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ROBERT FORSTER
PEASANTS, NOBLES AND RURAL REVOLUTION IN 18TH-CENTURY FRANCE
Ronald Posner
Inquiry Materials
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
New York
Collier Macmillan Publishers
London
A Tour of the Village
Villagers at Work
Communal Farming, Communal Rights
Village Government
The Role of the Seigneur
The impact of the Royal Government on the Village Community
Values and Attitudes of the Villagers
CHAPTER 2 THE
VILLAGE COMMUNITY: CHANGING PATTERNS
The Effect of Population Growth
Classes of Farmers in France
The "Outside World": The Fermier
The "Outside World": The Village Lawyer
Taxes and Absentee Landlords
Growing national government
Effects of Military Service
Problems Within the Catholic Church
CHAPTER 3 LIFE
STYLE OF THE NOBLE LANDLORDS: PARIS AND
THE
PROVINCES
Paris and the Royal Court
What It Meant to Be a Noble
The Great Noble
The Provincial Noble
The Rise of a Merchant to Noble Status
CHAPTER 4 NOBLE
LANDLORDS AND THE LOCAL VILLAGE
COMMUNITY
An Overview of French Landlords
Duke Saulx-Tavanes as Seigneur
The Depont as Seigneurs
Marquis d'Escouloubre as Seigneur
The Noble Landlords and the Landless Poor
The Effect of Landlord Policies
CHAPTER 5 THE RURAL REVOLUTION AND ITS AFTERMATH
Why a Rural Revolution
The Crisis of 1788-89
The Rural Revolution: Stage I, Spring and Summer 1789
The Rural Revolution: Stage II, 1790-91
The Rural Revolution: Stage III, 1792-94
Post-Revolution Landowners
Some Consequences of the Rural Revolution
Glossary and Pronunciation Key
Index and Metric. Measures
For thousands of years working the land has been the occupation of most men and women the world over. Even in this last quarter of the 20th century, farming is still the way of life of more than half the world's population. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, millions of peasant farmers live in the traditional way of their ancestors. They spend all their lives in villages of a few hundred inhabitants. At daybreak, they trudge out to their fields; at dusk, they return to their small, simple cottages, or huts. In one region, rice is the important crop; in another, corn and beans; and in a third, wheat. Water buffalo pull the peasants' simple plows and creaking carts in some countries. Oxen or horses are better suited to other climates and soils. But everywhere the muscle power of men and women is the chief form of energy. People grow their own food, make their own clothing, build their own houses, and fashion their own simple tools. Because their contacts with the outside world are few, they must make do with what they have. Their lives and their very thoughts are shaped by the land and the climate of the area in which they live.
Our story begins in about 1750 in a little village of southern France,Vieillevigne. {vya-ven' ye}
There the people were giving very much as their ancestors had lived for centuries. There seemed to be no thought that things could, or should, change. Yet beneath the surface of this seemingly timeless, traditional society, little-noticed, subtle changes were taking place. We will see that a number of such changes - each one small in itself – were gradually altering the attitudes and outlook of the majority of village people. Such changes were not limited to this village. They were happening in many parts fo France as well.
One of the most important of these changes was a new way of thinking about the noble landlord. In the 18th century, most nobles lived a large part of the year in the city. Yet they owned large landholdings, and their revenues came from the land. When the French Revolution began in 1789, peasant farmer and noble landlord each played a part. When the Revolution was over, the peasants went on cultivating their fields much in the old way. But their relation to the land and to the noble landlord had changed. It had changed so markedly that we can say a new kind of rural society had been created. The story of this change is the subject of this book.
Here is a timely story for us in the 20th century. In the villages and fields of the developing world, subtle changes are taking place. Many of them are similar to those we shall observe in our French village. As in 18th-century France, influences from outside the villages are playing their part. Although peasants today, as always, resist change in their traditional ways of living, they want their share of the world's material comforts. More important, they want to live with self-respect and dignity, no matter how modest their worldly goods.
We begin our story in Chapter 1 with a description of the traditional life of Vieillevigne about 1750. Chapter 2 shows us the influences working to change the peasants' outlook between 1750 and the French Revolution 40 years later. In the third and fourth chapters, we shall look at the rural community from "above." That is, we shall observe the village from the viewpoint of the noble landlord, the most influential and important figure in the village. Chapter 3 describes the style of life of the landlord in city and country. Chapter 4 shows how the nobility contributed to further change in the countryside. Finally, in Chapter 5, we shall note the rural aspects of the French Revolution. We shall see the effects of the Revolution on the status and attitudes of both the village peasant and the noble landlord. .
All history is, to some degree, a record of conflict between traditional ways and habits on the one hand, and pressures for change on the other. Yet our story has special importance. Why? Because the struggle between tradition and change in rural France in these 40 or 50 years had a dramatic result. It helped to bring about the French Revolution. This little book is not the history of that Revolution. It is the study of the preparation for revolution. In France, as elsewhere, revolution took' place first in the minds of people. We shall concentrate on how it happened in the minds of people in rural France. We shall see how the actions of the nobility affected the villagers, and how the Revolution affected the various classes of people concerned with the land.
