Travels in France during the years 1814-15 / Comprising a residence at Paris, during the stay of the allied armies, and at Aix, at the period of the landing of Bonaparte, in two volumes.

by Sir Archibald Alison; Patrick Fraser Tytler

During the revolution, when the peasants of all the adjoining estates violently dispossessed their landlords of their property; when every adjoining chateau exhibited a scene of desolation and ruin; the peasants of this estate were remarkable for their moderate and steady conduct; so far from themselves pillaging their seigneur, they formed a league for his defence "—Ils l'ont soutenùs," as they themselves expressed it—and he continued throughout, and is now in the quiet possession of his great estate. It is not perhaps going too far to say, that had the peasants throughout the country been treated with the same indulgence, and suffered to enjoy the same property, as in this delightful district, France would have been spared from all the horrors and all the sufferings of her revolution.

From Foudrain to La Fere, the country is, for the most part, flat; and the road, which is shaded by lofty trees, skirts the edge of a great forest, which stretches as far as the eye can reach to the left; and joins with the forest of Villars Coterets. For many miles the road is bordered by fruit-trees, and the cottages have a most comfortable thriving appearance. To St Quentin the face of the country is flat, though the ridge over which you pass is high; the villages have an appearance of progress and opulence about them, which is rarely to be met with in other parts of France. All the peasantry carry on manufactures in their own houses; and probably their gains are very considerable, as their houses are much more neat and comfortable than in districts which are solely agricultural, and their dress bears the appearance of considerable wealth. The cultivation in the open country still continues, in general, to be wheat, barley, clover, and fallow; but the approach to French Flanders is very obvious, both from the increased quantity of rye under cultivation, from the occasional fields of beans which are to be met with, and from the numbers of potatoes and other vegetables which are to be discerned round the immediate vicinity of the villages. In these villages the houses are white-washed, surrounded by gardens, and have a smiling aspect.

La Fere is a small town, surrounded with trifling fortifications, containing a considerable arsenal of artillery. We were much amused, while there, with the spectacle which the market exhibited. A great concourse of people had been collected from all quarters, to purchase a number of artillery horses which the government had exposed at a low price, to indemnify the people for the losses they had sustained during the continuance of the war. The crowds of grotesque figures which thronged the streets, the picturesque appearance of the horses that were exposed to sale, and the fierce martial aspect of the grenadiers of the old guard, a detachment of whom were quartered in the town, rendered this scene truly characteristic of the French people.

St Quentin is a neat, clean, and thriving town, resembling, both in the forms of the houses, and the opulence of the middling classes, the better sort of the country towns in England. It is the seat of considerable manufactures, which throve amazingly under the imperial government, in consequence of the exclusion of the English commodities during the revolutionary wars. The linen manufacture is the staple branch of industry, and affords employment to the peasantry in their own houses, in every direction in the surrounding country, which is probably the cause of the thriving prosperous appearance by which they are distinguished. The great church of St Quentin, though not built in fine proportions, is striking, from the coloured glass of its windows, and its great dimensions.

The French cultivation continues without any other change than the increased quantity of rye in the fields, and vegetables round the cottages, to the frontier of French Flanders. Still the country exhibits one unbroken sheet of corn and fallow; no inclosures are to be seen, and little wood varies the uniformity of the prospect. In crossing a high ridge which separates St Quentin from Cambray, the road passes over the great canal from Antwerp to Paris, which is here carried for many miles through a tunnel under ground. This great work was commenced under the administration of M. Turgot, but it was not completed till the time of Bonaparte, who employed in it great numbers of the prisoners whom he had taken in Spain. The magnitude of the undertaking may be judged of from the immense depth of the hollow which was cut for it, previous to the commencement of the tunnel, which is so great, that the canal, when seen from the top, has the appearance of a little stream. The course of the tunnel is marked on the surface of the ground by a line of chalky soil, which is spread above its centre, and which can be seen as far as the eye can reach, stretching over the vast ridge by which the country is traversed.

At the distance of three miles from the town of Cambray, the road crosses the ancient frontiers of French Flanders. We had long been looking for this transition, to discover if it still exhibited the striking change described by Arthur Young, "between the effects of the despotism of old France, which depressed agriculture, and the free spirit of the Burgundian provinces, which cherished and protected it." No sooner had we crossed the old line of demarcation between the French and Flemish provinces, than we were immediately struck with the difference, both in the aspect of the country, the mode of cultivation, and the condition of the people. The features of the landscape assume a totally different aspect; the straight roads, the clipt elms, the boundless plains of France are no longer to be seen; and in their place succeeds a thickly wooded soil and cultivated country. The number of villages is infinitely increased; the village spires rise above the woods in every direction, to mark the antiquity and the extent of the population: the houses of the peasants are detached from each other, and surrounded with fruit trees, or gardens kept in the neatest order, and all the features of the landscape indicate the long established prosperity by which the country has been distinguished.

Nor is the difference less striking in the mode of cultivation which is purified. Fallows, so common in France, almost universally disappear; and in their place, numerous crops of beans, pease, potatoes, carrots and endive, are to be met with. In the cultivation of these crops manual labour is universally employed; and the mode of cultivation is precisely that which is carried on in garden husbandry. The crops are uniformly laid out in small patches of an acre or thereby to each species of vegetable; which, combined with the extreme minuteness of the cultivation, gives the country under tillage the appearance of a great kitchen garden. This singular practice, which is universal in Flanders, is probably owing to the great use of the manual labour in the operations of agriculture. Rye is very much cultivated, and forms the staple food of the peasantry. The crops of wheat, barley, oats, rye, and clover, struck us as exceedingly heavy, but not nearly so clean as those of a similar description in the best agricultural districts of our own country.

But it is principally in the condition, manners, and comfort of the people, that the difference between the French and Flemish provinces consists. Every thing connected with the lower orders, indicates the influence of long-established prosperity, and the prevalence of habits produced by the uninterrupted enjoyment of individual opulence. The population of Flanders, both French and Austrian, is perfectly astonishing; the villages form an almost uninterrupted line through the country; the small towns are as numerous as villages in other parts of the world, and seem to contain an extensive and comfortable population. These small towns are particularly remarkable for the number and opulence of the middling classes, resembling in this, as well as other respects, the flourishing boroughs of Yorkshire and Kent, and affording a most striking contrast to those of a very opposite description, which we had recently passed through in France.

The cottages of the peasantry, both in the villages and the open country, are in the highest degree, neat, clean, and comfortable; built for the most part of brick, and slated in the roof; nowhere exhibiting the slightest symptoms of dilapidation. These houses have almost all a garden attached to them, in the cultivation of which, the poor people display, not only extreme industry, but a degree of taste superior to what might be expected from their condition in life: The inside bore the marks of great comfort, both from the cleanness which every where prevailed, and the costly nature of the furniture with which they were filled. Nothing could be more pleasing than the appearance of the windows, every where in the best repair, large and capacious, and furnished with shutters on the outside, painted green, which, together with the bright whiteness of the walls, gave the whole the appearance of buildings destined for ornamental purposes, rather than the abode of the lower orders of the people.

Cambray is a neat comfortable town, containing 15,000 inhabitants, and surrounded by fortifications in tolerable repair, but which, when we passed them, were not armed. It was once celebrated for its magnificent cathedral, reckoned the finest in France; but a few ruins of this great building alone have escaped the fury of the people, during the commencement of the revolution. These trifling remains, however, were sufficient to convey some idea of the beautiful proportions in which the whole had been constructed; they resembled much the finest part of Dryburgh Abbey, in Scotland. The modern cathedral, built near the site of the old one, has a mean exterior, but possesses considerable splendour in the inside.