The Ancient Regime. Taine Hippolyte

(return) [ "Mémoires of Madame Campan," I. 89; II. 215.]

      1118 (return) [ In 1785 an Englishman visiting France boasts of the political liberty enjoyed in his country. As an offset to this the French reproach the English for having decapitated Charles I., and "glory in having always maintained an inviolable attachment to their own king; a fidelity, a respect which no excess or severity on his part has ever shaken." ("A Comparative View of the French and of the English Nation," by John Andrews, p.257.)]

      1119 (return) [ Memoirs of D'Augeard, private secretary of the Queen, and a former farmer-general.]

      1120 (return) [ The following is the reply of Louis XV. to the Parliament of Paris, March 3, 1766, in a lit de justice: "The sovereign authority is vested in my person … The legislative power, without dependence and without division, exists in myself alone. Public security emanates wholly from myself; I am its supreme custodian. My people are one only with me; national rights and interests, of which an attempt is made to form a body separate from those of the monarch, are necessarily combined with my own, and rests only in my hands."]

CHAPTER II. THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES.

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I. Number of the Privileged Classes.

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The privileged classes number about 270,000 persons, comprising of the nobility, 140,000 and of the clergy 130,000.1201 This makes from 25,000 to 30,000 noble families; 23,000 monks in 2,500 monasteries, and 37,000 nuns in 1,500 convents, and 60,000 curates and vicars in as many churches and chapels. Should the reader desire a more distinct impression of them, he may imagine on each square league of territory1202, and to each thousand of inhabitants, one noble family in its weathercock mansion. In each village there is a curate and his church, and, every six or seven leagues, a community of men or of women. We have here the ancient chieftains and founders of France; thus entitled, they still enjoy many possessions and many rights.

II. Their Possessions, Capital, and Revenue.

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Let us always keep in mind what they were, in order to comprehend what they are. Great as their advantages may be, these are merely the remains of still greater advantages. This or that bishop or abbot, this or that count or duke, whose successors make their bows at Versailles, was formerly the equals of the Carlovingians and the first Capets. A Sire de Montlhéry held King Philippe I in check.1203 The abbey of St. Germain des Prés possessed 430,000 hectares of land (about 900,000 acres), almost the extent of an entire department. We need not be surprised that they remained powerful, and, especially, rich; no stability is greater than that of an associative body. After eight hundred years, in spite of so many strokes of the royal ax, and the immense change in the culture of society, the old feudal root lasts and still vegetates. We remark it first in the distribution of property.1204 A fifth of the soil belongs to the crown and the communes, a fifth to the Third-Estate, a fifth to the rural population, a fifth to the nobles and a fifth to the clergy. Accordingly, if we deduct the public lands, the privileged classes own one-half of the kingdom. This large portion, moreover, is at the same time the richest, for it comprises almost all the large and imposing buildings, the palaces, castles, convents, and cathedrals, and almost all the valuable movable property, such as furniture, plate, objects of art, the accumulated masterpieces of centuries.—We can judge of it by an estimate of the portion belonging to the clergy. Its possessions, capitalized, amount to nearly 4,000,000,000 francs.1205 Income from this amounts to 80 or 100 millions. To this must be added the dime (or tithes), 123 millions per annum, in all 200 millions, a sum which must be doubled to show its equivalent at the present day. We must also add the chance contributions and the usual church collections.1206 To fully realize the breadth of this golden stream let us look at some of its affluents. 399 monks at Prémontré estimate their revenue at more than 1,000,000 livres, and their capital at 45,000,000. The Provincial of the Dominicans of Toulouse admits, for his two hundred and thirty-six monks, "more than 200,000 livres net revenue, not including the convent and its enclosure; also, in the colonies, real estate, Negroes and other effects, valued at several millions." The Benedictines of Cluny, numbering 298, enjoy an income of 1,800,000 livres. Those of Saint-Maur, numbering 1672, estimate the movable property of their churches and houses at 24,000,000, and their net revenue at 8 millions, "without including that which accrues to Messieurs the abbots and priors commendatory," which means as much and perhaps more. Dom Rocourt, abbot of Clairvaux, has from 300,000 to 400,000 livres income; the Cardinal de Rohan, archbishop of Strasbourg, more than 1,000,000.1207 In Franche-Comté, Alsace and Roussillon the clergy own one-half of the territory, in Hainaut and Artois, three-quarters, in Cambrésis fourteen hundred plow-areas out of seventeen hundred.1208 Almost the whole of Le Velay belongs to the Bishop of Puy, the abbot of La Chaise-Dieu, the noble chapter of Brionde, and to the seigniors of Polignac. The canons of St. Claude, in the Jura, are the proprietors of 12,000 serfs or 'mainmorts.'1209 Through fortunes of the first class we can imagine those of the second. As along with the noble it comprises the ennobled. As the magistrates for two centuries, and the financiers for one century had acquired or purchased nobility, it is clear that here are to be found almost all the great fortunes of France, old or new, transmitted by inheritance, obtained through court favors, or acquired in business. When a class reaches the summit it is recruited out of those who are mounting or clambering up. Here, too, there is colossal wealth. It has been calculated that the possessions of the princes of the royal family, the Comtés of Artois and of Provence, the Ducs d'Orléans and de Penthiévre then covered one-seventh of the territory.1210 The princes of the blood have together a revenue of from 24 to 25 millions; the Duc d'Orléans alone has a rental of 11,500,000.1211—These are the vestiges of the feudal régime. Similar vestiges are found in England, in Austria, in Germany and in Russia. Proprietorship, indeed, survives a long time survives the circumstances on which it is founded. Sovereignty had constituted property; divorced from sovereignty it has remained in the hands formerly sovereign. In the bishop, the abbot and the count, the king respected the proprietor while overthrowing the rival, and, in the existing proprietor a hundred traits still indicate the annihilated or modified sovereign.

III. Their Immunities.

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