A Political and Social History of Modern Europe Part 47

In no country was the evil side of absolutism exhibited so unmistakably as in France. During the eighteenth century the French government went from bad to worse, until at last it was altered not by peaceful reform but by violent revolution.

[Sidenote: French People better off than their Neighbors]

As far as their actual condition was concerned, the people of France were, on the whole, better off than most Germans or Italians. Next to England, France had the most numerous, prosperous, and intelligent middle cla.s.s; and her peasants were slightly above the serfs of other Continental countries. But the very fact that in material well-being they were a little better off than their neighbors, made the French people more critical of their government. The lower cla.s.ses had not all been ground down until they were mere slaves without hope or courage; on the contrary, there were many st.u.r.dy farmers and thrifty artisans who hoped for better days and bitterly resented inequalities in society and abuses in the government. The bourgeoisie was even less inclined to bow to tyranny; it was numerous, intelligent, wealthy, and influential; it could see the mistakes of the royal administration and was hopeful of gaining a voice in the government. Thus, the people of France were keener to feel wrongs and to resent the injustice of undutiful monarchs.

Let us glance at the crying abuses in the French state of the eighteenth century, and then we shall understand how great was the guilt of that pleasure-loving despot--Louis XV (1715-1774).

[Sidenote: The Administration]

[Sidenote: The King]

The French administrative system was confused and oppressive. In theory, it was quite simple--the government was the king. As Louis XV haughtily remarked: "The sovereign authority is vested in my person...

the legislative power exists in myself alone... my people are one only with me; national rights and national interests are necessarily combined with my own and only rest in my hands."

But in practice, the king could not alone make laws, keep order, and collect taxes, especially when he spent whole days hunting or gambling.

He contented himself with spending the state money, getting into wars, and occasionally interfering with the work of his ministers. And it was necessary to intrust the actual conduct of affairs to a complicated system or no-system of royal officials.

[Sidenote: The Royal Council]

The highest rung in the ladder of officialdom was the Royal Council. It was composed of the half dozen chief ministers and about thirty councilors who helped their chiefs to supervise the affairs of the kingdom,--issuing decrees, conferring on foreign policy, levying taxes, and acting on endless reports from local officials.

[Sidenote: Local Administration. The Intendants]

The Royal Council had numerous local representatives. There were the bailiffs and seneschals, whose actual powers had quite disappeared, but whose offices served to complicate matters. Then there were the governors of provinces, well-fed gentlemen with fat salaries and little to do. The bulk of local administration fell into the hands of the intendants and their sub-delegates. Each of the thirty-four intendants --the so-called "Thirty Tyrants of France"--was appointed by the king's ministers and was like a petty despot in his district (_generalite_).

The powers of the intendant were extensive. He decided what share of the district taxes each village and taxpayer should bear. He had his representatives in each parish of his district, and through them he supervised the police, the preservation of order, and the recruiting of the army. He relieved the poor in bad seasons. The erection of a church, or the repair of a town hall, needed his sanction. When the Royal Council ordered roads to be built, it was the intendant and his men who directed the work and called the peasants out to do the labor.

With powers such as these, it was little wonder that the intendant was called _Monseigneur_--"My lord."

[Sidenote: The Parlement of Paris]

The system of Royal Council, intendants, and sub-intendants would have been comparatively simple, had it not been complicated by the presence of numerous other political bodies, each of which claimed certain customary powers. First of all, there was the _Parlement_, or supreme court, of Paris, primarily a judicial body which registered the royal decrees. If the Parlement disliked a decree, it might refuse to register it, until the king should hold a "bed of justice"--that is, should formally summon the Parlement and in person command it to register his decree.

[Sidenote: Provincial Estates]

Then there were provincial "Estates," or a.s.semblies, in a few of the provinces. [Footnote: Such provinces were called _pays d'etat_ and included Brittany, Languedoc, Provence, Roussillon, Dauphine, Burgundy, Franche Comte, Alsace, Lorraine, Artois, Flanders, Corsica, etc. The local a.s.semblies in these _pays d'etat_ were by no means representative of all the inhabitants. The remaining provinces, in which no vestiges of provincial self-government survived, were called _pays d'election_: they included Ile de France, Orleanais, Champagne and Brie, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Guyenne and Gascony, Limousin, Auvergne, Lyonnais, Bourbonnais, Touraine, Normandy, Picardy, etc.] These bodies, survivals of the middle ages, did not make laws but had a voice in the apportionment of taxes among the parishes of the province, and exercised powers of supervision over road-building and the collection of taxes.

[Sidenote: Town Councils]

The government of the towns was peculiar. The old gilds, now including only a small number of the wealthiest burghers, elected a Town Council, which managed the property of the town, appointed tax-collectors, saw that the town hall was kept in repair, and supervised the collection of customs duties on goods brought into the town. It is easy to perceive how the Town Council and the intendant would have overlapping powers, and how considerable confusion might arise, especially since in different towns the nature and the powers of the Town Council differed widely. Matters were complicated still further by the fact that the mayors of the towns were not elected by the council, but appointed by the crown.

In rural districts there was a trace of the same conflict between the system of intendants and the survivals of local self-government.

Summoned by the clanging church bell, all the men of the village met on the village green. And the simple villagers, thus gathered together as a town meeting or communal a.s.sembly, might elect collectors of the _taille_, or might perhaps pet.i.tion the intendant to repair the parsonage or the bridge.

[Sidenote: Confusion in Administration]

Possibly the reader may now begin to realize that confusion was a prime attribute of the French administrative system. The common people were naturally bewildered by the overlapping functions of Royal Council, Parlement, provincial estates, governors, bailiffs, intendants, subintendants, mayors, town councils, and village a.s.semblies. The system, or lack of system, gave rise to corruption and complication without insuring liberty. The most trivial affairs were regulated by overbearing and exacting royal officials. Everything depended upon the honesty and industry or upon the meanness and caprice of these officials. Each petty officer transmitted long reports to his superior; but the general public was kept in the dark about official matters, and was left to guess, as best it could, the reasons for the seemingly unreasonable acts of the government. If an intendant increased the taxes on a village, the ignorant inhabitants blamed it upon official "graft" or favoritism. Or, if hard times prevailed, or if a shaky bridge broke down, the villagers were p.r.o.ne in any case to find fault with the government, for the more mysterious and powerful the government was, the more likely was it to bear the blame for all ills.

Confusion in administrative offices was not the only confusion in eighteenth-century France. There was no uniformity or simplicity in standards of weight and measure, in coinage, in tolls, in internal customs-duties. But worst of all were the laws and the courts of justice.

[Sidenote: Confusion in Laws]

What was lawful in one town was often illegal in a place not five miles distant. Almost four hundred sets or bodies of law were in force in different parts of France. In some districts the old Roman laws were still retained; elsewhere laws derived from early German tribes were enforceable. Many laws were not even in writing; and such as were written were more often in Latin than in French. The result was that only unusually learned men knew the law, and common people stumbled along in the dark. The laws, moreover, were full of injustice and cruelty. An offender might have his hand or ear cut off, or his tongue torn out; he might be burned with red-hot irons or have molten lead poured into his flesh. Hanging was an easy death compared to the lingering torture of having one's bones broken on a wheel.

[Sidenote: Confusion in Law Courts]

The courts were nearly as bad as the laws. There were royal courts, feudal courts, church courts, courts of finance, and military courts; and it was a wise offender who knew before which court he might be tried. Extremely important cases might be carried on appeal to the highest courts of the realm--the Parlements--of which there were thirteen, headed in honor by that of Paris.

[Sidenote: Prevalence of Injustice]

Although courts were so plenteous, justice was seldom to be found.

Persons wrongfully accused of crime were tortured until they confessed deeds they had never committed. The public was not admitted to trials, so no one knew on what grounds the sentence was pa.s.sed, and the judge gave no reason for his verdict. Civil lawsuits were appealed from court to court and might drag on for years until the parties had spent all their money. Lawyers were more anxious to extract large fees from their clients than to secure justice for them.

[Sidenote: "n.o.blesse de la Robe"]

Confused laws and conflicting jurisdictions were often made worse by the character of the judges who presided over royal courts. Many of them were rich bourgeois who had purchased their appointment from the king. For a large price it was possible to buy a judgeship or seat in a Parlement, not only for a lifetime but as an hereditary possession. It has been estimated that 50,000 bourgeois families possessed such judicial offices: they formed a sort of lower n.o.bility, exempted from certain taxes and very proud of their honors. Naturally envious were his neighbors when the "councilor" appeared in his grand wig and his enormous robe of silk and velvet, attended by a page who kept the robe from trailing in the dust. No wonder these bourgeois judges were called "the n.o.bility of the robe."

In some way or other the "n.o.ble of the robe" had to compensate himself for the price of his office and the cost of his robe. One bought an office for profit as well as for honor. For to the judge were paid the court fees and fines; and no shrewd judge would let a case pa.s.s him without exacting some kind of a fee. Even more profitable were the indirect gains. If Monsieur A had gained his case in court, it was quite to be expected that in his joy Monsieur A would make a handsome present to the judge who had given the decision. At least, that is the way the judge would have put it. As a plain matter of fact the judges were bribed, and justice was too often bought and sold like judgeships.

[Sidenote: Abuses in the Army]

Corruption and abuses were not confined to the civil government and the courts of law; the army, too, was infected. In the ranks were to be found hired foreigners, unwilling peasants dragged from their farms, and the sc.u.m of the city slums. Thousands deserted every year. Had the discontented troops been well commanded, they might still have answered the purpose. But such was not the case. There were certainly enough officers--an average of one general for every 157 privates. But what officers they were! Dissolute and dandified generals drawing their pay and never visiting their troops, lieutenants reveling in vice, instead of drilling and caring for their commands. n.o.ble blood, not ability, was the qualification of a commander. Counts, who had never seen a battlefield, were given military offices, and the seven-year-old Duc de Frousac was a colonel.

[Sidenote: Confusion in Finance]

Confused administration, antiquated laws, corrupt magistrates, and a disorganized army showed the weakness of the French monarchy; but financial disorders threatened its very existence,--for a government out of money is as helpless as a fish out of water.

The destructive wars, costly armies, luxurious palaces, and extravagant court of Louis XIV had left to the successors of the Grand Monarch many debts, an empty treasury, and an overtaxed people. If ever there was need of care and thrift, it was in the French monarchy in the eighteenth century.

Yet the king's ministers did not even trouble themselves to keep orderly accounts. Bills and receipts were carelessly laid away; no one knew how much was owed or how much was to be expected by the treasury; and even the king himself could not have told how much he would run into debt during the year. While it lasted, money was spent freely.

[Sidenote: Royal Revenue]

The amount of money required by the king would have made taxes very heavy anyway, but bad methods of a.s.sessment and collection added to the burden. The royal revenue was derived chiefly from three sources: the royal domains, the direct taxes, and the indirect taxes. From the royal domains, the lands of which the king was landlord as well as sovereign, a considerable but ever-diminishing income was derived.

[Sidenote: Direct Taxes]

[Sidenote: The Income Tax]

[Sidenote: The Poll Tax]

The direct taxes were the prop of the treasury, for they could be increased to meet the demand, at least as long as the people would pay.

There were three direct taxes--the _taille_, the _capitation_, and the _vingtieme_. The _vingtieme_, or "twentieth," was a tax on incomes?5 per cent [Footnote: Five per cent in theory; in practice in the reign of Louis XVI it was 11 per cent] on the salary of the judge, on the rents of the n.o.ble, on the earning of the artisan, on the produce of the peasant. The clergy were entirely exempted from this tax; the more influential n.o.bles and bourgeois contrived to have their incomes underestimated, and the burden fell heaviest on the poorer cla.s.ses.

_Capitation_ was a general poll or head tax, varying in amount according to whichever of twenty-two cla.s.ses claimed the individual taxpayer. Maid-servants, for example, paid annually three _livres_ and twelve _sous_. [Footnote: A _livre_ was worth about a _franc_ (20 cents) and a _sou_ was equivalent to one cent.]

[Sidenote: The Taille or Land Tax]

The most important and hated direct tax was the _taille_ or land tax,--practically a tax on peasants alone. The total amount to be raised was apportioned among the intendants by the Royal Council, and by the intendants among the villages of their respective districts. At the village a.s.sembly collectors were elected, who were thereby authorized to demand from each villager a share of the tax, according to his ability to pay. As a result of this method, each villager tried to appear poor so as to be taxed lightly; whole villages looked run- down in order to be held for only a small share; and influential politicians often obtained alleviation for parts of the country.

[Sidenote: Indirect Taxes]

[Sidenote: "Tax Farming"]