The story of a peasant, (1789), or, The beginning of the great French revolution

Front matter

IN-

STORY

AS ANT

Part The First

The story of the Great Eevolution of the people and the middle classes against the nobles in 1789 has been told by many. But they were men of wit and learning, who took an extended view of the matter. I am an old j>easant, and I will only speak of these facts as they affected ourselves. Let us attend to our business ; we must be acquainted with what occurred before our eyes ; let us profit by them.

You must know, before the Eevolution, the district and lordship of Phalsbourg had five villages belonging to it — Vilschberg, Mittelbronn, Lutzelbourg, Hultenhausen, and Hazelbourg. The townspeople and those of Vilschberg and Hazelbourg were free, but those of the other villages were serfs, men and women alike ; they could not leave the lordship or otherwise absent themselves without the prevot's permission.

The prevot administered justice at the town-hall ; he had both civil and criminal jurisdiction ; he wore a sword, and could send a man to the gallows.

Accused persons were put to the torture in the vaults under the town-hall, where the guard-room now stands. If they refused to confess, the prevot's sergeant and the executioner put them to such pain, that their cries could be heard on the open square.

The gallows were erected on market days under the old elms, and the hangman despatched them by resting his feet on their shoulders. In those days it required a stout heart to do wrong only in imagination. Phalsbourg had also a right to levy a toll on all commodities ; for instance, every cart laden with cloth, wool, or similar wares paid a florin at the gates ; every load of poles, planks, frames, or other woodwork, six gros de Lorraine; and rich stuffs, either velvets, silks, or cloths, paid thirty gros a waggon- load; one packhorse, two gros; one basket of goods, half a gros ; a truckful of fish, half a florin ; of butter, eggs, or cheese, six gros ; every hogshead of salt, six gros ; every rezal of rye or wheat, three gros ; of barley or oats, two gros ; one hundred pounds of iron paid two gros ; a cow or an ox, six pfennings ; a calf, pig, or sheep, two pfennings, &c.

In this wise the Phalsbourg people could neither eat, drink, nor clothe themselves without paying a round sum to the Dukes of Lorraine.

Then came the gabelle — that is, every hotel-keeper and tavern-keeper living in Phalsbourg or the villages belonging to it was obliged to pay his highness a certain tax on every measure of wine or beer which was either stored in their cellars or consumed by them. Then there were fines on alienation, which means five per cent, on the sale of houses or inherited property. Then came the tax on grain — every rezal of wheat, rye, barley, or oats sold in the market paid his highness one sou.

-t lie awry oj a ireasant. 11

Then there were the standings at the fairs, that took place three times a year ; the first, St. Matthew's day, the second, St. Modesty's, and the third, St. Gall's day. The sergeant put a price on these standings for the benefit of his highness.

Next, the town weights — every hundred pounds of wool, flour, or other goods paid one sou ; then the fines, which were always disputed before the prevot, but which his highness's counsellors usually decided in his favour ; then the right to gather acorns, the right of pasture, of mowing, of felling ; the great tithes, twothirds for his highness, and one for the Church ; the small tithes on wheat for the Church only, but which his highness finished by appropriating, loving himself better than the Church.

If any one wants to know how so many people found themselves in the clutches of his highness and hi3 prevots and bailiffs, they must remember that about 200 years before this miserable state of things, a certain George-John Count Palatine, Duke of Bavaria, and Count of Weldentz, who possessed immense forests in our country by the grace of the Emperors of Germany, but who profited nothing by them for want of inhabitants, want of roads to transport the wood, and of rivers to float it down to a market for it, published in Alsace, Lorraine, and the Palatinate, " That all those who were not afraid to work had but to betake themselves to these woods, that he would give them land, and they would live in abundance." That he, John of Weldentz, did all this for the glory of God ! That Phalsbourg being on the high road between France, Lorraine, Vestrich, and Alsace, artisans, tradespeople, blacksmiths, coopers, and farriers, and shoemakers would find a market for their productions, as would locksmiths, armourers, innkeepers, furniture-makers, and other industrious persons ; that as the honour of God ought to be the beginning of every great undertaking, all those who found themselves in his good town of Phalsbourg should be free from servitude ; they should be free to build, and should have wood for nothing ! he would construct them a church wherein to preach purity, simplicity, and good faith ; and a school to teach their children true religion, seeing that the mind of youth is a beautiful garden with delicious plants therein, the scent of which rises to God!

He promised them a thousand exemptions and advantages besides; the news soon spread over Germany, and crowds of people hurried to have a share in these good things.

They built, they cleared, they cultivated, and made the woods of George-John of some value, instead of being worthless.

Then did the said George- John, Count of Weldentz, sell lands, beasts, and inhabitants to Charles III., Duke of Lorraine, for the sum of 400,000 florins, in honour of good faith, justice, and the glory of God.

The greater number of the inhabitants were Lutherans. George-John had declared that faith, pure and simple according to St. Paul, should be preached at Phalsbourg, in virtue of the Confession of Augsburg ; but as soon as he had pocketed the 400,000 florins, his promises never kept him awake, and the successor to Charles III., who had promised nothing at all, sent his trusty and well-beloved counsellor of state, Didier Dathel, to exhort his townsmen of Phalsbourg to embrace the Catholic faith ; should any persist in their errors, to order them to leave the town on pain of expulsion and loss of property. Some were after this fashion converted ; the rest, men, Avomen, and children, left, taking their carts loaded with old furniture with them.

Order being thus established, the dukes employed " their dearly-beloved inhabitants of Phalsbourg in raising and repairing the ramparts ; in building the two gates of Germany and Prance of hewn stone ; in clearing out the ditches, building a town-hall for the administration of justice, a church for the instruction of the faithful, and a home for the curate adjoining the said new church, to watch over his flock ; last of all, to build the market-hall, where the dues were levied and paid." After which the officers of his highness settled what duties, charges, service, and forced labour, of corvees, they thought proper ; and so these poor people worked from father to son, from 1583 to 1789, for the benefit of the Dukes of Lorraine and the Kings of Prance, for having believed in the promises of George- John of Weldentz, who was only a rogue, like many others in this world.

The dukes also established several corporations in Phalsbourg by letters patent, associations among men of the same trade, to prevent all others from working at it, and consequently enabling themselves to plunder the public between them without let or hindrance.

The state of apprenticeship lasted three, four, or five years. The master was well paid for admission to the trade ; then after making his masterpiece and receiving his certificate, the quondam apprentice treated his neighbours as he had been treated himself.

The town was nothing like what it is now. The lines of streets and the stone-built houses are of course the same, but not one house was painted ; all were in roughcast ; the doors and windows were small and arched, and behind the leaden framework of the windows the tailor was to be seen sitting crosslegged on his board, cutting out or sewing, and the weaver at his loom throwing his shuttle in the obscurity.

The soldiers of the garrison, with their large cocked hats, their patched white coats hanging about their heels, were most wretched of all ; they were only fed once a day. The tavern-keepers and chop-house-keepers went from house to house collecting broken victuals for these poor devils ; this was still the case some few years before the Eevolution.

The people themselves looked wan and dismal ; a dress was handed down from grandmother to granddaughter ; the grandfather's shoes were inherited by the grandson. No pavement in the streets, no lights at night, no gutters to the roofs ; small panes of glass in the windows, mostly replaced for twenty years by pieces of paper. In the midst of this squalor the prevot passes and mounts the staircase of the town-hall, a black cap on his head ; young officers, nobles, march about in their little cocked hats and white uniforms, their swords against the calves of their legs ; capucins with their dirty beards, brown gowns, no shirts, and red noses, trooping to the convent, where now the college stands. I see all in my mind's eye as if it were yesterday, and I say to myself, " What happiness for wretches like us that the Eevolution happened, and most of all for the peasantry !" For if the misery and want in the town were great, in the country they exceeded all description. In the first place the peasants paid the same dues as the townsfolk, with many others besides. In every village in Lorraine there was a farm belonging to the seigneur or to a convent ; all the best land belonged to this farm ; the poor had only the worst as their share. Nor were the unfortunate peasants allowed to cultivate their land as they wished ; grass land must remain grass land, arable land arable. If the peasant laid any of his land down in grass he robbed the cure of his tithe ; if he ploughed up his meadow he diminished the grazing land ; if he sowed his fallows with clover, he could not prevent the flocks of the seigneur or of the convent eating up his crop. His land was burdened with fruit-trees, which were let for the benefit of the seigneur or the abbey ; these trees he could not destroy, but was obliged to replace them when dead. The shade of these trees, the damage caused by gathering the fruit, and the ground occupied by their roots, caused him a very great loss.

In addition to all this the seigneur had the right of sporting, of walking over the crops and injuring the harvests in all seasons ; and if the peasant killed one single head of game even on his own land he risked being sent to the galleys. The seigneur and the abbey had also the right of sending their cattle to graze an hour earlier than the peasant could send his beasts, which of course suffered in consequence.

The farm of the seigneur or of the abbey had also exclusive right to a dovecot ; their pigeons covered the fields by thousands, and hemp, peas, beans, had to be sown thrice over if a crop was to be hoped for. Then, every father of a family owed the seigneur in the course of the year fifteen bichets of oats, ten fowls, twenty-four eggs. He had to give up to him three working days — three for each of his sons or his servants, and three days' cartage or horse labour. He had to mow his meadow round the chateau, make his hay, and cart it to the barn at the first sound of the bell, subject to a fine of five sous each time he failed. He had also to cart both stones and timber when required for repairing the chateau or the farm. The seigneur fed him on a crust of bread and a clove or garlic — that is what was called the corvee, or forced labour. I must also mention the manorial bakehouse, the manorial mill, the manorial press, where the whole village was obliged to go, of course by paying. I will just notice the executioner, who had a right to the skin of every dead beast ; and lastly the tithe, the worst of all, was, the cures took the eleventh sheaf of corn, at a time when so many monks, canons, carmelites, capucins, and mendicant friars of all sorts were to be fed. If I were to speak of all these impositions, and of a thousand others which crushed the country population down to the ground, I should never come to an end.

It seemed as if the seigneurs and the convents had leagued together to exterminate the wretched peasantry, and that they took all possible means to succeed.

And even now the measure was not yet full. As long as our country remained under the rule of the dukes, the exactions of his highness, as well as those of the seigneurs, abbeys, priories, convents of men and convents of women, were quite enough to ruin us all ; but after the death of Stanilas and the incorporation of Lorraine with France, there had to be added the king's capitation tax— that is, the father of every family had to pay twelve sous a head for every child and every servant — the king's supply ; so much for the furniture — the king's twentieth, which meant the twentieth of the net produce of the land, but only of the peasants' land, the seigneurs and the clergy paid no twentieth ; then the tax on salt and tobacco, from which the seigneurs and the priests were also exempted ; and lastly the king's excise or assessed taxes.

Then, again, if the princes, seigneurs, and convents, who had kept the best land to themselves for ages past, obliging the wretched peasants to plough, to sow, to reap for them, compelling them to pay all costs or contributions as well — if they had used their wealth in making roads, digging canals, draining marshes, manuring the soil, building schools and hospitals ; if they had done this the evil would have been only half as great ; but their only cares were their pleasures, their pride, and their greed.

When one saw the Cardinal Louis de Rohan, a prince of the Church, as he was called, living in debauchery at Saverne, turning decent people into ridicule, and causing the peasants to be beaten on the road before his carriage by his lackeys ; when one saw at Neuville, Bouxviller, Hildeshausen, the great men build pheasantries, orangeries, and hothouses ; lay out gardens, half a league in extent, full of vases, statues, and fountains, in imitation of the king at Versailles ; not to speak of the loose women dressed out in silks, that they carried about with them amongst these poor people ; when one saw droves of barefooted friars, cordeliers, and capucins begging and lounging about from New Year's Day to St. Sylvester ; when one saw bailiffs, prevots, seneschals, notaries, and judges of all sorts, only thinking of their fees, and living on exactions and fines ; when one saw a thousand similar grievances, it was sad indeed, the more sad because the sons of the peasants alone supported this state of things against their fathers, their friends, and themselves.

Once enlisted, these sons of peasants forgot the distress in their villages, forgot their mothers and sisters ; they only acknowledged their officers, their colonelsnobles who had bought them, and at whose command they would massacre every one, for the honour of their colours ! Yet not one of these men could rise to become an officer : clowns were unworthy of the epaulette ; but after having been wounded in battle, they were allowed to beg their way. The knowing ones picked up recruits in the taverns and tried to swindle them out of the bounty money, the bolder turned highwaymen ; sometimes one or two companies of gendarmes were sent against them. I saw a dozen hanged at Phalsbourg, nearly all old soldiers, disbanded after the seven years' war. They had lost the habit of work and did not get a livre of pension, and were all taken at Vilschberg after having stopped a diligence near Saverne. Any one can now understand what the ancien regime was like — the nobles and the priests had everything, the people nothing.

II

Thank Cod this is all over now ! The peasants Lave acquired their share in the good things of the earth, and naturally I have not remained behind. Every one hereabouts knows Father Michel's farm, his Valtin meadows, his fine Swiss cows, wandering about the firforests, and his twelve big plough oxen.

I have nothing to complain of: my grandson, Jacques, is at the Polytechnic School in Paris, in the first class; my granddaughter, Christine, is married to the inspector of forests, Martin, a man with plenty of good sense ; my granddaughter, Juliette, is the wife of Commandant Forbin, of the Engineers ; and the last one, Michel, whom I may be said to like the best, because he is the last, is going to be a doctor — he passed his bachelor examination last year at Nancy ; if he works he will get on.

I owe all this to the Eevolution ! Before '89 I could have possessed nothing ; I might have worked all my life for the seigneur and the convent.

Sitting, as I do now, in my old arm-chair, in the middle of the big room, the old crockery in the rack over the door shining in the fire-light ; the old hen and her chickens coming and going ; my old dog stretched before the fire, his muzzle resting on his forefeet, looks me in the face for hours together ; when I see through the windows my apple-trees white with blossom, my old beehives, and I hear the farm-lads singing and chattering with the girls in the yard ; the ploughs going out, the hay-waggons coming in, whips cracking, horses neighing ; as I sit thinking there, I call to mind the horrible hut in which my poor father and mother and sisters and brothers lived in 1780 — its four bare and crazy walls, the windows stuffed with straw, the thatch worn down by rain, melted snow, and wind ; a sort of black, rotten den, where we used to be smothered in smoke, and shiver from cold and hunger ; when I think of these really brave people, of my good father, and of my mother courageously and ceaselessly working to give us a few beans for food ; when I see them before me covered with rags, the picture of misery — it makes me shudder, and, if I am by myself, I begin to cry.

The indignation I feel for those who made us drag out such a miserable existence, in order to screw the last farthing from us, will never be extinguished ; my eighty-five years count for nothing ; the older I grow the stronger I feel. And when I think that sons of the people, the Gros-Jacques, the Gros-Jeans, the Guillots, dare to write in their papers that the Eevolution destroyed everything — that we were much more honest, much happier before '89 —what liars ! Every time I get hold of one of their papers I tremble with rage. It is of no use for Michel to say — -

" What is the use of being angry, grandfather ? Those fellows are paid to deceive people, to lead them back into ignorance ; it is their business, it is their only means of living."

I reply —

" No ; we shot dozens of men from '92 to '99 a thousand times better than these ; they were the nobles, the

^oldiers of Conde, they fought for their principles ! But

betray father, mother, children, and country, to fill pe's belly, is too much !"

', If I were to read these rascally papers often I should h|,ve a fit ; fortunately my wife puts it out of sight if oie chances to find its way to the farm. But they are hie the plague, they get everywhere without being sojight for.

This, then, is the reason I have made up my mind to write this story — the story of a peasant — to destroy this spite, and to let the world know what we underwent. It is some time since I first thought of it. My wife has preserved all our old letters. This work will give me some trouble, but one must not mind trouble if one means to do good ; besides, there is a great deal of pleasure in worrying those who vex us ; were it only for that I could spend years at my desk, spectacles on nose.

It will amuse me, and will do me good, to think we have driven those rascals away. I need not hurry myself; just one thing will occur to me and then another, and I shall put down everything in its turn ; without order nothing goes right.

ISTow I begin.

I am not to be made to believe that the peasantry was happy before the Revolution; I have seen what they call " the good old times ;" I have seen our old villages ; I have seen the manorial bakehouse where they baked their cake once a year, and the manorial wine-press, where they only went when forced to work for the seigneur or the abbey ; I have seen the lean, scraggy labourers, with neither shirts nor sabots, but only a frock and linen pantaloons, summer and winter alike ; their wives, so sunburnt, so filthy and ragged that they might be taken for beasts; their childrei hanging about the doors, with nothing but a rag to cover them round their loins. Even the seigneu-s themselves could not help writing in their books it that time " that the poor animals bent over the ground in sunshine and in rain to get bread for every oie, ought at least to have a little of it to eat." They wrote thus in a moment of good feeling, and then they thought no more of it. These things are never to be forgottai ; ask Mittelbronn, Hultenhausen, Baraques, ask all the country round. And the old people used to speak of a state of things still worse ; they talked about the great war of the Swedes and the French, and the Lorramers — the seven years' war — when they hanged the peasants to the trees in bunches ; they spoke of the great plague which followed to complete the ruin of every one. You could go for leagues without meeting a soul. They used to cry with uplifted hands, " 0 Lord Grod, save us from the plague, from war, and from famine !" As for famine, they had it every year. With sixteen chapters, twenty-eight abbeys, thirty-six priories, forty-seven convents for men, and nineteen for women, in one single diocese, besides several lordships, how could sufficient beans, peas, and vegetables be harvested for winter ? They had not yet learned to plant potatoes, and the poor had nothing but hard pulse to eat ; how could they get food enough ?

No day labourer could.

After forced labour in ploughing, sowing, hoeing, mowing, haymaking, carting — and in the vine districts in the vintage also — in fact, after this amount of forced labour, when the good times were employed in getting in the crops for the seigneur and the abbey, what could a man do for self and children ? Nothing. So as soon afe the dead season arrived three-fourths of the villagers sdt out to beg.

,The capucins of Phalsbourg complained if every one tobk up their trade they would leave the country, which would be a great loss to religion. In consequence of this, M. Schneider, the prevot, and the Marquis Talaru, the governor of the town, forbade mendicancy, and police- sergeants, and even detachments of the regiments of Eouergue, Schenau, and La Fare gave their help to the capucins. It was risking the galleys, but life was sweet ; the poor set out in troops, in spite of all, to look for food.

Want ! that is what lowers a man ; I repeat, want and bad example. When one met on all the roads capucins, cordeliers, barefooted friars — fellows six feet high, strong as bullocks, fit to roll a wheelbarrow — when one saw them daily walking about with their long beards and hairy arms, holding out their hands without any shame, and grinning for a couple of liards — how could the poor ever respect themselves ?

Unfortunately it is not enough to beg for bread if one is hungry, but others must have it to give ; it was the usual phrase, " Every one for himself, God for us all !"

Towards the close of the winter a report was usually spread that some band had been robbing carriages either in Alsace or Lorraine. Troops were put in motion, and the business was concluded by hanging a number of men.

Just fancy in these days a poor basket-maker with a wife and six children, without a sou or an inch of ground ; neither goat nor fowl — in fact, with no other means of subsistence but his labour, and no hoje either for him or for his children of a change for tie better ! So it was ordained — some came into the worid noble, and ought to have everything, and the others were born labourers, and consequently were doomed to live in misery from generation to generation. Fancy this state of things ; long days of hunger, winter nights without covering, the dread of tax-gatherers, police-sergeants, gamekeepers, bailiffs ! Well, in spite cf all that, when spring came, after a long winter, when the sun shone upon the lonely hut, lighting the cobwebs on the beams, the little hearth, in the left-hand corner, the foot of the ladder on the right, the clay floor, and the heat, the pleasant heat which warmed us ; when the cricket began to chirp, the woods to grow green again, in spite of all we were happy in life, happy to stretch ourselves at the door, holding our little naked feet in our hands, happy to laugh and whistle, to look up in the sky while rolling in the dust.

When we saw our father coming from the woods, with a great faggot of green broom or branches of birch on his shoulders, his hair hanging over his face, with a smile upon it when he saw us at a distance, we used all to run and meet him ; then he would put the faggot on end for a minute while he kissed the little ones, his face, his blue eyes, his nose a little heavy at the tip, his thick lips lighted up ; he really seemed happy.

How good he was ! how he loved us ! And then our mother, grey and wrinkled at forty ; for all that, full of courage, always in the fields, digging others' ground, every evening spinning others' hemp and flax to feed her brood and pay all sorts of dues and exactions. What courage, and yet what misery, thus to work continually with no other hope of reward than what is to be found in life eternal ! And this was not all. The poor creatures had another sore the worst of all the sores of the peasant : they were in debt !

I remember, when quite a child, hearing my father say, on his return from selling some baskets or a few dozen brooms in the town —

" Here is the salt, the beans, and the rice, but I have not a sou left. 0 Lord ! O Lord ! I was in hope of bringing back a few sous for M. Eobin !"

This M. Eobin was the richest rogue in Mittelbronn, a big man with a great grey beard, an otter- skin cap tied under the chin, a large nose, yellow complexion, round eyes, with a sort of a bag over his shoulders like a short gown. He went about on foot with long linen gaiters up to his knees, a large basket on his arm, and a wolf-dog at his heels. This man went all round the neighbourhood getting in the interest owing him, for he lent money to every one, three livres at a time or six livres, up to one or two louis d'or. He used to walk into the houses, and if his money was not ready, he would pocket anything in the interim ; half-a-dozen eggs, a pound of butter, a bottle of kirsch, a piece of cheese, or whatever they had. So that they got time from him, they would rather let him rob them in that way than have a visit from a bailiff.

How many there are to this day eaten up by similar robbers ! How many there are labouring in misery under the weight of debt, and wear away without seeing any end to their troubles !