The Ancient Regime. Taine Hippolyte
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walls without a special permit.1355 In case of a permit being given he must leave a wide, open and continuous space in order to let the huntsmen easily pass through. He is not allowed to keep any ferret, any fire-arm, any instrument adapted to the chase, nor to be followed by any dog even if not adapted to it, except the dog be held by a leash or clog fastened around its neck. And better still. He is forbidden to reap his meadow or his Lucerne before St. John's day, to enter his own field between the first of May and the twenty-fourth of June, to visit any island in the Seine, to cut grass on it or osiers, even if the grass and osiers belong to him. The reason is, that now the partridge is hatching and the legislator protects it; he would take less pains for a woman in confinement; the old chroniclers would say of him, as with William Rufus, that his bowels are paternal only for animals. Now, in France, four hundred square leagues of territory are subject to the control of the captaincies,1356 and, over all France, game, large or small, is the tyrant of the peasant. We may conclude, or rather listen to the people's conclusion. "Every time," says M. Montlosier, in 1789,1357 "that I chanced to encounter herds of deer or does on my road my guides immediately shouted: 'Make room for the gentry!' in this way alluding to the ravages committed by them on their land." Accordingly, in the eyes of their subjects, they are wild animals.—This shows to what privileges can lead when divorced from duties. In this manner an obligation to protect degenerates into a right of devastation. Thus do humane and rational beings act, unconsciously, like irrational and inhuman beings. Divorced from the people they misuse them; nominal chiefs, they have unlearned the function of an effective chief; having lost all public character they abate nothing of their private advantages. So much the worse for the canton, and so much worse for themselves. The thirty or forty poachers whom they prosecute to day on their estates will march to-morrow to attack their chateaux at the head of an insurrection. The absence of the masters, the apathy of the provinces, the bad state of cultivation, the exactions of agents, the corruption of the tribunals, the vexations of the captaincies, indolence, the indebtedness and exigencies of the seignior, desertion, misery, the brutality and hostility of vassals, all proceeds from the same cause and terminates in the same effect.
When sovereignty becomes transformed into a sinecure it becomes burdensome without being useful, and on becoming burdensome without being useful it is overthrown.
1301 (return) [ Beugnot, "Mémoires," V. I. p.292.—De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution."]
1302 (return) [ Arthur Young, "Travels in France," II. 456. In France, he says, it is from the eleventh to the thirty-second. "But nothing is known like the enormities committed in England where the tenth is really taken."]
1303 (return) [ Saint-Simon, "Mémoires," ed. Chéruel, vol. I.—Lucas de Montigny, "Mémoires de Mirabeau," I. 53–182.—Marshal Marmont, "Mémoires," I. 9, 11.—Châteaubriand, "Mémoires," I. 17. De Montlosier, "Mémoires," 2 vol. passim.—Mme. de Larochejacquelein, "Souvenirs," passim. Many details concerning the types of the old nobility will be found in these passages. They are truly and forcibly depicted in two novels by Balzac in "Beatrix," (the Baron de Guénic) and in the "Cabinet des Antiques," (the Marquis d' Esgrignon).]
1304 (return) [ A letter of the bailiff of Mirabeau, 1760, published by M. de Loménie in the "Correspondant," V. 49, p.132.]
1305 (return) [ Mme. de Larochejacquelein, ibid. I. 84. "As M. de Marigny had some knowledge of the veterinary art the peasants of the canton came after him when they had sick animals."]
1306 (return) [ Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traité de la Population," p. 57.]
1307 (return) [ De Tocqueville, ibid. p.180. This is proved by the registers of the capitation-tax which was paid at the actual domicile.]
1308 (return) [ Renauldon, ibid.., Preface p. 5.—Anne Plumptre, "A narrative of three years residence in France from 1802 to 1805." II. 357.—Baroness Oberkirk, "Mémoires," II. 389.—"De l'état religieux," by the abbés Bonnefoi and Bernard, 1784, p. 295.—Mme.Vigée-Lébrun, "Souvenirs," p.171.]
1309 (return) [ Archives nationales, D, XIX. portfolios 14, 15, 25. Five bundles of papers are filled with these petitions.]
1310 (return) [ Ibid. D, XIX. portfolio 11. An admirable letter by Joseph of Saintignon, abbé of Domiévre, general of the regular canons of Saint-Sauveur and a resident. He has 23,000 livres income, of which 6,066 livres is a pension from the government, in recompense for his services. His personal expenditure not being over 5,000 livres "he is in a situation to distribute among the poor and the workmen, in the space of eleven years, more than 250,000 livres."]
1311 (return) [ On the conduct and sentiments of lay and ecclesiastical seigniors cf. Léonce de Lavergne, "Les Assemblées provinciales," I vol. Legrand, "L'intendance du Hainaut," I vol. Hippeau, "Le Gouvernement de Normandie," 9 vols.]
1312 (return) [ "The most active sympathy filled their breasts; that which an opulent man most dreaded was to be regarded as insensible." (Lacretelle, vol. V. p. 2.)]
1313 (return) [ Floquet, "Histoire du Parlement de Normandie," vol. VI. p.696. In 1772 twenty-five gentlemen and imprisoned or exiled for having signed a protest against the orders of the court.]
1314 (return) [ De Tocqueville, ibid. pp. 39, 56, 75, 119, 184. He has developed this point with admirable force and insight.]
1315 (return) [ De Tocqueville, ibid. p.376. Complaints of the provincial assembly of Haute-Guyenne. "People complain daily that there is no police in the rural districts. How could there be one? The nobles takes no interest in anything, excepting a few just and benevolent seigniors who take advantage of their influence with vassals to prevent affrays."]
1316 (return) [ Records of the States-General of 1789. Many of the registers of the noblesse consist of the requests by nobles, men