The Ancient Regime. Taine Hippolyte
in Alsace and in Paris, everybody is giving; "in front of each hotel belonging to a well-known family a big log is burning to which, night and day, the poor can come and warm themselves." In the way of charity, the monks who remain on their premises and witness the public misery continue faithful to the spirit of their institution. On the birth of the Dauphin the Augustins of Montmorillon in Poitou pay out of their own resources the tailles and corvées of nineteen poor families. In 1781, in Provence, the Dominicans of Saint Maximin support the population of their district in which the tempest had destroyed the vines and the olive trees. "The Carthusians of Paris furnish the poor with eighteen hundred pounds of bread per week. During the winter of 1784 there is an increase of alms-giving in all the religious establishments; their farmers distribute aid among the poor people of the country, and, to provide for these extra necessities, many of the communities increase the rigor of their abstinences." When at the end of 1789, their suppression is in question, I find a number of protests in their favor, written by municipal officers, by prominent individuals, by a crowd of inhabitants, workmen and peasants, and these columns of rustic signatures are eloquent. Seven hundred families of Cateau-Cambrésis1309 send in a petition to retain "the worthy abbés and monks of the Abbey of St. Andrew, their common fathers and benefactors, who fed them during the tempest." The inhabitants of St. Savin, in the Pyrénées, "portray with tears of grief their consternation" at the prospect of suppressing their abbey of Benedictines, the sole charitable organization in this poor country. At Sierk, Thionville, "the Chartreuse," say the leading citizens, "is, for us, in every respect, the Ark of the Lord; it is the main support of from more than twelve to fifteen hundred persons who come to it every day in the week. This year the monks have distributed amongst them their own store of grain at sixteen livres less than the current price." The regular canons of Domiévre, in Lorrraine, feed sixty poor persons twice a week; it is essential to retain them, says the petition, "out of pity and compassion for poor beings whose misery cannot be imagined; where there no regular convents and canons in their dependency, the poor cry with misery."1310 At Moutiers-Saint-John, near Sémur in Burgundy, the Benedictines of Saint-Maur support the entire village and supply it this year with food during the famine. Near Morley in Barrois, the abbey of Auvey, of the Cistercian order, "was always, for every village in the neighborhood, a bureau of charity." At Airvault, in Poitou, the municipal officers, the colonel of the national guard, and numbers of "peasants and inhabitants" demand the conservation of the regular canons of St. Augustin. "Their existence," says the petition, "is absolutely essential, as well for our town as for the country, and we should suffer an irreparable loss in their suppression." The municipality and permanent council of Soissons writes that the establishment of Saint-Jean des Vignes "has always earnestly claimed its share of the public charges. This is the institution which, in times of calamity, welcomes homeless citizens and provides them with subsistence. It alone bears the expenses of the assembly of the bailiwick at the time of the election of deputies to the National Assembly. A company of the regiment of Armagnac is actually lodged under its roof. This institution is always found wherever sacrifices are to be made." In scores of places declarations are made that the monks are "the fathers of the poor." In the diocese of Auxerre, during the summer of 1789, the Bernardines of Rigny "stripped themselves of all they possessed in favor of the inhabitants of neighboring villages: bread, grain, money and other supplies, have all been lavished on about twelve hundred persons who, for more than six weeks, never failed to present themselves at their door daily … Loans, advances made on farms, credit with the purveyors of the house, all has contributed to facilitating their means for relieving the people." I omit many other traits equally forcible; we see that the ecclesiastical and lay seigniors are not simple egoists when they live at home. Man is compassionate of ills of which he is a witness; absence is necessary to deaden their vivid impression; they move the heart when the eye contemplates them. Familiarity, moreover, engenders sympathy; one cannot remain insensible to the trials of a poor man to whom, for over twenty years, one says good-morning every day on passing him, with whose life one is acquainted, who is not an abstract unit in the imagination, a statistical cipher, but a sorrowing soul and a suffering body.—And so much the more because, since the writings of Rousseau and the economists, a spirit of humanity, daily growing stronger, more penetrating and more universal, has arisen to soften the heart. Henceforth the poor are thought of, and it is esteemed an honor to think of them. We have only to read the registers of the States-General1311 to see that spirit of philanthropy spreads from Paris even to the chateaux and abbeys of the provinces. I am satisfied that, except for a few country squires, either huntsmen or drinkers, carried away by the need of physical exercise, and confined through their rusticity to an animal life, most of the resident seigniors resembled, in fact or in intention, the gentry whom Marmontel, in his moral tales, then brought on the stage. Fashion took this direction, and people in France always follow the fashion. There is nothing feudal in their characters; they are "sensible" people, mild, very courteous, tolerably cultivated, fond of generalities, and easily and quickly roused, and very much in earnest. For instance like that amiable logician the Marquis de Ferrières, an old light-horseman, deputy from Saumur in the National Assembly, author of an article on Theism, a moral romance and genial memoirs of no great importance; nothing could be more remote from the ancient harsh and despotic temperament. They would be glad to relieve the people, and they try to favor them as much as they can.1312 They are found detrimental, but they are not wicked; the evil is in their situation and not in their character. It is their situation, in fact, which, allowing them rights without exacting services, debars them from the public offices, the beneficial influence, the effective patronage by which they might justify their advantages and attach the peasantry to them.
But on this ground the central government has taken their place. For a long time now have they been rather feeble against the intendant, unable to protect their parish. Twenty gentlemen cannot not assemble and deliberate without the king's special permission.1313 If those of Franche-Comté happen to dine together and hear a mass once a year, it is through tolerance, and even then this harmless group may assemble only in the presence of the intendant. Separated from his equals, the seignior, again, is further away from his inferiors. The administration of the village is of no concern to him; he is not even tasked with its supervision. The apportionment of taxes, the militia contingent, the repairs of the church, the summoning and presiding over a parish assembly, the making of roads, the establishment of charity workshops, all this is the intendant's business or that of the communal officers whom the intendant appoints or directs.1314 Except through his justiciary rights, so much curtailed, the seignior is an idler in public matters.1315 If, by chance, he should desire to act in an official capacity, to make some reclamation for the community, the bureaus of administration would soon make him shut up. Since Louis XIV, the higher officials have things their own way; all legislation and the entire administrative system operate against the local seignior to deprive him of his functional efficiency and to confine him to his naked title. Through this separation of functions and title his pride increases, as he becomes less useful. His vanity deprived of its broad pasture-ground, falls back on a small one; henceforth he seeks distinctions and not influence. He thinks only of precedence and not of government.1316 In short, the local government, in the hands of peasants commanded by bureaucrats, has become a common, offensive lot of red tape. "His pride would be wounded if he were asked to attend to it. Raising taxes, levying the militia, regulating the corvées, are servile acts, the works of a secretary." He accordingly abstains, remains isolated on his manor and leaves to others a task from which he is excluded and which he disdains. Far from protecting his peasantry he is scarcely able to protect himself or to preserve his immunities. Or to avoid having his poll-tax and vingtiémes reduced. Or to obtain exemption from the militia for his domestics, to keep his own person, dwelling, dependents, and hunting and fishing rights from the universal usurpation which places all possessions and all privileges in the hands of "Monseigneur l'intendant" and Messieurs the