Madame Thérèse. Erckmann-Chatrian
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was on the tenth of August, 1792, a memorable day in the history of France.
9. On the twentieth of September the battle of Valmy was fought, in which the French defeated their enemies decisively. The next day the Republic was formally established, and on the twenty-second began Year One of the French Republic. In the January following, the king was executed. Prussia, Austria, England, Holland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Holy See, and Russia now combined to crush the young republic and restore monarchy. La Vendée, one of the western districts of France, rose against the radical changes introduced by the Revolution.
10. The National Assembly was succeeded by the Convention, among whose members dissensions arose and produced the Reign of Terror, from June to October, 1793. Among the excesses of this period was the abolition of the Christian religion in France and the substitution therefor of the worship of the Goddess of Reason.
11. The causes which led the French people to rise and overthrow its oppressors are fivefold:
(a). A despotic government. Over a century before the Revolution, Louis XIV had said, "L'état, c'est moi." In his opinion the people existed merely for him to tax, and despise in exact proportion to the burdens which they bore. His successors held the same doctrine. For nearly two centuries no king had summoned the national legislative body to make laws and lay taxes. Successive kings had, by royal decree, enacted such laws as they had seen fit, and had enforced them as they pleased. They arrested, imprisoned, and executed citizens, almost as they wished. Their taxation was extravagant, for the most part unnecessary, unreasonable, and brutal. They lived scandalous lives utterly regardless of their responsibility to their people. Their courts were notorious for extravagance, frivolity and vice.
(b). Another cause was a contemptible nobility. In profligacy the nobles imitated the kings. They despised their people, and robbed them of the little left by the king's tax collectors. They had many ancient feudal privileges but were unwilling to relinquish any of them to help the people. The nobility, like the clergy, on the pretext of saving their dignity exempted themselves from the necessity of paying taxes.
(c). The clergy. It has sometimes happened that oppression of the people by religious organizations has been commensurate with the tyranny of the ruling classes. On this account the oppressors representing religion have been despised by the people, quite as much as lay tyrants. The higher clergy, who were lords over nearly one fifth of the land of France, did not treat their vassals appreciably better than did the nobility. During the violence at the outbreak of the Revolution the people in some parts of France burned castles, churches, and monasteries alike. As Erckmann and Chatrian say in another work, "The peasants were weary of monasteries and châteaux; they wished to till the fields for themselves."
(d). The condition of the people. The life, liberty, and property of the peasant were at the mercy of the king and the upper classes. Yet the condition of the peasant was not utterly bad. He seems to have been oppressed because he was not intelligent enough to better himself.
(e). Taxation. It was a recognized principle of the French government, that the people might be forced to pay taxes and to build roads at pleasure. If the peasant did not pay taxes by the time appointed, collectors went to his home and seized whatever would satisfy the claim, even taking clothes laid on bushes to dry, and sometimes going so far as to remove doors from their hinges, or to take beams and boards from the buildings and carry them away in place of taxes.
The salt tax (la gabelle) was an odious burden in its lack of uniformity. It was thirty times as high in some parts of France as it was in others. Besides, every person had to buy seven pounds a year for household use; this salt could not be devoted to any other use. A peasant needing salt for other purposes was forced to buy other salt, on which there was of course a tax. To all the nobility, however, the king made an annual free distribution of salt.
The corvée, or forced contribution to build roads, was an oppressive and tyrannical tax. Public good may have required community of labor on roads, but the later abuse by which royal officers "tore away poor peasants from their families and work, and drove them off to build roads" was not to be endured. While building roads peasants had only what food they brought along or what they begged out of working hours.
Louis Blanc makes the peasant soliloquize thus under the pre-Revolutionary taxation:
"They condemn me to work without pay. My family counts on my work in the field, but they take me away and force me to level the highway under coach wheels, under the feet of the trader or the priest or the elegant gentleman. I don't know how to surface roads; yet they take no account of my ignorance and if my work is ill-done, they will come in a few months and take my time to repair it. I am a human being, yet they treat me with a harshness which oxen and mules are spared. I pay a tax that the nobility and clergy may be exempt; and they make me break stone on the road for them, profiting by it without even being grateful to me. They make me buy salt at twelve cents a pound; they rob me on tobacco; they billet soldiers on me; and when I give them a whole week of my work, they don't pay me; if any of my animals die of fatigue while working for them, they never reimburse me. If I am maimed in their service, they brutally thrust me out on a charitable public."
Peasants were not allowed to enclose fields; and sometimes they were forbidden the necessary practice of agriculture, lest it might drive the game from the neighborhood or in some other way interfere with the lord's hunting. In seasons of bountiful crops peasants fared badly; but in years when crops failed, death and starvation walked through the land; so that the good Fénelon said to his king, "France is simply a large hospital, full of woe and empty of food." This picture is perhaps too dark and is hardly a fair presentation of the condition of French peasantry.
(f). The trend of French philosophy. Many writers in France, among them Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert, and Abbé Bergier, were publishing new doctrines about the rights of man and about government. Their teachings were too advanced for the France of the Bourbon kings. These philosophers did much to stimulate thought and discussion in the field of government and politics. Thus they prepared the minds of many for the steps that led to the Revolution. They did much to create the discontent which led the French people to assume and exercise the rights that were their own, though the result was the overthrow of established government and the downfall of kings.
(g). The success of the American Revolution, 1776-1783. Across the sea the Americans had resented and resisted tyranny and oppression; this fact was all the better known because of French interest, sympathy, and assistance. Thus the French found a recent precedent for their own attempt to overthrow a tyrannical government and establish a republic.
Erckmann and Chatrian
Erckmann and Chatrian, or Erckmann-Chatrian, as the French write this collaborative name, were two authors whose joint productions were at first short stories, and later a series of historical romances which made their fame. In these they confined their efforts to themes suggested by the history of their own country, France. The scenes are for the most part laid in localities which they themselves knew--especially the Alsace of their youth. Their best characters are from classes of their beloved people with whom they had lived, and whose virtues and faults were to them as open books. The chosen time of most of their romances is the period of the French Revolution, and the purpose--for they wrote with a purpose--is the glorification of peace and the universal brotherhood of man.
They had several successes in the dramatic field also, some of their plays being cordially received not only in France but in other countries. Their play called Alsace was intensely patriotic, and pleased the people, whenever a despotic government allowed it to be presented. Their Juif Polonais, or "The Bells", as it is known in English, has been on the stage for nearly forty years, and enjoys a great popularity yet. Probably no play in Sir Henry Irving's repertory was received with the same steady favor or was acted so many times by him.
Émile Erckmann was born at Phalsbourg, a fortified town of Alsace on the border between Germany and France, May 20, 1822. His father was a poor shopkeeper and as late as 1870 continued to serve his customers. The younger Erckmann received his education at the local college, but only after a hard struggle. Like the others