Daily Life During the French Revolution (37 page)

Life was particularly hard for rural women, who often
worked both in and outside the house, tending vegetables, which they sold along
with eggs, gathering firewood, taking the cow or goat to pasture on common
land, and feeding chickens or geese. In times of need, mother and daughters
also helped in the fields and with the plowing. At other times, there were
meals to be prepared and laundry to be washed and laid out in the field to dry
in the sun.

Lack of privacy was taken for granted. A recently married
couple usually had to sleep in the same room as other members of the household,
and their emotional and sexual relationships were a matter of gossip. Village
women gathered at the public well or at washing sites along streams to act as
tribunes, casting moral judgment on the housekeeping, farming practices, or
business astuteness of a young couple. Young unmarried men in the community
also exercised their tongues in making fun of husbands suspected of being
henpecked or cuckolded. Widows or widowers who married a second time, choosing
a younger person as a mate, could be subjected to harassment by hostile young
men and women who saw their supply of eligible partners in the village
diminished.

The wealthier peasants could afford to educate their
children, but for most, life was something to endure, with a constant worry
about the future. A bad harvest meant little food and even starvation for those
living on the edge of subsistence. Gathering the harvest was the dominant
factor in their lives, for only if the harvest was successful could they pay
their taxes and dues and feed the family. The entire household would be called
upon when the harvest was ready, since all hands were needed to get the crops in
before they rotted in the ground.

The men, meanwhile, worked in the fields repairing fences,
cleaning tools, digging irrigation ditches, and tending to the animals.
Depending on the type of farm, the man might have to spend months away with his
sheep in the alpine pastures or weeks and months as a migrant laborer in
addition to planting and harvesting his own field. He also had to leave to
fulfill labor obligations to the seigneur and to the government—the detested
corvée,
buying or selling livestock, dealing with taxes, or negotiating a new
lease. Children were put to work by age six or seven, or as soon as they could
understand instructions.

TALES AND LEGENDS

When the workday was finished, supper had been eaten, and
the early winter night had descended, how did peasants in isolated farms and
hamlets entertain themselves? One may never know the extent to which
storytelling, sitting around the hearth, was part of family evenings, but it is
clear that folk tales, passed down orally from one generation to the next, were
recited for the benefit of children and adults. Stories in which a widow and
her son, beaten down by poverty, leave the village, travel through a forest
full of murderous brigands, and finally wind up in a filthy poorhouse before a
magic bracelet rescues them demonstrate the terrible and dangerous conditions
in which peasants lived and their desire to break free. The tale of a poor
peasant who comes by a magic tablecloth that produces a fabulous meal whenever
the peasant spreads it out reflects real life and the constant striving to
satisfy hunger. Many French tales revolved around work in the fields, guarding
sheep, gathering wood, carrying water, begging, or spinning wool or tell of
young men setting out to find a better life. The wives of peasants in the tales
are more often than not portrayed at the spinning wheel, gathering wood,
hoeing, and, in some cases, yoked to plows. Such stories would have helped to
relieve the tedium and bitter austerity of the peasants’ daily life while at
the same time serving as cautionary tales, warning that the world was a
dangerous place in which they could expect only endless work and deprivation.
They also offered a vague hope, depending on how much the peasant believed in
magic, that his life of misery might be transformed for the better. Morality
was not an issue in French tales, whereas quick thinking, cunning, deceit, and
trickery were often themes; the peasant outwits the lord of the manor or even
the king, and his life is improved. Escapism for girls might revolve around
marriage to a horrible husband who then turns into a prince. Such themes occur
over and over in the tales, and the magical acquisition of wealth by the
peasant seems to take second place to the acquisition of food. Given three
wishes by a benevolent fairy, the first is inevitably for a good meal—all one
can eat. French folk tales also suggest that village life was not always as
harmonious as it has been portrayed. Neighbors are often hostile, greedy,
vengeful, spying, or thieving.

Cats have always been animals of superstition and are
associated with witchcraft in many cultures; France was no exception. It was
believed that cats possessed occult powers and that drinking their blood could
cure various illnesses. If a man treated a cat well, he would have a pretty
wife. On the other hand, to maim or kill a cat would prevent its association
with witches, whose power would thus be diminished.

HAIL, HUNGER, AND HOSTILITY

Disastrous famines brought on by extreme bad weather
occurred in France every decade or so, ruining the crops; other times, crops
were lost to the devastation of war. Grain was the mainstay of the country and
bread the most precious item of the diet. When food was in short supply, prices
shot up, usually accompanied by riots, especially in the larger cities.

On July 13, 1788, black clouds rolled over central France
and released a torrent of hailstones. The large pellets slammed into and destroyed
the budding vines in Alsace, Burgundy, and the Loire Valley, decimating the
wheat ripening in the fields south of Paris along with the fruit and
vegetables. Bruised, split, and knocked to the ground, apples in Normandy
rotted, and olives and oranges in the Midi were severely damaged.

Over vast regions of France, the storm was followed by
drought, and the little that was left of the harvest was mostly parched and
useless. The winter brought on the coldest spell in many years. It was said
that birds froze in their nests. Rivers froze, watermills stopped working, and
the little grain that remained could not be made into flour. Transportation
came to a standstill in the deep snow that covered the ground in many areas as
far south as Toulouse. Starving families in the Tarn and in the Ardèche regions
boiled tree bark to make gruel. Provence was described by Mira-beau, in January
1789, as having been visited by the Exterminating Angel. Thousands of people
froze to death, and many more died of hunger. The cold was so severe that town
and village councils kept bonfires blazing in the streets to keep the poor from
freezing.

The spring thaw sent rivers over their banks, flooding
fields and towns. The four-pound loaf of bread in normal times cost 8 sous in
the summer of 1787, about half the wage earner’s income; the price nearly
doubled, to 15 sous, in February 1789. A family of four consumed two of these
loaves each day, yet the manual laborer earned only between 20 and 30 sous per
day. Not only did the price of bread reach unheard-of prices, but another
essential, firewood, nearly doubled in price. Thousands of cold and hungry
people roamed the countryside looking for anything to eat or burn. The landless
day laborers found themselves unemployed, far from home, and desperate; for the
greater part of the rural population, small landholders or
métayers
, the
situation was also dire. Being both producers and consumers, they immediately
used any money made from selling their products to buy bread or wood. The steep
rise in the prices of these items wiped out any profit the peasants might have
had from the rising value of their crop. Many had to borrow money to make ends
meet, using future crops as collateral. With much of the harvest virtually
destroyed and taxes, which the peasants were unable to pay, owed to the
seigneur and the state, creditors often called in the debt. Many were evicted
from their plots and joined the growing ranks of the landless. This miserable
mass of humanity shambled its way to the nearest church for a handout of a
crust of bread and a little milk or headed for the big towns to try to find
menial jobs or to beg in the streets. With migrant laborers also invading the
cities looking for work, the peasants’ prospects were bleak. Such conditions brought
on hostile reactions and violence: bakeries and warehouses were raided, and hatred
toward the well off and the monarchy, generally blamed for high costs and food
shortages, intensified.

MORTALITY

Death among the peasant population was as much part of
daily life as everyday toil. The specter of death hovered above all beds in
which a mother gave birth to a child. It was not uncommon for the mother to die
or the child to be stillborn, or both. The fear of damnation after death was so
strong that midwives were empowered by the church to baptize unhealthy infants
if death seemed imminent and no priest was close by. If they could not save the
baby, they could at least save its soul. An emerging hand or foot could be
baptized if it was thought that the baby would die in the womb.

If alone at the time of birth, the parents were permitted
to perform the baptism. Complications with newborns were generally caused by
the mother’s overwork, poor diet, and illness. About one-fifth of all babies
died within the first year or so, as many as one in three in the more
impoverished areas of the country. Fewer than half reached their fifteenth
birthday. With scant knowledge of hygiene, a multitude of diseases breeding in
the unsanitary conditions, and no money for medicine, there was about a 50-50
chance that a baby would survive to adulthood; smallpox was one of the great
levelers. The worst time to give birth was in the months of August through
October, when breast-feeding mothers toiled in the fields and the only food was
the fast-deteriorating remnants of last year’s crop.

People tended to remain loyal to their villages and helped
one another in times of need. Men often bonded through group drinking. When men
of different communities met at fairs, hostilities could easily flare up,
resulting in brawls, with the name of the village as a rallying cry. In some
regions, violence among the men and a sense of solidarity among villagers
resulted in vendettas in which knives or guns were used to even a score. Urban
authorities showed little inclination and had little opportunity to investigate
murders in remote, clannish, tight-lipped country communities.

VILLAGE COUNCILS AND SOCIAL LIFE

The village or hamlet usually formed a parish of the
Catholic Church, and the local priest looked on the inhabitants as his flock.
The community might form the jurisdiction of a court and also regulate its own
collective affairs. Some communities in the Pyrenees valleys, run by the elders
of the village, joined with other villages to resist outside intrusion. In
other regions, the communities were encouraged by the state to elect town
officials and to meet regularly to conduct local business. Some of this had to
do with state demands, such as the
taille;
the officials had to decide
how much each resident owed to the king.

There was also a regular lottery for service in the
militia, the country’s military reserve. This service was loathed as much as
the
corvée
by both parents and their sons, who, when their number came
up, had to serve. Other duties of the villagers included helping with communal
projects, such as making repairs to the church, wells, water troughs, laundry
sites, and buildings, for which extraordinary local taxes might be assessed.
The town council might also decide when the harvest, which required the
participation of all village hands, would begin. As well, it managed the use of
common land or woodland that fell under its authority. This sometimes meant
entering litigation with neighboring communities. The stones of one village that
were used to demarcate its common pastureland might be moved by the people of
another village—an act that would lead to animosity. Open conflict could break
out when a herd of animals strayed and was found eating grass that belonged to
another village or when firewood was collected in woodland whose ownership was
disputed. Young men sometimes took contentious matters into their own hands and
attacked neighbors with fists or clubs. Sometimes the disputes went to court,
where they often remained for decades.

Depending on the size of the community, one or more persons
ran the administration and represented the local interest with regard to the
seigneur, the state, and the church. More and more, however, throughout the
eighteenth century, the state’s regional official, the intendant, and his
deputies supervised the work of the town councils, laying down the rules for
their roles and managing tax assessments. In some places, the intendant
appointed the town councils; in others, the seigneur appointed the members; and
in still others, members were voted into office by the community.

As expected, village political life tended to be dominated
by the wealthier members of the community. The village of Cormeilles-en-Vexin,
north of Paris, with just over 200 households by the late 1780s, was in the
habit of electing an official, the syndic, equivalent to a mayor and a town
clerk, who might be a substantial farmer, an artisan, or even an innkeeper. The
last syndic, in 1789, was Jean-Louis Toussaint Caffin, a
fermier de seigneurie,
a person who leased lands from the seigneur and then sublet them or hired
laborers to work them. As he was also a flour merchant, he was very prosperous,
and he and most of the others elected to the office were better off than the
majority of the villagers. Tax records show that inhabitants paid less than 10
livres in taxes, while more than half of the syndics paid 50 livres. One,
probably Caffin, paid 2,000 livres, a third of the assessment for the village.