The Ancient Regime. Taine Hippolyte
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find modern employment for the chieftain of feudal times.
II. Resident Seigniors.
Remains of the beneficent feudal spirit.—They are not
rigorous with their tenants but no longer retain the local
government.—Their isolation.—Insignificance or mediocrity
of their means of subsistence.—Their expenditure.—Not in a
condition to remit dues.—Sentiments of peasantry towards
them.
If we go back a little way in our history we find here and there similar nobles.1303 Such was the Duc de Saint-Simon, father of the writer, a real sovereign in his government of Blaye, and respected by the king himself. Such was the grandfather of Mirabeau, in his chateau of Mirabeau in Provence, the haughtiest, most absolute, most intractable of men, "demanding that the officers whom he appointed in his regiment should be favorably received by the king and by his ministers," tolerating the inspectors only as a matter of form, but heroic, generous, faithful, distributing the pension offered to himself among six wounded captains under his command, mediating for poor litigants in the mountain, driving off his grounds the wandering attorneys who come to practice their chicanery, "the natural protector of man even against ministers and the king. A party of tobacco inspectors having searched his curate's house, he pursues them so energetically on horseback that they hardly escape him by fording the Durance. Whereupon, "he wrote to demand the dismissal of the officers, declaring that unless this was done every person employed in the Excise should be driven into the Rhine or the sea; some of them were dismissed and the director himself came to give him satisfaction." Finding his canton sterile and the settlers on it idle he organized them into groups, women and children, and, in the foulest weather, puts himself at their head, with his twenty severe wounds and neck supported by a piece of silver. He pays them to work making them clear off the lands, which he gives them on leases of a hundred years, and he makes them enclose a mountain of rocks with high walls and plant it with olive trees. "No one, under any pretext could be excused from working unless he was ill, and in this case under treatment, or occupied on his own property, a point in which my father could not be deceived, and nobody would have dared to do it." These are the last offshoots of the old, knotty, savage trunk, but still capable of affording shelter. Others could still be found in remote cantons, in Brittany and in Auvergne, veritable district commanders, and I am sure that in time of need the peasants would obey them as much out of respect as from fear. Vigor of heart and of body justifies its own ascendancy, while the superabundance of energy, which begins in violence, ends in beneficence.
Less independent and less harsh a paternal government subsists elsewhere, if not in the law at least through custom. In Brittany, near Tréguier and Lannion, says the bailiff of Mirabeau,1304 "the entire staff of the coast-guard is composed of people of quality and of stock going back a thousand years. I have not seen one of them get irritated with a peasant-soldier, while, at the same time, I have seen on the part of the latter an air of filial respect for them. … It is a terrestrial paradise with respect to patriarchal manners, simplicity and true grandeur; the attitude of the peasants towards the seigniors is that of an affectionate son with his father; and the seigniors in talking with the peasants use their rude and coarse language, and speak only in a kind and genial way. We see mutual regard between masters and servants." Farther south, in the Bocage, a wholly agricultural region, and with no roads, where ladies are obliged to travel on horseback and in ox-carts, where the seignior has no farmers, but only twenty-five or thirty métayers who work for him on shares, the supremacy of the great is no offense to their inferiors. People live together harmoniously when living together from birth to death, familiarly, and with the same interests, occupations and pleasures; like soldiers with their officers, on campaigns and under tents, in subordination although in companionship, familiarity never endangering respect. "The seignior often visits them on their small farms,1305 talks with them about their affairs, about taking care of their cattle, sharing in the accidents and mishaps which likewise seriously affect him. He attends their children's weddings and drinks with the guests. On Sunday there are dances in the chateau court, and the ladies take part in them." When he is about to hunt wolves or boars the curate gives notice of it in the sermon; the peasants, with their guns gaily assemble at the rendezvous, finding the seignior who assigns them their posts, and strictly observing the directions he gives them. Here are soldiers and a captain ready made. A little later, and of their own accord, they will choose him for commandant in the national guard, mayor of the commune, chief of the insurrection, and, in 1792, the marksmen of the parish are to march under him against "the blues" as, at this epoch against the wolves. Such are the remnants of the good feudal spirit, like the scattered remnants of a submerged continent. Before Louis XIV., the spectacle was similar throughout France. "The rural nobility of former days," says the Marquis de Mirabeau, "spent too much time over their cups, slept on old chairs or pallets, mounted and started off to hunt before daybreak, met together on St. Hubert's, and did not part until after the octave of St. Martin's. … These nobles led a gay and hard life, voluntarily, costing the State very little, and producing more through its residence and manure than we of today with our tastes, our researches, our cholics and our vapors. . The custom, and it may be said, the obsession of making presents to the seigniors, is well known. I have, in my lifetime, seen this custom everywhere disappear, and rightly so. … The seigniors are no longer of any consequence to them; is quite natural that they should be forgotten by them as they forget. … The seignior being no longer known on his estates everybody pillages him, which is right."1306 Everywhere, except in remote corners, the affection and unity of the two classes has disappeared; the shepherd is separated from his flock, and pastors of the people end in being considered its parasites.
Let us first follow them into the provinces. We here find only the minor class of nobles and a portion of those of medium rank; the rest are in Paris.1307 There is the same line of separation in the church: abbés-commendatory, bishops and archbishops very seldom live at home. The grand-vicars and canons live in the large towns; only priors and curates dwell in the rural districts. Ordinarily the entire ecclesiastic or lay staff is absent; residents are furnished only by the secondary or inferior grades. What are their relations with the peasant? One point is certain, and that is that they are not usually hard, nor even indifferent, to him. Separated by rank they are not so by distance; neighborhood is of itself a bond among men. I have read in vain, but I have not found them the rural tyrants, which the declaimers of the Revolution portray them. Haughty with the bourgeois they are generally kind to the villager. "Let any one travel through the provinces," says a contemporary advocate, "over the estates occupied by the seigniors. Out of one hundred one may be found tyrannizing his dependents; all the others, patiently share the misery of those subject to their jurisdiction … They give their debtors time, remit sums due, and afford them every facility for settlement. They mollify and temper the sometimes over-rigorous proceedings of the fermiers, stewards and other men of business."1308 An Englishwoman, who observes them in Provence just after the Revolution, says that, detested at Aix, they are much beloved on their estates. "Whilst they pass the first citizens with their heads erect and an air of disdain, they salute peasants with extreme courtesy and affability." One of them distributes among the women, children and the aged on his domain wool and flax to spin during the bad season, and, at the end of the year, he offers a prize of one hundred livres for the two best pieces of cloth. In numerous instances the peasant-purchasers of their land voluntarily restore it for the purchase money. Around Paris, near Romainville, after the terrible storm of 1788 there is prodigal alms-giving; "a very wealthy man immediately distributes forty thousand francs among the surrounding unfortunates."