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THE NOBLE LANDLORDS AND THE LOCAL VILLAGE COMMUNITY
In the 1780's, French villages still seemed timeless and unchanging. The noble landlords, for their part, believed that their way of life was equally stable. They expected that the revenues from their lands would continue to permit them to maintain the life style described in the last chapter. We have seen that important changes were actually stir-ring under the surface in the villages. To final out whether new forces were also developing in the world of the noble landlords, we must examine further the relations between them and the villagers.
The largest landlords in France were nobles of one kind or another. Non-nobles -bankers, merchants, manufacturers, bondholders, professional people, civil servants, and even town shopkeepers -owned land. But theme wealthy commoners, like the Depont family, were almost always on their way to becoming noble. Buying a domain with a chateau or manor house was a mark of rising social status. A title and coat of arms were either already in hand or not far away. Of course, in France a "large landowner" might be anyone who owned over 100 acres (about 41 hectares). There was thus a great range of status and wealth within this wide group. But this much can be said. Once a person owned more than 100 acres, he could not work it alone. He was no "dirt farmer" working with a plow and team of oxen. He was a "landlord" who had to find others to manage and work the grainfields or vineyards for him. This need clearly distinguished him from a "peasant."
Within the landlord group were men as different as the Duc de Saulx-Tavanes at Paris, Baron de Montesquieu at Bordeaux, Marquis d'Escouloubre at Toulouse, or Depont at La Rochelle. There were also hundreds of very modest landholders like Chateaubriand in Brittany. They, "country bumpkins," did not even possess a permanent town house in a provincial capital, or a public office, or a judgeship above the rank of simple "seigneur." Differences between old and new nobles, and between rich Court nobles and poorer nobles, were very noticeable within the noble class. Yet these differences, so striking as we saw in the last chapter, are much less pronounced when one sees these men simply as landlords and aeronauts. In fact, there were certain common needs or rules of administration of the land that made all noble landlords seem alike, at least to their tenants and villagers. At first glance this fact seems very curious. A man like Duke Saulx-Tavanes in Paris was an absentee landlord, visiting his chateau and land in Burgundy only a few times in his life, Marquis d'Escouloubre in Toulouse spent six months of the year on his land, while Chateaubriand's father was at Combourg all year around, even in the winter months. Chateaubriand's father, and robe magistrates like Depont or Montesquieu, were resident landlords. Many writers -from Mirabeau to modern sociologists-have stressed the gulf between the absentee landlord and the resident one. A careful look at French examples makes one wonder if the differences are as important as the similarities. Let us consider an absentee landlord first
Enough has been said about the life style of the Saulx-Tavanes family to suggest why the duke rarely visited his properties in the provinces. But if the countryside bored him as a setting for social activity and display, it did not make him inattentive to the income his land could bring. A noble landlord did not have to tramp about his fields to appreciate their worth. In his town house study he could learn all he needed to know about his property from his lawyers.
The duke had a domain of 8,000 acres of land (about, 3,238 hectares) in the Saone Valley, just east of Dijon, the provincial capital. This acreage was big by French standards, surely among the 50 largest in the kingdom in 1780. Like most holdings of the upper nobility, it was far from compact. Spread, over 13 parishes, the domain, was often broken up into tiny parcels like the peasant land with which it was mixed in like a patchwork quilt. The table on the following page compares, the acreage and type of the duke's domain with the land of all the villagers.
Notice that the duke had only a very small part (8 per cent) of the land suitable for plowing and planting (the arable land) in the 13 parishes. But he had two-thirds of the wood and about 40 per cent of the meadow. The wood was held in large tracts of hundreds of acres each. The arable and meadow land was of divided into pieces of less than one acre-in many cases slivers narrower than the country roads. Not only was the duke's land divided into a number of fragments in each parish, and interlaced with the small or even tiny peasant plots, but the 13 parishes were not eve next to each other. They formed three distinct clusters. How could anyone administer such-an estate? In fact, the duke's administrative staff was amazingly small. It consisted of only three men, not counting the eight forest guards and three servants in the half-deserted family chateau. There was a chief steward, or general manger at Paris, a receiver” at Dijon, and a resident steward at the country house. These three men were all lawyers. The one at Paris was an attorney of high professional standing who handled more than one Parisian noble's estate. What were their duties? They leased the duke's land to tenants, collected the rents (in coin), and sold the wood. They paid the creditors of the estate, kept accounts, and wrote to or met with the duke at his townhouse in Paris. It was understood that the main, qualities needed by an estate agent were precision in accounting, rapidity in dispatching rents to Paris (in sacks, by coach), and great care in keeping estate expenses down. There was no thought that these agents would make agricultural improvements or advise the duke on how to make capital investments in the land.
Acres Hectares Acres Hectares Acres Hectares
Arable 1,674 678 20,277 8,206 21,951 8,884
Meadow 1,134 459 1,818 736 2,952 1,195
Vine 9 4 216 87 225 91
Wood 5,310 2,149 2,637 1,067 7,947 3,216
Totals 8,127 3,289 24,948 10,097 33,075 13,386
Per cent of tota1 24.6 24.6 75.4 75.4 100.0 100.0
The main effort of this staff was to lease the land to tenants who could pay the highest rents. A lease-let us say for one cluster of properties. covering three or four parishes-was placed at public auction. Prospective tenants would gather before the agent. They would make offers, usually including an "entrance fee" and a year's rent in advance. No special consideration was given to the old tenant. Every nine years he had to bid along with the newcomers. Leases of this size sometimes totalled over 1,000 acres each (about 400 hectares). They included mills, ovens, winepresses, forges, and seigneurial rights. They brought the duke as much as 20,000 livres per year in rent. To pay this much money, a tenant had to have some means, much more than an ordinary dirt farmer or peasant. Most tenants of this kind were fermiers, grain merchants, or ironmasters, depending on the type of land they leased. They often formed partnerships with other merchants in the larger towns to obtain enough capital to pay the rent and finance their operations before they had grain or iron to sell. But they could not work ~his much land them selves. Some of it they farmed themselves by hiring wage labor. The bulk of it they sublet, especially the small plots, to smaller tenant farmers or sharecroppers.
Hence, the estate administration of the land began to become more complex as the fermier subleased the land. Some went to sharecroppers for produce rent, which the fermier then marketed in the hopes of making a profit. Remember that fermiers also often lent seed and livestock to the sharecroppers, frequently earning a reputation for "usury" and hard dealing when they did so. Other parcels of land went to sub-tenants. The fermier hid to be a hustler to survive, especially as the duke began to increase rents dramatically in the 1770's and 1780's.
It must be remembered (see Chapter 2) that seigneurs had two kinds of claims over the land. They had full ownership over their own domain. In the case of the Duke Saulx-Tavanes, this meant 8,127 acres of domain land. The duke's jurisdiction, however, also included 24,948 acres that had long ago belonged to the domain but were now held by peasants. These peasants~ nevertheless still had to pay various fees or dues to the seigneur. The French word for a piece of peasant land owned in this partial way is mouvance. {moo-vans}' The duke's agents had to collect dues owed by the peasants for their mouvances. The number and amount of these dues varied from region to region and even from village to village. Especially burdensome to peasants in this part of France was the dime. This one-twelfth of their harvest was collected before they paid their expenses for labor, taxes, or next year's seed. This obligation or fee had originally been intended for the Church, but by the 18th century it went to the Saulx-Tavanes family, the seigneur. So, as much as one-fourth of the small peasant's share of the harvest was collected by the duke's agent as a fee, and was sold J for the duke. In general, these seigneurial dues were more than a small supplement to the noble landlord's income, and they were more than a small burden on the peasant holders. In the duke's case, the dues alone came to almost one-third of his landed income and were a sum equal to the royal taxes of ten small villages.
In their relations with the seigneur, the peasants could only yield to what he claimed to be their obligations. The duke had the "right of justice" over 13 parishes. This right meant that the peasants could appeal only to his court in cases concerning land or contracts, even when they were in conflict with the duke himself. His residence at Paris made it possible for him to secure many legal advantages. "Seigneurial justice" was very efficient in handling most rural lawsuits in a way favorable to the local noble landlord, large or small. Only if peasants had some money, legal counsel, literacy, -and the will to use them could they hope to reach a higher court of law. And even there it was not certain that they would receive justice in a dispute with a seigneur.
The distinction between domain and mouvances was often blurred in practice. The seigneurial claims were carefully recorded in large cowhide ledgers. Copies were given to the fermiers to enable them to prove to the peasant farmer what he owed and to make sure it was collected in full. In short, the fermiers not only rented domain land, they also served as dues collectors on the land of the mouvances. Figuring and collecting the various dues throughout the year was a complex and difficult task. There were as many payers of dues as there were households (over 900), and the dues were often tiny, varying from a few chickens to a few pints of wine. Hence the fermiers shouldered an important and unpleasant part of the administration of the duke's jurisdiction. Once more, the task did not earn the fermiers any love or respect from the rest of the villagers. They, as we shall see, were becoming increasingly irritated with the whole seigneurial system on the duke's estate.
The Saulx-Tavanes never neglected their estate in Burgundy in the sense of letting it "go to seed." But as the cost of Parisian living mounted and the duke needed more income, he spent more time with his chief steward and other lawyers at Paris. How could he make the land pay more? As the duke concluded in a letter to his agent at Dijon in August, 1780:
The quantity of debts and charges imposed upon me by my father ... requires me to raise 15,000 livres more annually from the land. I have no other choice at this time but to raise rents....
It may require no particular managerial skill to raise rents. But in this case it is interesting to see how the duke went about it. He sent two men from Paris to inspect his properties near Dijon. They were to estimate the precise yield in produce or cash from each parcel of land, from each tract of forest, from each forge or mil and from each and every seigneurial right. In short, they were to check on the exact potential revenue of each fermier.
When the duke received these detailed accounts, he estimated the maximum rent he could charge. For example, the agent figured one of the leases could return 18,304 livres. The actual rent for this property was 13,000. So the duke wrote to his agent at Dijon to auction the lease for 18,000, leaving the fermier a margin profit of only 304 livres! There was some resistance such an increase, and the agent sometimes had trouble getting the bidders to go as high as the duke wished. Nonetheless, food prices were rising and land was scarce. There were usually people who were willing to accept high rents. They hoped to stock enough grain to sell later when the market rose, and to make enough money on loans of livestock and seed to the poor farmers to be able still to make a profit. But we can see that fermiers could not expect to do as well for themselves as in the past. Their hopes, for future profits began to fade and their attitude toward their landlord, the duke, became less cordial and respectful.
Also, from the standpoint of agricultural improvement, the fermiers were discouraged. Their margins of profit left so little capital to invest in the land. Some fermiers tried to get rent rebates or a temporary reduction in rent to make farm improvements. One Monsieur Huvelin, an energetic fermier, claimed he could increase the revenues of the duke's property by 2,000 livres per year if the duke would advance him 10,000 livres for farm improvements. The duke's agent recommended refusal. He wrote:
This 2,000 livres and more
will come to us anyway at the next lease without planting any new crops.
In short, if "we" can raise rents anyway, why bother? This attitude toward investment in farm improvements was only too typical of nobles like Saulx-Tavanes. An estate was not a risk-taking enterprise but a source of steady revenue and social status.
The duke's account books, still in existence, leave no doubt that the duke raised rents. The Burgundian estate yielded 50,000 livres in 1754. The same properties yielded 86,ooo livres in 1788, an increase of 72 per cent in 34 years. This rise was much faster than the rise in prices of all farm produce except wood. After 1780 the fermiers did not get the benefits of rising wood prices either. The duke detached his forests from the leases. He sold the timber directly to wood merchants on a yearly plan and at excellent prices. The timber from one acre sold at 67 livres in 1758 and 138 livres in 1776, having more than doubled in 28 years-and all of this increase went to the landlord.
If the fermiers were affected by rent increases and loss of wood profits, the smaller villagers were also affected. The duke's new enforcement of all seigneurial rights hurt them. All over France in the years after 1750, noble seigneurs made an increasingly careful accounting of their seigneurial dues. There were few parishes that did not receive new registers bound in cowhide with every obligation listed down to the last chicken. As an absentee landlord, the duke was especially anxious to have every peasant obligation written down. These lists included detailed maps of each peasant's holding in the duke's seigneurial jurisdiction. To draw up these lists and atlases, the duke hired a professional surveyor and lawyer who was an expert in seigneurial rights. He was Jacques Feneon, paid 3,000 livres a year, more than four times the salaries of the duke's other estate agents. In the process of measuring the land and drawing up the new registers, Feneon "rediscovered" old dues that had been forgotten. In some cases, he actually added new ones. He enforced every one of these obligations. He enforced strict collection of the twelfth sheaf of grain at the harvest for the dime, every fee charged the peasants for carting their grain, every quitrent and special fee. He not only refused to allow the peasants to pasture the cattle or search for firewood in his forest, he advanced claims to the communal woodland of the peasants themselves! Seigneurial threats to communal land were not limited to the Saulx-Tavanes land.
As a result of the reinforcement of old dues, the peasants' position changed. Now they felt the presence of even a distant seigneur in the person of the new agent. In this case, the villagers had enough energy and organization to fight some of the duke's claims in the courts. Some villagers hired town lawyers or even appeared in court themselves. They charged Feneon with fraud and gained a hearing. This is not the only case where villages had fought the claims of a seigneur. In fact, at the end of the 18th century, local courts were dealing with an increasing number of suits between seigneur and village community. The "seigneurial reaction," as the landlord's effort to enforce old dues or invent new ones was called, did not go uncontested. And it did not go uncontested despite the prestige and influence of a grand signeur like Saulx-Tavanes, and despite his hold on local justice.
Both the duke and his new agent, Feneon, were puzzled and then angry with the reaction of the village communities. Both declared that this unexpected resistance to what they thought their legal right was the work of "outside trouble makers." Such persons were town lawyers who came into the villages and inspired the villagers to appeal to the royal court at Dijon. The landlord and the agent were shocked by the lack of respect of these "outsiders" for a "great family," and the duke asked the royal intendant to keep these "conspirators" out of "his" villages. Gradually, however, it became apparent, to F6n6on at least, that something more than outside agitators was at the root of the matter. Villagers in large numbers were acting more like "citizens" with legal rights. They were acting less as respectful "vassals" of a seigneur-and duke. It was a disturbing sign. Although the duke was unaware of it, his new land administration was frustrating his older agents and hurting his fermiers. It was also exasperating the local villagers, who in the old days had been hardly aware of the duke's existence.
When we turn to the resident noble landlord, we have the examples of Depont, the "new noble" at La Rochelle, and Marquis d'Escouloubre, the "old noble" at Vieillevigne. Given such different personalities, we would expect to find different landlords, different administrations of the land, and different relations with the local rural community. Depont was a newcomer and not yet sure of himself as a "seigneur." He was still deeply attached to the virtues of thrift and economy and morally opposed to the pleasures of high society. Surely he would manage his land with a careful eye on the account book. He would take a hard view toward tenants behind in their payments or toward any sign of laziness. And indeed this was true. Less expected is the fact that Marquis d'Escouloubre, the Toulousan landlord, was little different.
The Depont family owned about 1,300 acres of domain land (about 526 hectares) some 20 miles east of La Rochelle (about 32 kilometers). It was mostly vineyard and meadow. Depont also had seigneurial claims, over 4,000 more (about 1,600 hectares). Like SaulxTavanes, Depont, although he possessed only one-sixth as much land, leased his domain and seigneurial rights to fermiers whose money leases were placed at auction every nine years. He raised his rents steadily from 13,000 livres in 1751 to 30,000 in 1787. Here was an increase of 131 per cent in 36 years~even better than the duke's 72 per cent in the same period.
Depont's fermiers were men of modest capital. They had tenancies of only about 100 acres each (about 41 hectares). But the seigneurial rights that they collected included a claim to one-eighth of the wine harvest over large areas. Most fermiers set up stills and converted the wine into brandy for export to England. This region was an extension of the cognac country, today still famous for its fine brandies. Yet even with this export, the fermiers were hard pressed. They fell behind in their rents and were frequently replaced even before their nine-year term expired. True, Paul-Frangois Depont managed his farms with only a single agent, M. Faurie. With legal training of his own, Depont hounded fermiers who owed him money (one of them for 27 years after he had ceased being Depont's fermier) and did not hesitate to step in and seize a fermier's possessions if he could not pay. In a letter to the agent Faurie in 1769, Depont's tone with his fermiers appears little different from the duke's:
Tell me immediately ff the lease is signed and (if not) do not fail to find another fermier to take his place.
Furthermore, the Deponts were not concerned about improving the land or increasing productivity. The lease terms did not encourage new methods by the tenant. Depont would not even help pay for the fuel and equipment needed to make the brandy. And almost all the land taxes were paid by the fermiers, not by Depont.
As for seigneurial rights, Depont ordered two surveys of the land, one in 1746 and another in 1786. The second survey was much more thorough. It was conducted by an outside specialist paid by the acre surveyed. The cowhide ledgers of seigneurial dues are very much like those of Saulx-Tavanes. Also as with Tavanes, the principal seigneurial. fee was a produce rent, a claim to one-eighth of the harvest on about 4,000 acres (about 1,619 hectares), which struck the small winegrower heavily. And of course as "seigneur," Depont had his own local court, which he used to enforce his claim to rents or dues.
In one way, the resident Depont, father and son, were different from the absentee duke. Since they were close by, they were able to build up their properties piece by piece, using a number of ways to get the smaller peasant owners to sell out and give up their parcels to the seigneur. Often the "sales" were removal of the tenants for failure to pay rents or dues or for other debts carefully recorded in the account books of the estate. Often the “sales" were very small-a half-acre plot, a row of vine plants, a garden here, a patch of beans there. If land was "abandoned" in the seigneurial jurisdiction, Depont claimed it "reunited to the domain" and made it hi own. All of this activity was a very long-term process. Over 60 years in 23 separate transactions, the Depoint added more than 250 acres to their domain (about 10 hectares) in this piecemeal fashion.
The Marquis d'Escouloubre was of old noble stock. Secure in his titles and at ease in his Catholicism, his had none of the problems Paul-Frangois Depont met in adjusting to his station in life. Without a puritan or business morality that identified pleasure with "folly” and "immorality," the marquis could enjoy the theater or drawing room at Toulouse. He could even devote some spare time to writing a sonnet or two. But these differences of provincial style of life shrank to nothing when it came to managing the land. Escouloubre at Toulouse was every bit as tightfisted and economial when it came to his revenues as Depont at La Rochelle.
Escouloubre had a much smaller estate than either Saulx-Tavanes or Depont. His domain totaled just over 600 acres (about 243 hectares) and was almost exclusively committed to wheat growing. He did not auction his seven farms to fermiers for money rents. He worked four of them with wage labor and the other three on shares. These methods meant he had to supervise the land even more closely than Depont. He had to oversee the harvest and make sure that it was proportioned correctly -so much for seed, so much for harvest hands, so much for sharecroppers. He marketed his own grain. He did not need a fennier-type tenant to market his crops, His sharecroppers did not work for much more than they needed to keep their families alive. The marquis knew how to stock his own grain and sell -it at the most favorable moment. It may seem strange that Escouloubre, a ram who could trace his noble pedigree to the 13th century, was much more directly concerned with the grain market than Depont, whose immediate ancestors knew other forms of commerce so well. But, remember, standing amidst the livestock and manure of the barnyard, supervising the harvest, was much more "noble" than handling ship cargoes. It was also quite respectable to lend peasants farm produce and even money, but R was always "suspect" to lend capital to merchants.
The similarity
to Depont is most striking in the process of domain building. All the same ways of adding parcels to the
domain were used. Loans and removals,
forced sales to pay back rent, purchases from hard-pressed peasants, the right
of the seigneur to step into any private sale and make his own offer were
employed by both landlords, and with the same long-run success. In 40 years (1750-90) the Escouloubre
increased their domain from 600 acres to 730 acres- (about 243 to 295 hectares)
by such piecemeal purchases. And like
Depont, Escouloubre used his claims, even though his return from seigneurial
dues was less than 10 per cent of his landed income. (Tavanes and Depont received about one-third of their landed
income from seigneurial dues.) In any case, peasant holders within this
jurisdiction had some reason to be irritated.
The relation of Escouloubre to his sharecroppers is more difficult to judge. Like Depont, he raised rents. in this case he raised produce rents, reducing the sharecropper's portion from about one-half to about one fourth of the grain harvest in the 40 years after 1750. No doubt many sharecroppers were in trouble. Those who once counted on a small surplus to sell were now lucky to feed and clothe their families, keep them warm throughout the year, and pay their taxes without going into debt. Yet, their hopes of selling grain had always been less than those of the fermier. As semiliterate dirt farmers, sharecroppers were dependent on a seigneur like Escouloubre. If the sharecroppers were unhappy under their dependence for loans, for occasional charity, and for a person to act for them with the royal government, they had no choice. In the region of Toulouse the village communities were weak. They, and the local priest and notaries, were too dependent on the noble seigneurs to offer a counterweight to a landlord like Marquis d'Escouloubre.
We have talked a great deal about the noble landlord's relations with his tenants, large and small. We have also spoken of the noble landlord's relations with the small peasant farmers in his seigneurial jurisdiction. We have, said nothing about his relations with the very poor -the seasonal harvest hands and day laborers who were happy merely to survive from year to year. We recall that these landless day laborers made up perhaps a third of the rural population. This was close to eight million people. Their dismal condition is clearly shown in these words by the Society of Agriculture at La Rochelle in 1764.
The Day Laborer 'in our province earns only 183 livres annually. He must spend 189 livres for his own needs. Therefore, nothing remains for the support of his family or the payment of his taxes. He must deprive himself of necessities. His miserable clothing is scarcely better than a beggar's. He often relies on unscrupulous moneylenders and becomes insolvent (in debt). If the tax collector comes, he is struck down again. He does not even have the consolation of inspiring pity.
How did the noble landlords act toward the poor in the villages? Among the three examples above, Escouloubre was perhaps more directly charitable than the other two. He gave food to the poor either in his parish at Toulouse or at the chateau at Vieillevigne. It was his Catholic duty and he performed it. Depont seemed less willing to give in this manner. Although he donated bread to his own peasants in bad harvest years, he was reluctant to do so. During the bad year of 1765, Depont wrote to his agent that "although I am convinced that the misery is great, one must not always believe what they [the rural poor] say because there are many loafers who make their hardships seem worse than they really are." On the one hand, charity must not go to the idle, but only to the "pious and industrious." On the other hand, Depont senior established a small charity school on his domain for a half dozen poor girls. He also gave some money to the General Hospital at La Rochelle. Perhaps he was more interested than Escouloubre in making his gifts effective, in the sense of educating or "rehabilitating" the poor. Perhaps as a "New Catholic," he felt his charities should be known to the Church and local public. They would prove that his conversion was sincere.
What about the duke at Paris? There is no evidence that he contributed any money at all to the rural poor. He donated 200 livres a year in Paris to maintain two students at the Academy of Art and Music. He gave away 96 livres to the parish poor on the day of his daughter's marriage, and perhaps he distributed some small change to the countless beggars along the streets of Paris. His largest recorded donation for charity occurred in the grim winter of 1789. That year the duke gave 600 livres to his 11 villages to be distributed by the parish priests, and 300 livres to his home parish in Paris. These sums hardly seem large for a man with an income in 1788 of 150,000 livres. Here it seems that absenteeism may have made some difference, especially when added to the enormous cost of living in the capital. There was simply nothing left once the so-called social obligations at Paris had been paid for. In fact, debts were mounting to pay for these social obligations. That the duke rarely thought about questions of rural poverty before 1789 says a great deal about what he believed to be - or not to be his duty.
What can we conclude about nobles as landlords from the three examples here? None of these nobles seemed interested in agricultural improvements or reinvesting in the land. All pressed their fermiers and sharecroppers for a maximum return by raising rents, enforcing seigneurial dues, and pursuing those owing money with seigneurial justice. The resident seigneurs (Depont and Escouloubre) built up their domains by buying out the small and indebted owners near them. (Here was a process that must have increased the pain by its very slowness!) The absentee landlord built up his property by favorable marriages in Paris. Yet the land administration of a grand seigneur was efficient enough- to touch the lives of most of the members of the local rural community. Even the lot of the poor was made harder by seigneurial claims to the common land and by threats to the communal rights of the villages.
Furthermore, the noble landlords profited most from the favorable grain market and scarcity of land. After'~ 1750 they raised their rents even faster than the increase in grain prices, and they kept them high even when prices temporarily fell. By contrast, almost all the other classes of people who earned their living from the land suffered. Sharecroppers, day laborers, small owners, and even fermiers either found it harder to feed their families or saw their own profits from farming decline. Rents and dues absorbed more and more of the farm surplus.
There is much in the policies of these three landlords that might be called shortsighted greed and selfish calculation. Landlords cannot be expected to be charities. But if they hoped to hold the loyalty of their agents and tenants and the respect of the rural community, surely their money-seeking efforts should have been tempered by some sense of community well-being. They might have given examples of new farming methods and high grain yield. Or perhaps at least they might have encouraged their agents and tenants to do so. They might have adjusted their rents and dues to local needs and capacity to pay, and not based them only on what the market would bear, or what a noble style of life dictated. They might have used their political power and influence to make local public improvements (roads, canals, drainage, irrigation) that would serve all of the country people. They might have tried to deal with the symptoms and even causes of poverty. They might have . . . but they did not.
Alexis de Tocqueville was one noble landlord who saw the problem, at least in looking back. Like Mirabeau, he saw loyalties of peasant to landlord ebbing away. Years after the French Revolution he wrote:
Long before open war was declared against it [the aristocracy], the tie that had hitherto united the higher classes to the lower may be seen to be gradually relaxed. Indifference and contempt are revealed by one class, jealousy and hatred by the others. The intercourse between rich and poor becomes less frequent and less kind, and rents are raised.
Many peasants who tilled the soil or rented land from large landlords had changed enough in their attitude and outlook to resent what was happening to them. They felt what we call today "relative deprivation." This feeling is a resentment at watching others become richer while they remained untouched by prosperity -or even suffered severe want. Of course there was poverty in the countryside, especially among the millions of share croppers and day laborers. But even the peasant owners and fermiers, who had been able to sell some grain on the rising market, now found the future bleak as the rents and seigneurial dues increased. Again, to use a modem expression, their "expectations" -were disappointed, their hope of a better future dashed.
Still, these feelings would not have been enough to cause deep restlessness or widespread anger toward the 46 powers that be" in the past. But many villagers had already gained some self-respect, some sense of their own worth. Furthermore, they had some notion of reform and a growing belief that change for the better was possible. It is this belief that is fundamental to revolution.
Once the hope of change was planted in their minds, the peasants began to grope for solutions to their daily problems. Some of their pent-up anger came to the surface. Is it so strange that one of their strongest hostilities was toward the noble landlord? But they would still have to be able to express this anger and resentment without danger to themselves. The peasants would need friends, leaders, and some organization for common action. After 1789 they would find them.
In Chapter 2 we
saw that there were many unchanging aspects of village life. But despite them, new influences were at
work on the minds and outlook even of the most humble peasant and
villager. It is impossible to measure
precisely the effect of all these influences.
But the attitudes and activities of the noble landlords in the 40 years
after 1750, which were revealed in this chapter, were clearly among the most
important among them.