Another street in Chauny, the Rue des Bons Enfans, preserves the memory of the early foundation in the little city of public schools for the children of the poor—'les bons enfans escholiers.'
Where now stands the communal school of Chauny stood, I am told, a public college, founded here in the earliest years of the fourteenth century. The buildings of this college were restored under the Regency and Louis XV. They were confiscated, and the establishment swept away by the worthy Revolutionists of 1793, at the same time that they gave a public ball in the Church of Notre-Dame in honour of the Tree of Liberty, which the young girls of the place were expected to attend 'in dresses of white, symbolic of their innocence, and adorned only with their virtues!'
Besides this public college, Chauny, before the beneficent epoch of the Revolution, possessed a public school in each parish of the town. The schoolmaster, besides his regular scholars, who paid for their education, was expected to receive and educate eight poor children nominated by the mayor and sworn magistrates. For this he received, under Louis XIV., in 1706, forty setiers of wheat and fifty livres in money. It is interesting, also, to learn that the principal of the public college, when he happened to be a layman, received a salary, under Louis XIV., of 400 livres in addition to his dwelling-house. When he was a priest he received only 300 livres, but he might also receive 172 livres more as chaplain of the Hôtel-Dieu. The well-to-do citizens who sent their children to the college paid for each child forty sols a year.
When law and order had been re-established by Napoleon in France, two citizens of Chauny, Carra and Dumoulin, in December 1802, got permission to re-open the college, which the Revolution had closed. It has never recovered its former importance however, and Chauny now possesses only a communal school, I am told, and two religious or free schools, besides the establishments maintained by the Company of St.-Gobain. One educational foundation of the ancien régime, however, still survives, in the bursaries of the Abbé Bouzier.
Antoine Bouzier d'Estouilly, priest, abbot of Notre-Dame-lès-Ardres, doctor in science, doctor of the Sorbonne, canon and écolâtre of the collégiale of St.-Quentin, was a noble as well as a priest. He founded, on October 10, 1713, a fund for endowing two poor boys with the funds necessary to enable them, in his own words, 'to serve the Church as ecclesiastics, or the public in civil functions.' This phraseology is worth noting by people who are tempted to believe the nonsense current in our day to the effect that 'almost everything we know as modern civilisation in connection with institutions of a philanthropic sort has taken shape within the last hundred years, and is due to the influence of the Revolution of 1789 in France.'
Nothing can be wider of the truth than this. On the contrary, the progress of modern civilisation in connection with such institutions was distinctly checked and thwarted for a time in France by the shock of this Revolution, and in other countries by the horror and indignation which the follies and crimes of the French Revolutionists excited.
The foundation of the Abbé Bouzier was expressly intended by him to benefit 'the poorest' of those who should compete for its advantages, regard being had to their natural ability and aptitudes for study. Each beneficiary was to enjoy his scholarship for eight consecutive years, dating from his entrance into the third class. If he had got beyond the third class when he secured his nomination the difference was to run against him. For example, a scholar ready to enter the class of rhetoric who received a nomination was to hold his scholarship for six years only; if he was ready to enter upon the study of theology, law or medicine, for three years only; after the expiration of which another must be appointed to enjoy it. Provisions were also made to secure the good conduct of the beneficiaries. How this excellent foundation escaped the cupidity of the Revolutionists is not clear.
From June, 1793, to March, 1795, the Société Populaire of Chauny, organised by emissaries from Paris, ruled the town absolutely. The official authorities of the city and of the district went in abject terror of them; for a denunciation sent to the headquarters in Paris by this society was like a report sent thither from an army in the field by one of the legislative spies who accompanied the generals of the Republic, and swaggered about in the camps wearing the mountebank costumes which may be studied with amusement and advantage in the museum of the Revolution established this year in the Pavillon de Flore at Paris. The members of this Société Populaire openly pillaged the churches and convents, made domiciliary visits, sold certificates of 'civism,' and dictated the most extraordinary measures of confiscation and outrage. Their loudest leader was a certain Pierre Gogois, who used to wind up their meeting by singing songs of his own composition, addressed to the 'crowned brigands who were trying to re-establish the abominable monarchy with the help of their anthropophagous hordes!' These worthies abolished the school kept by the 'Daughters of the Cross,' confiscated their property, and set up their own headquarters in the convent.
In some way the Bouzier fund escaped their clutches, and it has been so well managed that in 1871 the income was found large enough to warrant the managers in establishing three scholarships instead of two.
The good example of the Abbé has been followed in our own times by a Christian lady, Madame Lacroix of Sinceny. In memory of her son, a Councillor-General of the Aisne, who was universally esteemed throughout the department, and who died at the early age of thirty-five, this lady founded, a few years ago in perpetuity, eight prizes, to be annually competed for by the pupils of all the communal schools of the canton of Chauny, and by the pupils of the schools established here by the Company of St.-Gobain, as well as four full scholarships at the School of Arts and Industries in Châlons-sur-Marne.