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THE LIFE STYLE OF NOBLE LANDLORDS: PARIS AND THE PROVINCES
We turn now to the other class most concerned with the land and the villages: the landed nobility. To do so, we must look toward Paris. To travel by coach from Vieillevigne to the capital of France represented much more of a change than the five-days coach journey would suggest. Paris was another world. Here was a metropolis of 600,000 people. It was the capital of one of the most important powers in the Western world. Even more important, Paris was the cultural capital of the West. The people who lived there were far removed from the timeless routines of the grain fields and the unchanging rounds of the wine harvests.
Paris was first of all the center of the largest body of government officials in Europe. It teemed with officeholders of all kinds. These officials ranged from the great ministers of state and royal councilors to tax receivers and city officials and so on down the ladder to the lowest government clerks. It was the home of the highest law courts, with all of their magistrates, attorneys, clerks, and lesser judicial officials. At 10 in the morning, a huge crowd of men of the law and hangers-on crowded their way to the principal law courts in the center of the city. As one observer put it, "It was a veritable procession of wigs and gowns and brief bags with plaintiffs and defendants at their heels."
In another quarter of -Paris was the stock market, symbol of the business life in the city. Here men dealt not in sacks of grain or casks of wine. Instead, they dealt in large-scale orders to buy or sell commodities immediately or in the future. Here was a mysterious world of high finance where a single signature could redirect the sugar harvest of the West Indies, or the textile exports of southern France. For Paris was a banking and commercial center, as well as a governmental and legal one. Horses drawing barges plodded their way along the banks of the Seine River. Artisans and textile workers bent over dimly lighted workbenches on the east side of Paris. Shopkeepers, cafe owners, and peddlers were everywhere. In busy hours the narrow streets teemed with people. Houses trembled as coaches and wagons rattled by, splashing mud in every direction. Garbage was hurled from the upper-floor windows to the open gutters below as pedestrians clung to the walls for protection. There were neither sewers nor sidewalks, and the air was full of all kinds of smells-fine perfume and baking bread, workbench shavings and fresh manure.
Contrasts in the standard of living were enormous. On the east side of the island called the he-de-la-00 were the crowded flophouses of the prostitutes and the poor. Yet only a few blocks away were the luxury shops of the Rue Saint Honore. Here the rich of-Paris purchased fine jewelry, chinaware, linens, and lace. Wellborn ladies with elaborately dressed hair shared the streets with servants and shopkeepers in coarse homespun, while ragged beggars held out their gnarled and dirty hands at each street corner.
If the country villages and provincial towns of France were blanketed by silence at nightfall, Paris never went to sleep. Its caf6s and taverns echoed with shouting voices in the popular quarter. Its drawing rooms sparkled with dinner conversation or murmured over gaming tables. At one o'clock in the morning 6,000 country people brought their provisions of vegetables, fruits, and flowers to the enormous market where the food for the whole city was sorted in baskets and bins for the next day's sale.
In the streets rich and poor mingled freely. There were no "neighborhoods." The highest society lived close to the lowest. A single building might house a noble family on the ground floor, a lawyer on the second floor, a widow on the third, and a student in the attic. As one wit had it, social distinction was arranged vertically. Yet in Paris it was possible for, people to advance their careers more quickly than in the provinces. Perhaps they might even scale the heights of success in a single generation. For money and powerful friends made it possible to skip some of rungs in the social ladder. Even the poor of unknown family, were they clever with mind and pen, might find fame and success in this Babylon on the Seine.
Some 20 miles (about 32 kilometers) from Paris was the palace of the king at Versailles. In the 17th century, Louis XIV had made Versailles the bureaucratic center of his government. Many of the buildings housed the secretarial staff, armed with quills rather than with typewriters, but otherwise it was very much like our own government in Washington. But Versailles was also much more. It was an elaborate city of grand ballrooms, exquisite gardens, and royal apartments populated by several hundred of the most elegant and oldest families of France. Here was the royal court. On the surface it was a great pageant where proper manners ruled the day. But beneath the surface there was a continuous battle waged for the king's ear and a competitive struggle pursued for royal favor and the rewards it brought. This world was the world of the courtier. He sought an army regiment for his eldest son, a church "benefice” for a younger one, and a more exalted post in government for himself.
Much of the old-nobility had come to Versailles in the hopes of finding high office. They also came for incomes or pensions from the royal treasury. Many posts in the royal government were entirely honorific, that is, they required only the most formal duties. A nobleman might be named Commander in the Provinces and receive 40 or 50,000 livres per year. His duties, however, were limited to a few days' visit to the provincial garrison. The rest of the year he was free to live in the elegant surroundings of Versailles or Paris. With such plums to be obtained at Court, how could a nobleman resist the temptation to go there to gain favor?
Nor were pensions, offices, and high honors all that might be obtained. The Court was an exclusive circle that often led to a very fine marriage. And marriage among the 18th-century nobility was not a matter romantic love. It was a serious financial venture which the sum of money - dowry - brought by the you bride to her marriage counted for much more than domestic virtues, beauty, or intelligence. In crude terms Paris was the marriage market of France. Marriages were unions of great names and great fortunes. There were still outward prejudices on the part of old noble families against commercial wealth yet many a banking and commercial fortune was transferred to a noble family in the dowery of a young bride. Moreover, what rich banker or rich merchant was not deeply tempted by the chance to marry his daughter into an old noble family? French society clearly placed the prestige of a noble land family above that of commercial success. As the saying went, the dunghill (on a landed property) was ore respectable than the countinghouse.
To understand the values of 18th-century society, one has to understand the importance of "nobility." Nobility symbolized a whole set of virtues and achievements that had gone unquestioned for centuries. One critic said that a nobleman was a man who possessed pensions, debts, and ancestors. And ancestors who had once been feudal knights and crusaders were well worth having. The further back a noble could trace the family ancestry, the more important was its name. Military achievements, especially knightly ones, were the most respected. Of course many nobles had gained their titles more recently. But whether a noble could trace the family pedigree for centuries or for generations, a noble was still a noble, with all the pride and privileges that went with the title.
In the 18th century the French nobility represented about 1 per cent of the total population. But theirs was not a closed caste. Nobility could be obtained by various means. First, the king could grant nobility for a special service in the government or on the field of battle. Much more frequent, however, was the purchase of an ennobling office. Since 1500 the Crown of France had sold many judicial and administrative offices that carried with them hereditary nobility. In this manner, a whole class of "new nobles" had grown up in France. Because most of them were nobles by office, they were called "nobles of the robe." This phrase distinguished them from the old military "nobles of the sword." Social prejudice, being what it is, the first generation of these newer nobles of the robe were not always accepted as social equals by the older nobility. But after two or three generations of close contact socially and professionally, these two nobilities were difficult to distinguish. For nobility carried with it not only honor, wealth, and privilege, but a special style of life.
Above all, the nobility were expected to live from the revenues of the land. In France, nobles were legally prevented from engaging in retail trade, which was thought degrading and below their rank. In fact they rarely engaged even in wholesale trade, thinking it "unnoble," and fit only for "commoners." It was and almost decent to pass money across a counter, or even deal openly in stock of commercial companies. Far better to receive one's revenue from tenants on the land. By tradition, nobles saw themselves as protectors of the people on their land. Here the roles of landlord and seigneur joined hands to make one truly a landed aristocrat. As important to the landlord as the revenues was the notion of exercising seigneurial jurisdiction. Such jurisdiction was the inheritance of a feudal ruling class that had once owned and ruled whole provinces. Moreover, a landed property implied a chateau, or an extensive rural manor house that would be appropriate for a person of special distinction.
With distinction went "privilege." Nor was "privilege" limited to social respect end frequent royal favor. Remember that nobles were freed from paying most royal taxes and were treated very leniently for those few taxes they did pay. At most, nobles paid 6 per cent of their income in taxes, while a peasant or merchant might pay 15 or even 20 per cent to the government. Nobles also had special privileges in the law courts. They were not tried by the lower courts but rather by nobles of the robe in the so-called parlements, or higher courts of France. They also had exclusive rights to wear swords and carry firearms, to, lead processions and exhibit the family coat of arms on their coaches, chateau gates, sor servants livery 9unifoirms). the nobles also had a special code of law regulating the inheritance of their property. They were the only social group in France who were permitted to give the eldest son the bulk of their property (usually two-thirds), thus keeping the family lands together. Peasants and other commoners were obliged to divide their land equally among their children. Privileges thus gave all the various kinds of nobles a common bond of interest and prestige. In fact, in the 18th century, it appears the nobles thought of their privileges as more important than the services they rendered the country.
But if privileges gave the French nobility a unity of sorts, it was really a negative bond. That is they acted together only when these privileges were attacked or threatened. In fact, during the 18th century the French nobility was deeply divided by differences of wealth, function, style of life, and attitudes. A look at some noble families, first in Paris and then in the provinces, will prove this point.
Consider first a great noble family of France, the SaulxTavanes. { so-ta-van'} This family claimed ancestors as far back as the 10th century. In the 15th century, some of them were serving as councilors to the dukes of Burgundy. A century later, during the Wars of Religion, the Saulx-Tavanes were fighting for the Catholic kings of France. At that time they were great provincial "captains" with considerable local power. Even as late as 1660, the Saulx-Tavanes could be considered almost semi-feudal princes with a following of local lesser nobility dependent, on and loyal to them. The king at Paris had not yet gained complete control over the province of Burgundy, and his commander there still had considerable independence. But by the end of the 17th century, the Saulx-Tavanes had been "tamed." As the armies of Louis XIV were modernized and centrally supplied, the old local military leaders lost their independent power. They went tip to Paris to seek high offices in the new royal army and government, thereby losing their local power in the provinces. But if they lost what had once been almost princely independence, the Saulx-Tavanes made the best of their move to Paris. They gained high offices of state with handsome revenues to supplement their rents from land.
Access to the king, contacts with ministers, the right family connections and friendships -all, that We call "influence in high places"-made it easier to be appointed to the proper posts. These might be in the top administration, the army, the Church, or as retainers at court. About 1750, Henry-Charles de Saulx-Tavanes was Lieutenant-General of Burgundy with a salary of 40,000 livres per annum. His son became commander in the army and later "Companion to the King's Son." His daughter-in-law was a lady-in-waiting to the queen. His younger brother became Archbishop of Rouen. He was later made a cardinal and Grand Almoner of the Queen, one of the highest posts in the French Church. Saulx-Tavanes' grandson was allowed to keep all the offices and appointments of his father, so that, in fact the royal favors were becoming hereditary. Each new honor served as a basis and Justification for other honors. These culminated in the title of Duc (Duke) in 1784. In addition, each post had a handsome revenue attached. No wonder families like the Saulx-Tavanes were envied for their success at Court, which had more to do with their old names than with their professional competence.
Like the Choiseul or the Tesse, the Saulx-Tavanes were particularly good at finding rich heiresses to marry. These women would bring not only a dowry in six digits, but were heirs to the entire fortune after the parents died. The marriage of Gaston de Saulx-Tavanes to a Tesse daughter delivered a handsome fortune 20 years later. Gaston must have raised his eyebrows when he read the inventory of his wife's inheritance. She had land in Normandy, government bonds, private loans, even commercial stock in the Atlantic trade, and 500,000 livres in the cash box! The game of dowries and inheritances at Paris is a chapter in itself. It is clear that a noble family could gain enough capital in one marriage contract or one will to pay off all its debts and to continue to spend on a magnificent scale for a generation.
Spending, however, could pose problems. Opportunities to make or to keep a fortune were many, but temptations to spend were no less so. In fact, families like the Saulx-Tavanes were in a constant race with bankruptcy. The costs of lavish living always threatened to overtake revenues and to force the family to borrow. Here was still another advantage of Paris, though, a dangerous one. In Paris, one could always obtain money. The Duc de Saulx-Tavanes spent many an hour in the lawyer's office working out fresh loans from- Paris bankers, usually to pay off old debts. By 1788, the Saulx-Tavanes were paying 120,000 livres annually as interest on their debts. This sum represented two-thirds of their income in that year. On what did they spend so much money? To answer this question one must understand what was expected of great nobles in Paris.
Above all, we must understand that the social pressures at the height of French society were severe. The Parisian aristocracy had to follow a particular life style. In fact, the example of the royal court put an ever greater social obligation on the energies and financial resources of those 400 or 500 great noble families who were "presented" to the king. And the lesser nobles had to follow as best they could.
First were the demands for elaborate dress. The young queen, Marie-Antoinette, had set the pace with her conversion to the French art of fantastic hairdressing. Books were written about fashion and illustrated by exquisite pictures and plates. One treatise on the Principles of Ladies' Hairdressing filled 39 volumes and examined almost 4,000 distinct hair styles! Think of how large the luxury industry must have been to supply the needs of a society with this many hair styles! If a lady's gown could cost 10,000 livres ($10,000), imagine the cost of other items to go with it. There were masses of jewelry, and no imitations of course. In addition, there was an enormous demand for little cases and containers of all kinds. These ranged from gold snuffboxes to engraved dance programs. There was also need for a vast variety of other items from walking sticks to wigs to shoe buckles, always finely engraved and decorated. Fine furnishings, statuary, rugs, and "exquisite porcelain decorated the drawing room. Like clothes, these items were an absolute necessity for the lady or gentleman of go good society." The luxury trades rose to the occasion, furnishing these items in vast amounts.
A proper setting for this great display was also needed. It was provided by elaborate amusements, properly spaced throughout the day. Theater, supper parties, promenades, balls, fireworks, visits, teas, and concerts kept everyone constantly on the move. The drawing room served for play acting and philosophizing. Whole afternoons were spent in gossiping. Whole evenings passed in dabbling in pseudoscience or communing with the dead over dimly lit tables. Fortune-telling, magic, and electromagnetism were very popular. At the same, time, drawing rooms served as meeting places for the great artists, writers, and- philosophers of the day.
Leaving aside the more obvious "follies," the costs of daily living were very demanding for Parisian nobles. A magnificent style of life meant splendid surroundings. Such surroundings would include a chateau and formal gardens, and in town apartments brilliantly lit by expensive candles. It would include a dozen or more servants. There would be varnished coaches and well-groomed horses, and a lavish table. But perhaps the very best mark of an aristocratic life style was an “open house" to all distinguished friends -a permanent cocktail party -with leftovers for the poor peering in at the main gate. The regular household budget of the Saulx-Tavanes tells us something about the burden of social status for an aristocrat in the capital
A family budget like this can tell us a lot about what people consider important in life. Notice how much attention the Saulx-Tavanes paid to outward display (clothing, servants, carriages, etc.). Notice how little was spent on education or charity. Notice how small the taxes are compared to the one-third of income most Americans pay. The high legal fees suggest a special concern of the Saulx-Tavanes: debts and lawsuits. But what strikes us most about the budget of the Saulx-Tavanes family is the amount of resources spent on what was called "splendor." Why was this so?
Clothing, jewelry, gifts 20, 000
Townhouse (rent, repair, upkeep) 7, 000
Heating ` 3, 000
Food 6, 000
Servants 10, 000
Stables (coaches, horses) 1, 000
Court (Versailles) 3, 000
Legal fees 5, 000
Education 1, 000
Medicines 1, 000
Theater 2, 000
Charities (in Paris) 200
Taxes (in Paris) 2, 000
Total 61, 200
* 1 livre equals approximately 1 dollar in 1970 purchasing power.
Unlike English lords of the day, French nobles had no part in running the government. Only those nobles who were officials of the king had any political responsibilities. Perhaps for this reason a concern with outward display and ceremony became all the more important. A grand appearance was partly an outlet for surplus energy, but it also was a way for great nobles to impress non-nobles and even lesser nobles. After all, there must be something special about people who had splendid clothes, a fine coach, and many servants waiting on them. Such an existence required ability to dance, ride, fence, gamble, and converse (not "talk"). One conversed always with politeness and good nature. One never antagonized anyone or became too intense
or longwinded. These skills do not require the thorough and sustained professional training of the lawyer, the civil servant, the merchant, or the artisan. Education was a matter of travel, or attendance at a play, or an occasional public lecture. It was not a question of disciplined application. This the aristocrats considered, perhaps in their own defense, as degrading for "persons of rank."
But whatever we may think of the training and public contribution of nobles like these, Paris was the setting for their lives. Yet, it cost so much to live there. The royal gifts and pensions, though enormous by provincial standards, were not enough, as the Saulx-Tavanes' budget makes clear. One must have money to sustain rank. Where would it come from? Some Parisian aristocrats bought commercial stock, despite deep prejudices against trade. However, there were relatively few of these "companies." Fewer still made money in the face of English competition. Even public bonds, so easy to transfer and to divide among children, became less available. They became even less reliable as Parisians began to suspect that all was not well at the royal treasury.
Fortunately, most aristocrats could turn to the land in the hope, of finding fresh revenues. If Parisian nobles seemed unlikely candidates for managing agriculture, they could employ the services of professional estate administrators. After all, an aristocratic name still commanded the respect of such professionals. This fact made absentee landholding possible, and, as we shall see in Chapter 4, Noble Landlords and the Local Village Community, even very profitable.
Aristocrats like Saulx-Tavanes were a minority of the noble class in France at the end of the 18th century. Perhaps 2,000 nobles lived at court and 20,000 in the Paris area. The other 180,000 or more lived in the provinces. How little our Marquis d’Escouloubre in Toulouse had in common with the Duc de Saulx-Tavanes in Paris! The marquis and his family spent about six months in his village of Vieillevigne and the other six months in the provincial capital. Toulouse had about 50,000 people, not one-tenth the number in Paris. It could not possibly absorb the time, energy, and money required for life in the national capital. Instead of spending 60,000 livres on personal consumption- clothes, services, carriages- the marquis probably spent no more than 6,000. He had a modest town house, near the cathedral, where he passed the quiet winter season. Instead of 15 servants, he had four-two personal attendants (valets), a chambermaid, and a cook. When he went to his land in the country 20 miles away, he might add an extra maidservant or a gardener. His servants were satisfied with room, board, and a uniform. The marquis maintained only one coach and one sedan chair to take him about Toulouse.
But the most important difference from Paris was this. In a provincial capital there were very few things on which to spend large sums of money. Entertaining, theater-going, gambling-even clothes-were certainly less expensive and less necessary in a town the size of Toulouse. The Escouloubre, like some 200 other nobles at Toulouse, had practically no debts. They were able to live within a budget of 10,000 livres per year. Their account books show that they were careful in their spending habits, and our general picture is that of a sober and frugal class. Here in Toulouse we are far from the world of the spendthrift courtier.
The nobility of the provincial capitals -Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rennes, Dijon, Aix-was often a nobility of the robe. That is, they were nobles who performed services in the royal law courts, the parlements. There they led a regular, disciplined life. They performed as magistrates with the necessary legal training that this work demanded. In contrast to the average courtiers, provincial nobles were likely to be better read, and, in general, more serious and professionally productive people. They worked out their revenues carefully and invested what savings they had in buying more land. More than the nobles in Paris, provincial nobles hesitated to take part in any "risky" commercial venture. They preferred government or Church bonds and land as the only safe and respectable forms of investment. Moreover, they visited their land frequently and in fact, like the Marquis d'Escouloubre, lived in the château at least six months of the year. Above all, they resented 'the pensions and honors that the court nobility received from the Crown, and they often regarded Paris as a whirlpool of sin and damnation.
Resentment towards Paris and the courtier is well represented in the writings of Montesquieu, {mon-tes-ku'} a political thinker and a robe nobleman from Bordeaux. {bor-do'} (Bordeaux was the provincial capital down the Garonne River, from Toulouse.) As a young man, Montesquieu had gone to Paris and later visited England. There he saw the contrast between a politically active English nobility and the playacting of the French-nobility in Paris. His feelings provoked the lively and biting satire of his book The Persian Letters. In this book he struck at the pompous manners of the court fop, a man who knew more about the proper way to blow his nose and take snuff than about political economy. What a waste for the kingdom!
But this did not make Montesquieu a political radical. As a noble magistrate from the parlement of Bordeaux, and as a grower of vineyards, he firmly believed that nobles could be useful. His lifetime work was an effort to describe the political role a French nobleman should perform. His famous argument for the "separation of powers" called for a balanced structure of government. This form would give the nobility an essential role in’ the judicial and the legislative parts of government as guardians against executive tyranny. Montesquieu strongly defended the right of the parlements to act as a supreme court. That is, he defended their claim to approve or disapprove the king's edicts. Hence, the noble magistrates would act as checks on royal power. He also "advocated the establishment of a set of local assemblies. They would be composed of local nobles and town officials and would serve as advisory bodies in the making of royal policies. This is not the place to discuss Montesquieu's political thought in detail. The point here is that his plan provided a large place for the French nobility. Nor would he have the nobles give up their privileges. On the contrary, their tax exemptions and their seigneurial rights and honors were marks of their special function. Montesquieu was a real champion of the French nobility. But he saw it as a nobility- purged of Parisian corruption and rendered useful, indeed essential, by a new political leadership.
Montesquieu represented many of the robe nobles of provincial France. But- there were still other nobles, with even closer ties to the countryside. Remember that France was overwhelmingly agricultural. There were not more than a half dozen cities with over 50,000 inhabitants. Look at the map and see how many areas there were far from centers of communication and city life. Take, for example, the center of France, the province of Auvergne. {o-vern'} It was described by occasional visitors as barren, wild, and remote. Here a man like Count Montlosier might play amateur geologist. He might take long, solitary walks over semi-volcanic mountains. Auvergne was not unique. Equally countrified and poor were large areas near the Pyrenees and the Alps, and large parts of Brittany and Provence. Here a very modest nobility lived in literally crumbling chateaux.
This countrified nobility had no town houses, or even apartments in town. Their country residences, furthermore, were little more than old manor houses capped with a family coat-of-arms. No formal gardens existed for leisurely walks, but instead there was a duck pond, a pigeon coop, and a pile of brushwood and logs for winter. The rather rough-mannered men who lived in these damp and dismal country houses were the proudest of all the French nobility. They were usually retired army or naval officers. They had to feed large families on perhaps 100 acres (about 41 hectares) of poor land. They clung to their seigniorial rights with great tenacity, not only because they needed every livre. They clung so hard to them because they had difficulty keeping their superior status above the humble country people around them in any other way. Their pleasures were few and of a purely rural kind. They went boar hunting. The: visited neighboring noble families, and rode their coaches to the parish church on Sunday, They ha little education themselves and had no money to see their children far from home. From the more urbanize nobles they earned contempt. The city nobles though of them as country bumpkins, or scarecrows, so different again from the Saulx-Tavanes.
Chateaubriand
The famous French novelist
Chateaubriand6 is one, example of
such a country nobleman. Chateaubriand
came from Brittany, a province known for its saints, stone crosses on lonely
roads, wide expanses of heath, drifting channel fog, poor peasants, and nobles
of few words. It was a province
ready-made for melancholy memoires
(biographical recollections). With
vivid romantic shadings, this younger son of an old family that had seen better
times described his daily routine at the family chateau. The site itself suggested isolation. The two round towers of Combourg chateau
peered over a clump of trees beside a deserted pond. A few strawroofed houses nestled below. A dense forest stretched, for miles beyond. To the obvious melancholia, Chateaubriand
added rural simplicity and paternal dominance.
The gloomy
stillness of Combourg was increased by my father's taciturn and unsocial
temperament. Instead of drawing his
family and servants closer to him, he had dispersed them to all wings of the
chateau. His bedroom was in the small
east tower, his study in the small west tower.
The furniture of the study consisted of three chairs in black leather
and a table covered with parchments and titles. A genealogical tree of the Chateaubriand family adorned the
mantlepiece above the fireplace and in the embrasure of a window hung firearms
of all kinds from a pistol to the blunderbuss.
Chateaubriand draws a picture for us of a life filled
with silence and solitude, with plenty of time to think "or dream. Reading quietly with his sister beside the
chateau fire, school at Dole a dozen miles away (about 19 kilometer), and long
solitary hours walking through heath and fern were part of it. Musoing to the lap of water against the old
skiff on the pond of Combourg was another.
Occasionally there was a village festival. A less imaginative soul might have died of boredom, but
Chateaubriand transferred his experience into romantic literature. Even allowing for a touch of poetic
exaggeration, we know we are far away from the Paris of Duc de Saulx-Tavanes or
even the Bordeaux of Baron de Montesquieu.
Mirabeau
But the romantic response was
not the only possible one to provincial isolation. Personal frustration sometimes blended with moral
indignation. This combination could
produce a flood of thoughts and feelings against the luxury and waste of the
city. It could bring an appeal to the
nobles of France to recapture the simple, clean, and useful existence that the
countryside represented. Marquis de
Mirabeau, {me-ra- boo'} from the other comer of France-sunny, Mediterranean
Provence{pro-vans'} made just such a connection. He was no literary stylist like Chateaubriand. His heavy works on agriculture and tax
reform can put the most dogged scholar to sleep. Yet he too was a romantic in a certain way. He yearned for the "good old
days." His was a blend of nostalgia
and reality that often comes from frustration.
Perhaps the southern sun' that reflected so brightly on his chateau roof
added to his fiery temperament.
Certainly Mirabeau did not write in the soothing imagery of the Breton
landscape. He wrote in the literary
style of a man with a cause.
Even more than Montesquieu,
Mirabeau condemned urban society. He
would have none of the theater, Italian music, or lessons in botany. He laughed at fancy dress, snuff-boxes, varnished
carriages, or the art of Court backbiting.
He called for a return to the old virtues of religion, honor, and
physical fitness. Mirabeau's ideal
nobleman spent his day dressed in sturdy cowhide and mud-splattered boots. He inspected his farms, talked to his
sharecroppers about the harvest, and organized shooting expeditions to kill off
wolves. In a bad harvest year, he gave
charity to the rural poor and sick. In
short, noble seigneurs should be back on the land where they could be useful,
humane members of society. The land,
not the city, was the seat of respectability for a noble. And it was more than that. It was also the source of moral purity.
According to Mirabeau, the
noble and the peasant had always been closely associated. Not as "equals" of course, but as
harmonious members of a rural community in which the noble seigneur
"protected" the struggling peasant.
But beginning in the 18th century, the countryside had been invaded by a
horde of ambitious, grasping city folk.
These people had bought out the old noble landlords. They had thrown out many peasants and raised
the rents on those who remained. These
"new men" exhibited a legalistic and "accountbook"
mentality that left little room for an easygoing, charitable paternalism, the
hallmark of the old resident seigneur, or so Mirabeau said. Like Montesquieu, the marquis from Provence
called for a revived service nobility.
In this case, they were to be local, almost village, leaders rather than
magistrates and defenders of a national government.
There was much nostalgia and
myth in Mirabeau's ideal view of the old nobility of the countryside. In any event, it seems certain that the
style of country life the marquis was trying to recapture was lost forever. As for his so-called differences- between
"old" and "new" landlords, between old and new nobles,
there is reason to doubt them. We often
underestimate how easily people get used to new situations and how rapidly they
cast off old ideas for new ones. The
climb of one merchant family into the landed nobility will illustrate how a
newcomer went about adjusting to a noble style of life.
THE RISE OF A
MERCHANT TO NOBLE STATUS
The Depont family came from La
Rochelle. This Atlantic port was famous
for its Protestants in the 17th century, but known for its overseas trade with
the West Indies in the 18th. The
Deponts could not trace their ancestors back for generations. They could not claim "glorious"
and "illustrious" battle honors that had won families like the
Saulx-Tavanes royal favor and exalted rank at Paris. They could not even claim the ancestry of a Montesquieu, a robe
magistrate from Bordeaux. The Deponts
had more modest beginnings according to the values of their time. They were merely shipowners engaged in
Atlantic trade in the 17th century. In
the early 18th century they gained their "nobility" by the purchase
of an office in the royal government.
Families of "new
nobles" were usually accepted into, and blended with, the Noble Order by
the third generation, and sometimes even by the second. This may not seem like a rapid social climb
by modem American standards. But by
European standards two centuries, ago, such "social mobility" was
remarkable. It made France, along with
England and Holland, the most quickly changing society in the world of its
time. Thus, a large number of rich
merchants became nobles. More
important, all merchants could hope to gain privilege and nobility, if not in
their own lifetime, then in that of their children or grandchildren. Only when wealthy and intelligent commoners
lost this hope of entering the nobility did they begin to question a social
system based on defined ranks. The
generation of merchants before 1789 found it less easy to enter noble ranks
than the Depont family did earlier in the century.
The Deponts are an excellent
example of a successful family of social climbers. Paul Depont was a French Protestant. He made his fortune shipping slaves to the West Indies and
bringing sugar back to Europe. As early
as 1700 he bought land in the region of La Rochelle, perhaps as security for
his shipping loans or as a safe extra income.
Paul Depont also became a town elder, a member of the chamber of
commerce, and royal agent for the East India Company at La Rochelle. Here was the fortune that led to nobility in
the following generation.
Paul Depont's son,
Paul-Francois, converted to Catholicism, the state religion, and bought the
enobling office of Treasurer of France about 1725. It was not among the most important offices of the Crown. Most of the duties of his office had been
taken over by the intendants (royal
governors). However, it provided a
noble title, tax exemption, and the right to pass on the office and the title
to one's eldest son. About the same
time, Paul-François gave up his shipping ventures and partnerships with other
Protestant families of La Rochelle. He
invested all of his capital in land and public bonds. Remember that these new investments were not only safer, but also
more respectable and "fitting" for a noble gentleman, especially a
new one. Moreover, the land purchases
made Paul-François a seigneur, with the rights of justice and claims to
seigneurial dues over a number of villages.
Paul-François Depont now
called himself "Paul-François Depont des Granges, President-Treasurer of
France, Seigneur of Aigrefeuille, Virson, and other places," after the
lands he had acquired. He was careful
later detach the "de" from Pont, which gave his name a more noble
form ("de Pont"). In his
personal correspondence, he dropped any reference to his father's previous
mercantile activity or to his Protestant religion. He now attended Catholic mass regularly. He even established a number of local
Catholic charities, including a rural schoolhouse- proof, it seemed, of the
sincerity of his conversion. His sister
married into the older (if poorer) local nobility, no doubt aided by her dowry
of 50,000 livres. Paul-François now
felt sensitive and even ashamed of his father's past money lending activities,
which had been condemned by Church law.
He advised his sister to get rid of her "ill-gotten" fortune
by following his example and buying land and public bonds. It may seem strange to us that he expressed
no remorse about his father's activities in the slave trade. In his own time money lending was far more
"sinful."
A certain clash, a mixture of
conflicting values, remained.
Paul-François could not give up his deep inclination toward thrift and
economy. He knew such business virtues
made him seem too petty and too moneyminded for a noble gentleman. Yet he still respected a certain
self-discipline, hard work-at least in others-and sober living. He considered the royal court at Versailles
frivolous and also "dangerous for the soul." He was especially
against dancing, gambling, playacting with the ladies, and expenditures for
outward display. How unlike a
Saulx-Tavanes! He worried about
exposing his two sons to new ideas and influences, especially if they left the
protective shell of La Rochelle for the "whirlpool of Paris."
It would seem that social
climbing caused Paul-Francois new anxieties, as well as new satisfactions. Such was the state of a new noble who was no
longer a merchant by function but yet not a noble in outlook and values. He was one of those many social mixtures
still uncertain and insecure in their new role in society.
Paul-François had two
sons. The eldest, Paul-Charles,
received his father's office. He
remained in La Rochelle and married there.
He became the seigneur of the family properties just before his father's
death in 1774, and was full recognized under the law as nobleman of ancient
lineage in 1789. Paul-François’s
younger son, Jean-Samuel, is more interesting.
He managed to climb another rung in the social ladder to earn the Depont
family national prominence. Jean-Samuel
went to law school in Paris. From there
he made his way, with the help of influential friends, into the highest law
court of France, the Parlement of Paris.
After serving as legal adviser to the Crown for a few years, he obtained
the post of intendant, one of the 30 royal governors of the kingdom.
The methods that Jean-Samuel
used to further his successful rise into the governing elite were not those he
learned from-his father in La Rochelle.
Thrift and economy were hardly suitable virtues for success in Paris. Instead, jean-Samuel learned to charm or
"court" influential people in high places (especially women). If this involved "declarations of
love" on his knees to a great lady with connections, so be it. He ignored the Puritanical advice of his
father and adapted fully to the social demands of Paris. He gambled, danced, and wore fine
clothes. He lived in well-furnished
apartments and even took a lively interest in the "new philosophy,"
which led to ignoring religious observances.
The letters between Paul-François and his son, jean-Samuel, are good
examples of what we call today the "generation gap." Paul-Farragoes
wrote in one instance:
Can't you
deny yourself gambling? It is not
permissible to risk in a game for one's -amusement enough money to keep a poor family
alive for a year.... If you are in
tight circumstances as a result, you must suffer it as God's punishment.
Needless to say, jean-Samuel
did not appreciate his father's words.
He answered on many occasions that he was astonished that his father did
not know how important it was for him to live in a different style in the great
city of Paris.
Jean-Samuel's style of life
might have seemed shocking to his aging father at La Rochelle. But it was his rise into the high government
post of intendant that earned the family its final and complete noble
status. He was a competent
administrator, first at Moulin and then at Metz. Jean de Pont (the "Samuel" sounded too Protestant and
was quietly dropped) was in the company of men of influence, the
"Establishment" of Paris.
These persons included councilors of state and magistrates of the
parlement. They also included high
military officers, rich bankers, and distinguished members of the Church-in
brief, all of the elite, the top people of Paris. In 1790, Edmund Burke addressed his famous Reflections on the
French Revolution to jean-Samuel's son.
This fact is less a reflection of their common political convictions
than it is a confirmation of the arrival of the "de Pont" family as
full-fledged members of the French nobility.
The younger de Pont became a councilor in the Parlement of Paris. In this social position no one was aware
that de Pont's great-grandfather had sold sugar and slaves, and that he had
even lent money at interest at La Rochelle three generations before.
What kind of landlords do such
"newcomers" make? Historians do not agree. ' Some believe that merchants who become landowners must be
greedy, harsher landlords than members of the old, settled nobility. They argue that "climbers" are anxious
to make the land pay for their new expenses of office and display. Thus such people bring a "countinghouse
meniality" to the land. Their
accounts are always in order. They
press their tenants and sharecroppers for rents. They treat their villagers coldly without charity or
compassion. Did the Deponts do the very
things that Mirabeau had complained about in the countryside?
The transfusion of new blood
in the form of newcomers was undoubtedly helpful to French society. It refreshed the older nobility, and it
reminded the wealthy merchants or lawyers that they were 11ot cut off forever
from nobility. But were relations
between landlord and tenant different now?
Were the seigneurs becoming colder and more money-minded than
before? It seems so. Yet rising men like Depont were no harsher
toward their peasants than were old families like Saulx-Tavanes. Despite all their differences,
"new" and "old" nobles acted very much alike when it came
to managing the land. As landlords, the
nobles were almost uniformly arousing the countryside by new methods of land
management.