What were some of the problems that French peasants faced?
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What were some of the problems that French peasants faced?
![Marvin Perry, "The Plight of the French Peasants," Sources of Western Tradition, v. 2 ed. 9, Wadsworth
Cengage Learning, 2014, pp. 102-104.
-Arthur Young, Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789 (London: Printed for W. Richardson,
1792), pp. 533-540.
Page 1
Abuses of the Old Regime
The roots of the French Revolution lay in the aristocratic structure of French
society. The Third Estate resented the special privileges of the aristocracy, a legacy
of the Middle Ages, and the inefficient and corrupt methods of government. To
many French people influenced by the ideas of the philosophies, French society
seemed an affront to reason. By 1789, reformers sought a new social order based
on rationality and equality.
Arthur Young
PLIGHT OF THE FRENCH PEASANTS
French peasants in the late eighteenth century were better off than the peasants
of Eastern and Central Europe, where serfdom predominated. The great major-
ity of France's 21 million peasants were free; many owned their own land, and
some were prosperous. Yet the countryside was burdened with severe problems,
which sparked a spontaneous revolution in 1789.
A rising birthrate led to the continual subdivision of French farms among
peasant sons; on the resulting small holdings, peasants struggled to squeeze out
a living. Many landless peasants, who were forced to work as day laborers, were
also hurt by the soaring population. An oversupply of rural day laborers reduced
many of the landless to beggary. An unjust and corrupt tax system also contrib-
uted to the peasants' poverty. Peasants paid excessive taxes to the state, church,
and lords; taxes and obligations due the lords were particularly onerous medieval
vestiges, as most peasants were no longer serfs. A poor harvest in 1788-1789 and
inflation worsened conditions.
Arthur Young (1741-1820), an English agricultural expert with a keen eye for
detail, traveled through France just prior to the Revolution. In Travels During
the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, he reported on conditions in the countryside.
... The abuses attending the levy of taxes
were heavy and universal. The kingdom
was parceled into generalities [administra-
tive units], with an intendant at the head of
each, into whose hands the whole power of the
crown was delegated for everything except the](/v2/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.bartleby.com%2Fqna-images%2Fquestion%2Fea3dd567-7be8-4aac-be4e-72088740403d%2Fa25bd516-e7a9-4695-a24b-56b65bf964f0%2Fritn13j_processed.jpeg&w=3840&q=75)
Transcribed Image Text:Marvin Perry, "The Plight of the French Peasants," Sources of Western Tradition, v. 2 ed. 9, Wadsworth
Cengage Learning, 2014, pp. 102-104.
-Arthur Young, Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789 (London: Printed for W. Richardson,
1792), pp. 533-540.
Page 1
Abuses of the Old Regime
The roots of the French Revolution lay in the aristocratic structure of French
society. The Third Estate resented the special privileges of the aristocracy, a legacy
of the Middle Ages, and the inefficient and corrupt methods of government. To
many French people influenced by the ideas of the philosophies, French society
seemed an affront to reason. By 1789, reformers sought a new social order based
on rationality and equality.
Arthur Young
PLIGHT OF THE FRENCH PEASANTS
French peasants in the late eighteenth century were better off than the peasants
of Eastern and Central Europe, where serfdom predominated. The great major-
ity of France's 21 million peasants were free; many owned their own land, and
some were prosperous. Yet the countryside was burdened with severe problems,
which sparked a spontaneous revolution in 1789.
A rising birthrate led to the continual subdivision of French farms among
peasant sons; on the resulting small holdings, peasants struggled to squeeze out
a living. Many landless peasants, who were forced to work as day laborers, were
also hurt by the soaring population. An oversupply of rural day laborers reduced
many of the landless to beggary. An unjust and corrupt tax system also contrib-
uted to the peasants' poverty. Peasants paid excessive taxes to the state, church,
and lords; taxes and obligations due the lords were particularly onerous medieval
vestiges, as most peasants were no longer serfs. A poor harvest in 1788-1789 and
inflation worsened conditions.
Arthur Young (1741-1820), an English agricultural expert with a keen eye for
detail, traveled through France just prior to the Revolution. In Travels During
the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, he reported on conditions in the countryside.
... The abuses attending the levy of taxes
were heavy and universal. The kingdom
was parceled into generalities [administra-
tive units], with an intendant at the head of
each, into whose hands the whole power of the
crown was delegated for everything except the
![military authority; but particularly for all af-
fairs of finance. The generalities were subdi-
vided into elections, at the head of which was
a sub-delegue appointed by the intendant. The
rolls of the taille, capitation, vingtièmes,¹ and
other taxes, were distributed among districts,
parishes, and individuals, at the pleasure of the
intendant, who could exempt, change, add, or
diminish at pleasure. Such an enormous power,
constantly acting, and from which no man was
free, must, in the nature of things, degenerate
in many cases into absolute tyranny. It must
be obvious that the friends, acquaintances, and
dependents of the intendant, and of all his sub-
delegues, and the friends of these friends, to a
long chain of dependence, might be favoured
in taxation at the expense of their miserable
neighbours; and that noblemen in favour at
court, to whose protection the intendant him-
self would naturally look up, could find little
difficulty in throwing much of the weight of
their taxes on others, without a similar sup-
port. Instances, and even gross ones, have been
reported to me in many parts of the kingdom,
that made me shudder at the oppression to
which [people have been subjected] by the un-
due favours granted to such crooked influence.
But, without recurring to such cases, what
must have been the state of the poor people
paying heavy taxes, from which the nobility
and clergy were exempted? A cruel aggrava-
tion of their misery, to see those who could
best afford to pay, exempted because able!
... The corvées [taxes paid in labor, often road
building], or police of the roads, were annually
the ruin of many hundreds of farmers; more
than 300 were reduced to beggary in filling up
one vale in Lorraine: all these oppressions fell
on the tiers etat [Third Estate] only; the nobil-
ity and clergy having been equally exempted
from tailles, militia and corvées. The penal code
of finance makes one shudder at the horrors of
punishment inadequate to the crime....
Arthur Young, Travels During the Years 1787, 1788,
and 1789 (London: Printed for W. Richardson, 1792),
pp. 533-540.
Page 2
1. Smugglers of salt, armed and assembled
to the number of five, in Provence, a fine of 500
liv. [livres, French coins] and nine years gal-
leys [sentenced to backbreaking labor-rowing
sea vessels], in all the rest of the kingdom,
death.
2. Smugglers, armed, assembled, but in
number under five, a fine of 300 liv. and three
years galleys. Second offense, death....
10. Buying smuggled salt, to resell it, the
same punishments as for smuggling....
The capitaineries [lords' exclusive hunt-
ing rights] were a dreadful scourge on all the
occupiers of land. By this term is to be under-
stood the paramountship of certain districts,
granted by the king to princes of the blood, by
which they were put in possession of the prop-
erty of all game, even on lands not belonging to
them.... In speaking of the preservation of the
game in these capitaineries, it must be observed
that by game must be understood whole droves
of wild boars, and herds of deer not confined
by any wall or pale, but wandering at plea-
sure over the whole country, to the destruction
of crops; and to the peopling the galleys
by the wretched peasants, who presumed to
kill them in order to save that food which
was to support their helpless children.
Such were the exertions of arbitrary power
which the lower orders felt directly from the
royal authority; but, heavy as they were, it is a
question whether the [abuses], suffered [indi-
rectly] through the nobility and the clergy,
were not yet more oppressive. Nothing can ex-
ceed the complaints made in the cahiers [lists
of Third Estate grievances drawn up in 1789]
under this head. They speak of the dispen-
sation of justice in the manorial courts, as
comprising every species of despotism; the
districts indeterminate-appeals endless-
irreconcilable to liberty and prosperity-and
irrevocably [condemned) in the opinion of the
¹A taille was a tax levied on the value of a peasant's land or
wealth. A capitation was a head or poll tax paid for each
person. A vingtième was a tax on income and was paid
chiefly by peasants. -Eds.](/v2/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.bartleby.com%2Fqna-images%2Fquestion%2Fea3dd567-7be8-4aac-be4e-72088740403d%2Fa25bd516-e7a9-4695-a24b-56b65bf964f0%2Fh4m3uzw_processed.jpeg&w=3840&q=75)
Transcribed Image Text:military authority; but particularly for all af-
fairs of finance. The generalities were subdi-
vided into elections, at the head of which was
a sub-delegue appointed by the intendant. The
rolls of the taille, capitation, vingtièmes,¹ and
other taxes, were distributed among districts,
parishes, and individuals, at the pleasure of the
intendant, who could exempt, change, add, or
diminish at pleasure. Such an enormous power,
constantly acting, and from which no man was
free, must, in the nature of things, degenerate
in many cases into absolute tyranny. It must
be obvious that the friends, acquaintances, and
dependents of the intendant, and of all his sub-
delegues, and the friends of these friends, to a
long chain of dependence, might be favoured
in taxation at the expense of their miserable
neighbours; and that noblemen in favour at
court, to whose protection the intendant him-
self would naturally look up, could find little
difficulty in throwing much of the weight of
their taxes on others, without a similar sup-
port. Instances, and even gross ones, have been
reported to me in many parts of the kingdom,
that made me shudder at the oppression to
which [people have been subjected] by the un-
due favours granted to such crooked influence.
But, without recurring to such cases, what
must have been the state of the poor people
paying heavy taxes, from which the nobility
and clergy were exempted? A cruel aggrava-
tion of their misery, to see those who could
best afford to pay, exempted because able!
... The corvées [taxes paid in labor, often road
building], or police of the roads, were annually
the ruin of many hundreds of farmers; more
than 300 were reduced to beggary in filling up
one vale in Lorraine: all these oppressions fell
on the tiers etat [Third Estate] only; the nobil-
ity and clergy having been equally exempted
from tailles, militia and corvées. The penal code
of finance makes one shudder at the horrors of
punishment inadequate to the crime....
Arthur Young, Travels During the Years 1787, 1788,
and 1789 (London: Printed for W. Richardson, 1792),
pp. 533-540.
Page 2
1. Smugglers of salt, armed and assembled
to the number of five, in Provence, a fine of 500
liv. [livres, French coins] and nine years gal-
leys [sentenced to backbreaking labor-rowing
sea vessels], in all the rest of the kingdom,
death.
2. Smugglers, armed, assembled, but in
number under five, a fine of 300 liv. and three
years galleys. Second offense, death....
10. Buying smuggled salt, to resell it, the
same punishments as for smuggling....
The capitaineries [lords' exclusive hunt-
ing rights] were a dreadful scourge on all the
occupiers of land. By this term is to be under-
stood the paramountship of certain districts,
granted by the king to princes of the blood, by
which they were put in possession of the prop-
erty of all game, even on lands not belonging to
them.... In speaking of the preservation of the
game in these capitaineries, it must be observed
that by game must be understood whole droves
of wild boars, and herds of deer not confined
by any wall or pale, but wandering at plea-
sure over the whole country, to the destruction
of crops; and to the peopling the galleys
by the wretched peasants, who presumed to
kill them in order to save that food which
was to support their helpless children.
Such were the exertions of arbitrary power
which the lower orders felt directly from the
royal authority; but, heavy as they were, it is a
question whether the [abuses], suffered [indi-
rectly] through the nobility and the clergy,
were not yet more oppressive. Nothing can ex-
ceed the complaints made in the cahiers [lists
of Third Estate grievances drawn up in 1789]
under this head. They speak of the dispen-
sation of justice in the manorial courts, as
comprising every species of despotism; the
districts indeterminate-appeals endless-
irreconcilable to liberty and prosperity-and
irrevocably [condemned) in the opinion of the
¹A taille was a tax levied on the value of a peasant's land or
wealth. A capitation was a head or poll tax paid for each
person. A vingtième was a tax on income and was paid
chiefly by peasants. -Eds.
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