on a campaign who execute orders with docility, for which necessity is the only plea, and who, without regarding themselves as brigands, commit acts of brigandage.
But here the situation is more tragic, for it is war in the midst of peace, a war of the brutal and barbaric multitude against the highly cultivated, well-disposed and confiding, who had not anticipated anything of the kind, who had not even dreamt of defending themselves, and who had no protection. The Comte de Courtivron, with his family, was staying at the watering-place of Luxeuil with his uncle, the Abbé of Clermont-Tonnerre, an old man of seventy years. On the 19th of July, fifty peasants from Fougerolle break into and demolish everything in the houses of an usher and a collector of the excise. Thereupon the mayor of the place intimates to the nobles and magistrates who are taking the waters, that they had better leave the house in twenty-four hours, as "he had been advised of an intention to burn the houses in which they were staying," and he did not wish to have Luxeuil exposed to this danger on account of their presence there. The following day, the guard, as obliging as the mayor, allows the band to enter the town and to force the abbey: the usual events follow, renunciations are extorted, records and cellars are ransacked, plate and other effects are stolen. M. de Courtivron escaping with his uncle during the night, the alarm bell is sounded and they are pursued, and with difficulty obtain refuge in Plombières. The bourgeoisie of Plombières, however, for fear of compromising themselves, oblige them to depart. On the road two hundred insurgents threaten to kill their horses and to smash their carriage, and they only find safety at last at Porentruy, outside of France. On his return, M. de Courtivron is shot at by the band which has just pillaged the abbey of Lure, and they shout out at him as he passes, "Let's massacre the nobles!" Meanwhile, the chateau of Vauvilliers, to which his sick wife had been carried, is devastated from top to bottom; the mob search for her everywhere, and she only escapes by hiding herself in a hay-loft. Both are anxious to fly into Burgundy, but word is sent them that at Dijon "the nobles are blockaded by the people," and that, in the country, they threaten to set their houses on fire.—There is no asylum to be had, either in their own homes nor in the homes of others, nor in places along the roads, fugitives being stopped in all the small villages and market-towns. In Dauphiny[1342] "the Abbess of St. Pierre de Lyon, one of the nuns, M. de Perrotin, M. de Bellegarde, the Marquis de la Tour-du-Pin, and the Chevalier de Moidieu, are arrested at Champier by the armed population, led to the Côte Saint-André, confined in the town-hall, whence they send to Grenoble for assistance," and, to have them released, the Grenoble Committee is obliged to send commissioners. Their only refuge is in the large cities, where some semblance of a precarious order exists, and in the ranks of the City Guards, which march from Lyons, Dijon, and Grenoble, to keep the inundation down. Throughout the country scattered chateaux are swallowed up by the popular tide, and, as the feudal rights are often in plebeian hands, it insensibly rises beyond its first overflow.—There is no limit to an insurrection against property. This one extends from abbeys and chateaux to the "houses of the bourgeoisie."[1343] The grudge at first was confined to the holders of charters; now it is extended to all who possess anything. Well-to-do farmers and priests abandon their parishes and fly to the towns. Travelers are put to ransom. Thieves, robbers, and returned convicts, at the head of armed bands, seize whatever they can lay their hands on. Cupidity becomes inflamed by such examples; on domains which are deserted and in a state of confusion, where there is nothing to indicate a master's presence, all seems to lapse to the first comer. A small farmer of the neighborhood has carried away wine and returns the following day in search of hay. All the furniture of a chateau in Dauphin is removed, even to the hinges of the doors, by a large reinforcement of carts.—" It is the war of the poor against the rich," says a deputy, "and, on the 3rd of August, the Committee on Reports declares to the National Assembly "that no kind of property has been spared." In Franche-Comté, "nearly forty chateaux and seignorial mansions have been pillaged or burnt."[1344] From Lancers to Gray about three out of five chateaux are sacked. In Dauphin twenty-seven are burned or destroyed; five in the small district of Viennese, and, besides these, all the monasteries—nine at least in Auvergne, seventy-two, it is said, in Mâconnais and Beaujolais, without counting those of Alsace. On the 31st of July, Lally-Tollendal, on entering the tribune, has his hands full of letters of distress, with a list of thirty-six chateaux burnt, demolished, or pillaged, in one province, and the details of still worse violence against persons:[1345]
"in Languedoc, M. de Barras, cut to pieces in the presence of his wife who is about to be confined, and who is dead in consequence; in Normandy, a paralytic gentleman left on a burning pile and taken off from it with his hands burnt; in Franche-Comté, Madame de Bathilly compelled, with an ax over her head, to give up her title-deeds and even her estate; Madame de Listenay forced to do the same, with a pitchfork at her neck and her two daughters in a swoon at her feet; Comte de Montjustin, with his wife, having a pistol at his throat for three hours; and both dragged from their carriage to be thrown into a pond, where they are saved by a passing regiment of soldiers; Baron de Montjustin, one of the twenty-two popular noblemen, suspended for an hour in a well, listening to a discussion whether he shall be dropped down or whether he should die in some other way; the Chevalier d'Ambly, torn from his chateau and dragged naked into the village, placed on a dung-heap after having his eyebrows and all his hair pulled out, while the crowd kept on dancing around him."