Madame Roland: A Biographical Study

by Ida M. Tarbell

After their marriage they were constantly cramped for money, for Roland’s salary was very small, and he had but few privileges in connection with his position. For instance, when Madame Roland was in Paris in 1784 seeking the letters of nobility, she was forced to guard her expenses with the greatest care; to avoid taking fiacres as often as possible, and to take cheap seats at the theatre. In the Beaujolais she had been forced to give up going to Lyons often, on account of the expense of life there, to stay much at Le Clos, and to administer her household with greatest economy.

There was no complaint on their part because of their poverty, but there was dissatisfaction with the system which did not reward properly a man who had given his life to the interests of his country, and had produced numbers of valuable works, while it took up insignificant individuals, and, through favoritism or for a round bribe, gave them easy and amply paid positions, and allowed them to keep them whatever they did or did not do; a system which, in short, justified Beaumarchais’ characterization: “Il fallait un calculateur pour remplir la place, ce fut un danseur qui l’obtint.” (An accountant was wanted in the place, a dancer received it.)

After the Rolands left Amiens, they came into personal contact with the feudal rights; for in the Beaujolais the peasant was still often obliged to give personal service to his lord. It was to the lord’s wine-press he was obliged to take his grapes, to his mill that he must take his wheat. They saw the effect of the wretched salt-tax, an indirect tax which forced every inhabitant to buy seven pounds of salt a year, and it cost eight times what it does to-day, considering the value of money. Not only was he forced to buy, he was forced to use it in certain ways,—not a grain of that seven pounds could be employed anywhere except in his table food. If he wanted to salt pork, he must buy another kind.

They probably saw, in their rides to and from Lyons, the peasants bent at their corvée, or road tax; for the peasants still made the royal roads in the Lyonnais. On an average, they gave twelve days a year, and the use of their own implements, to the highways which they rarely had the advantage of using. The terrible tolls were another unjust imposition from which they suffered personally. They were innumerable. Let a boat of wine attempt to go from Dauphiné, by the Rhone, Loire, and the canal of Briare, and it paid thirty-five to forty kinds of duties, not counting the entrée to Paris. From Pontarlier to Lyons there were twenty-five or thirty tolls. If Madame Roland had bought ten cents worth of wine in Burgundy, it would have cost her fifteen to eighteen sous before she got it to Lyons.

Another experience which intensified their disgust with the ancien régime was the study of the affairs of Lyons. In a report made, in 1791, on the condition of the city, Roland showed how Lyons, after having been for a long time one of the most flourishing cities of the world, because of her active and peculiar industries, and having earned a world-wide credit, attracted the attention of the government, at that time completely corrupt. The State forced the city to compromise her industries and credit in order to lend money. She borrowed again and again, and gave in return the saddest, most ruinous compensation,—the permission to tax herself. This had gone on until Lyons was bankrupt, her industries ruined, her streets full of beggars.

This condition of finances and society they had long seen, as had the whole country, must be changed or there would be an upheaval. They had even calculated on this change when Madame Roland was soliciting the letters of nobility at Paris, and the probability that when it came something would fall to them. Like all France, it was in a reform of the finances that they saw hope, and it was that which they demanded. They did not believe that France was hopelessly involved, but were confident that she could extricate herself by severe economies in the administration, by cutting off favoritism, by arranging a just system of taxes. Up to 1789 that was all that was demanded.

Like all France, they participated in those outbursts of joy which swept over the country at various periods in the reigns of Louis XV. and Louis XVI., when ministers of force and wisdom devised relief.

The call for the States-General, in 1788, interested them more deeply than ever in the reforms needed; the effort of the Parlement of Paris to prevent the Third Estate naming as many members as the nobility and clergy together, and to prevent their sitting together aroused them. When, however, in spite of all opposition, the King issued the edict allowing the Third Estate double representation and called for the election of members to, and the preparation of cahiers for, the coming gathering, the Rolands went to work with energy. It was on the preparation of the cahiers[^[2]] sent to the States-General by the Third Estate of Lyons that Roland was principally occupied, and it was with hopefulness that he saw the deputies and the memorials depart for Versailles, where, on May 4th, the twelve hundred representatives of the nation met to begin the work of restoring order in France and of making a constitution.

[2]. Memorials prepared by each of the three classes, setting forth their grievances, their demands, and the compromises they were willing to make.

At Le Clos the Rolands watched eagerly every act of the States-General, of the King, and of the people. But the drama played in Paris and at Versailles between May 4th and July 14th, turned their hopefulness to despair, their gratitude to suspicion, their generosity to resentment, their pliability to obstinacy.