The Ancient Regime. Taine Hippolyte
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thousand inhabitants. He appoints one-half of the aldermen of Cambray and the whole of the administrators of Cateau. He nominates the abbots to two great abbeys, and presides over the provincial assemblies and the permanent bureau, which succeeds them. In short, under the intendant, or at his side, he maintains a pre-eminence and better still, an influence somewhat like that to day maintained over his domain by grand duke incorporated into the new German empire. Near him, in Hainaut, the abbé of Saint-Armand possesses seven-eighths of the territory of the provostship while levying on the other eighth the seigniorial taxes of the corvées and the dime. He nominates the provost of the aldermen, so that, in the words of the grievances, "he composes the entire State, or rather he is himself the State."1326 I should never end if I were to specify all these big prizes. Let us select only those of the prelacy, and but one particular side, that of money. In the "Almanach Royal," and in "La France Ecclésiastique" for 1788, we may read their admitted revenues. The veritable revenue, however, is one-half more for the bishoprics, an double and triple for the abbeys; and we must again double the veritable revenue in order to estimate its value in the money of to day.1327. The one hundred and thirty-one bishops and arch-bishops possess in the aggregate 5, 600, 000 livres of episcopal income and 1,200,000 livres in abbeys, averaging 50,000 livres per head as in the printed record, and in reality 100,000. A bishop thus, in the eyes of his contemporaries, according to the statement of spectators cognizant of the actual truth, was "a grand seignior, with an income of 100,000 livres."1328 Some of the most important sees are magnificently endowed. That of Sens brings in 70,000 livres; Verdun, 74,000; Tours, 82,000; Beauvais, Toulouse and Bayeux, 90,000; Rouen, 100,000; Auch, Metz and Albi, 120,000; Narbonne, 160,000; Paris and Cambray, 200,000 according to official reports, and probably half as much more in sums actually collected. Other sees, less lucrative, are, proportionately, still better provided. Imagine a small provincial town, oftentimes not even a petty sub-prefecture of our times—Conserans, Mirepoix, Lavaur, Rieux, Lombez, Saint-Papoul, Comminges, Luçon, Sarlat, Mende, Fréjus, Lescar, Belley, Saint-Malo, Tréguier, Embrun, Saint-Claude—and, in the neighborhood, less than two hundred, one hundred, and sometimes even less than fifty parishes, and, as recompense for this slight ecclesiastical surveillance, a prelate receiving from 25,000 to 70,000 livres, according to official statements; from 37,000 to 105,000 livres in actual receipts; and from 74,000 to 210,000 livres in the money of to day. As to the abbeys, I count thirty-three of them producing to the abbé from 25,000 to 120,000 livres, and twenty-seven which bring from 20,000 to 100,000 livres to the abbess. Weigh these sums taken from the Almanach, and bear in mind that they must be doubled, and more, to obtain the real revenue, and be quadrupled, and more, to obtain the actual value. It is evident, that, with such revenues, coupled with the feudal rights, police, justiciary and administrative, which accompany them, an ecclesiastic or lay grand seignior is, in fact, a sort of prince in his district. He bears too close a resemblance to the ancient sovereign to be entitled to live as an ordinary individual. His private advantages impose on him a public character. His rank, and his enormous profits, makes it incumbent on him to perform proportionate services, and that, even under the sway of the intendant, he owes to his vassals, to his tenants, to his feudatories the support of his mediation, of his patronage and of his gains.
To do this he must be in residence, but, generally, he is an absentee. For a hundred and fifty years a kind of all-powerful attraction diverts the grandees from the provinces and impels them towards the capital. The movement is irresistible, for it is the effect of two forces, the greatest and most universal that influence mankind, one, a social position, and the other the national character. A tree is not to be severed from its roots with impunity. Appointed to govern, an aristocracy frees itself from the land when it no longer rules. It ceases to rule the moment when, through increasing and constant encroachments, almost the entire justiciary, the entire administration, the entire police, each detail of the local or general government, the power of initiating, of collaboration, of control regarding taxation, elections, roads, public works and charities, passes over into the hands of the intendant or of the sub-delegate, under the supreme direction of the comptroller-general or of the king's council.1329 Civil servants, men "of the robe and the quill," colorless commoners, perform the administrative work; there is no way to prevent it. Even with the king's delegates, a provincial governor, were he hereditary, a prince of the blood, like the Condés in Burgundy, must efface himself before the intendant; he holds no effective office; his public duties consist of showing off and providing entertainment. Besides he would badly perform any others. The administrative machine, with its thousands of hard, creaking and dirty wheels, as Richelieu and Louis XIV, fashioned it, can work only in the hands of workmen who may be dismissed at any time therefore unscrupulous and prompt to give way to the judgment of the State. It is impossible to allow oneself to get mixed up with rogues of that description. He accordingly abstains, and abandons public affairs to them. Unemployed, bored, what could he now do on his domain, where he no longer reigns, and where dullness overpowers him? He betakes himself to the city, and especially to the court. Moreover, only here can he pursue a career; to be successful he has to become a courtier. It is the will of the king, one must frequent his apartments to obtain his favors; otherwise, on the first application for them the answer will be, "Who is he? He is a man that I never see." In the king's eyes there is no excuse for absence, even should the cause is a conversion, with penitence for a motive. In preferring God to the king, he has deserted. The ministers write to the intendants to ascertain if the gentlemen of their province "like to stay at home," and if they "refuse to appear and perform their duties to the king." Imagine the grandeur of such attractions available at the court, governments, commands, bishoprics, benefices, court-offices, survivor-ships, pensions, credit, favors of every kind and degree for self and family. All that a country of 25 millions men can offer that is desirable to ambition, to vanity, to interest, is found here collected as in a reservoir. They rush to it and draw from it.—And the more readily because it is an agreeable place, arranged just as they would have it, and purposely to suit the social aptitudes of the French character. The court is a vast permanent drawing room to which "access is easy and free to the king's subjects;" where they live with him, "in gentle and virtuous society in spite of the almost infinite distance of rank and power;" where the monarch prides himself on being the perfect master of a household.1330 In fact, no drawing room was ever so well kept up, nor so well calculated to retain its guests by every kind of enjoyment, by the beauty, the dignity and the charm of its decoration, by the selection of its company and by the interest of the spectacle. Versailles is the only place to show oneself off; to make a figure, to push one's way, to be amused, to converse or gossip at the head-quarters of news, of activity and of public matters, with the élite of the kingdom and the arbiters of fashion, elegance and taste. "Sire," said M. de Vardes to Louis XIV, "away from Your Majesty one not only feels miserable but ridiculous." None remain in the provinces except the poor rural nobility; to live there one must be behind the age, disheartened or in exile. The king's banishment of a seignior to his estates is the highest disgrace; to the humiliation of this fall is added the insupportable weight of boredom. The finest chateau on the most beautiful site is a frightful "desert"; nobody is seen there save the grotesques of a small town or the village peasants.1331
"Exile alone," says Arthur Young, "can force the French nobility to do what the English prefer to do, and that is to live on their estates and embellish them."
Saint-Simon and other court historians, on mentioning a ceremony, repeatedly state that "all France was there"; in fact, every one of consequence in France is there, and each recognizes the other by this sign. Paris and the court become, accordingly, the necessary sojourn of all fine people. In such a situation departure begets departure; the more a province is forsaken the more they forsake it. "There is not in the kingdom," says the Marquis de Mirabeau, "a single estate of any size of which the proprietor is not in Paris and who, consequently, neglects his buildings and chateaux."1332 The lay grand seigniors have their hotels in the capital, their entresol