The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte
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of Tonnerre, a mob of debtors fire upon the body of police which comes to enforce the claims.—Near Amiens, the Comtesse de la Mire,3260 on her estate of Davencourt, is visited by the municipal authorities of the village, who request her to renounce her right to ground-rent (champart) and thirds (tiers). She refuses and they insist, and she refuses again, when they inform her that "some misfortune will happen to her." In effect, two of the municipal officers cause the tocsin to be rung, and the whole village rushes to arms. One of the domestics has an arm broken by a ball, and for three hours the countess and her two children are subject to the grossest insults and to blows: she is forced to sign a paper which she is not allowed to read, and, in warding off the stroke of a saber, her arm is cleft from the elbow to the wrist; the chateau is pillaged, and she owes her escape to the zeal of some of her servants.—Large eruptions take place at the same time over entire provinces; one succeeds the other almost without interruption, the fever encroaching on parts which were supposed to be cured, and to such an extent that the virulent ulcers finally combine and form one over the whole surface of the social body.
By the end of December, 1789, the chronic fermentation comes to a head in Brittany. Imagination, as usual, has forged a plot, and, as the people say, if they make an attack it is in their own defense.—A report spreads3261 that M. de Goyon, near Lamballe, has assembled in his chateau a number of gentlemen and six hundred soldiers. The mayor and National Guard of Lamballe immediately depart in force; they find everything tranquil there, and no company but two or three friends, and no other arms than a few fowling-pieces.—The impulse, however, is given, and, on the 15th of January, the great federation of Pontivy has excited the wildest enthusiasm. The people drink, sing, and shout in honor of the new decrees before armed peasants who do not comprehend the French tongue, still less legal terms, and who, on their return home, arguing with each other in bas-breton, interpret the law in a peculiar way. "A decree of the Assembly, in their eyes, is a decree of arrest" and as the principal decrees of the Assembly are issued against the nobles, they are so many decrees of arrest against them.—Some days after this, about the end of January, during the whole of February, and down to the month of April, the execution of this theory is tumultuously carried out by mobs of villagers and vagabonds around Nantes, Auray, Redon, Dinan, Ploërmel, Rennes, Guingamp, and other villages. Everywhere, writes the Mayor of Nantes,3262 "the country-people believe that in burning deeds and contracts they get rid of their debts; the very best of them concur in this belief," or let things take their course; the excesses are enormous, because many gratify "special animosities, and all are heated with wine.—At Beuvres, "the peasants and vassals of the manor, after burning title-deeds, establish themselves in the chateau, and threaten to fire it if other papers, which they allege are concealed there, are not surrendered." Near Redon the Abbey of Saint-Sauveur is reduced to ashes. Redon is menaced, and Ploërmel almost besieged. At the end of a month thirty-seven chateaux are enumerated as attacked: twenty-five in which the title-deeds are burnt, and twelve in which the proprietors are obliged to sign an abandonment of their rights. Two chateaux which began to burn are saved by the National Guard. That of Bois-au-Voyer is entirely consumed, and several have been sacked. By way of addition, "more than fifteen procureurs-fiscaux, clerks, notaries, and officers of seignorial courts have been plundered or burnt," while proprietors take refuge in the towns because the country is now uninhabitable for them.
A second tumor makes its appearance at the same time at another point.3263 It showed itself in Lower Limousin in the beginning of January. From thence the purulent inflammation spreads to Quercy, Upper Languedoc, Perigord, and Rouergue, and in February from Tulle to Montauban, and from Agen to Périgueux and Cahors, extending over three departments.—Then, also, expectancy is the creator, according to rule, of its own object. By dint of longing for a law for the suppression of all claims, it is imagined that it is passed, and the statement is current that "the King and the National Assembly have ordered deputations to set up the maypole3264 and to 'light up' the chateaux."—Moreover, and always in accordance with current practice, bandits, people without occupation, take the lead of the furious crowd and manage things their own way. As soon as a band is formed it arrests all the peaceable people it can find on the roads, in the fields, and in isolated farmhouses, and takes good care to put them in front in case of blows.—These miscreants add terror to compulsion. They erect gibbets for any one that pays casual duties or annual dues, while the parishes of Quercy threaten their neighbors of Perigord with fire and sword in a week's time if they do not do in Perigord as they have done in Quercy.—The tocsin rings, the drums beat, and "the ceremony" is performed from commune to commune. The keys of the church are forcibly taken from the curé the seats are burned, and, frequently, the woodwork marked with the seigneur's arms. They march to the seigneur's mansion, tear down his weathercocks, and compel him to furnish his finest tree, together with feathers and ribbons with which to deck it, without omitting the three measures which he uses in the collection of his dues in grain or flour. The maypole is planted in the village square, and the weathercocks, ribbons, and feathers are attached to its top, together with the three measures and this inscription, "By order of the King and National Assembly, the final quittance for all rentals." When this is done it is evident that the seigneur, who no longer possesses weathercocks, or a seat in the church, or measures to rate his dues by, is no longer a seigneur, and can no longer put forth claims of any kind. Huzzahs and acclamations accordingly burst forth, and there is a revel and an orgy on the public square. All who can pay—the seigneur, the curé, and the rich—are put under contribution for the festival, while the people eat and drink "without any interval of sobriety."—In this condition, being armed, they strike, and when resistance is offered, they burn. In Agénois, a chateau belonging to M. de Lameth, and another of M. d'Aiguillon; in Upper Languedoc, that of M. de Bournazel, and in Perigord that of M. de Bar, are burnt down:
M. de Bar is almost beaten to death, while six others are killed in Quercy. A number of chateaux in the environs of Montauban and in Limousin are assaulted with firearms, and several are pillaged.—Bands of twelve hundred men swarm the country; "they have a spite against every estate;" they redress wrongs; "they try over again cases disposed of thirty years ago, and give judgments which they put into execution."—If anybody fails to conform to the new code he is punished, and to the advantage of the new sovereigns. In Agénois, a gentleman having paid the rent which was associated with his fief the people take his receipt from him, mulct him in a sum equal to that which he paid, and come under his windows to spend the money on good cheer, in triumph and with derision.
Many of the National Guards who still possess some degree of energy, several of the municipalities which still preserve some love of order, and a number of the resident gentry, employ their arms against these excited swarms of brutal usurpers. Some of the ruffians, taken in the act, are judged somewhat after the fashion of a drum-head court-martial, and immediately executed as examples. Everybody in the country sees that the peril to society is great and urgent, and that if such acts go unpunished, there will be no such thing as law and property in France. The Bordeaux parliament, moreover, insists upon prosecutions. Eighty-three boroughs and cities sign addresses, and send a special deputation to the National Assembly to urge on prosecutions already commenced, the punishment of criminals under arrest, and, above all, the maintenance of the prévôtés.3265 In reply to this, the Assembly inflicts upon the parliament of Bordeaux its disapprobation in the rudest manner, and enters upon the demolition of every judicial corporation.3266 After this, the execution of all prévotal decisions is adjourned. A few months later the Assembly will oblige the King to declare that the proceedings begun against the jacquerie of Brittany shall be regarded as null and void, and that the arrested insurgents shall be set free. For repressive purposes, it dispatches a sentimental exhortation to the French people, consisting of twelve pages of literary insipidity, which Florian might have composed for his Estilles and his Nemorins.3267—New conflagrations,