Madame Thérèse | Page 3

gabelle) was an odious burden in its lack of uniformity.
It was thirty times as high in some parts of France as it was in others.
Besides, every person had to buy seven pounds a year for household
use; this salt could not be devoted to any other use. A peasant needing
salt for other purposes was forced to buy other salt, on which there was
of course a tax. To all the nobility, however, the king made an annual
free distribution of salt.
The corvée, or forced contribution to build roads, was an oppressive
and tyrannical tax. Public good may have required community of labor

on roads, but the later abuse by which royal officers "tore away poor
peasants from their families and work, and drove them off to build
roads" was not to be endured. While building roads peasants had only
what food they brought along or what they begged out of working
hours.
Louis Blanc makes the peasant soliloquize thus under the
pre-Revolutionary taxation:
"They condemn me to work without pay. My family counts on my
work in the field, but they take me away and force me to level the
highway under coach wheels, under the feet of the trader or the priest
or the elegant gentleman. I don't know how to surface roads; yet they
take no account of my ignorance and if my work is ill-done, they will
come in a few months and take my time to repair it. I am a human
being, yet they treat me with a harshness which oxen and mules are
spared. I pay a tax that the nobility and clergy may be exempt; and they
make me break stone on the road for them, profiting by it without even
being grateful to me. They make me buy salt at twelve cents a pound;
they rob me on tobacco; they billet soldiers on me; and when I give
them a whole week of my work, they don't pay me; if any of my
animals die of fatigue while working for them, they never reimburse
me. If I am maimed in their service, they brutally thrust me out on a
charitable public."
Peasants were not allowed to enclose fields; and sometimes they were
forbidden the necessary practice of agriculture, lest it might drive the
game from the neighborhood or in some other way interfere with the
lord's hunting. In seasons of bountiful crops peasants fared badly; but in
years when crops failed, death and starvation walked through the land;
so that the good Fénelon said to his king, "France is simply a large
hospital, full of woe and empty of food." This picture is perhaps too
dark and is hardly a fair presentation of the condition of French
peasantry.
(f). The trend of French philosophy. Many writers in France, among
them Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert, and Abbé Bergier, were
publishing new doctrines about the rights of man and about government.

Their teachings were too advanced for the France of the Bourbon kings.
These philosophers did much to stimulate thought and discussion in the
field of government and politics. Thus they prepared the minds of many
for the steps that led to the Revolution. They did much to create the
discontent which led the French people to assume and exercise the
rights that were their own, though the result was the overthrow of
established government and the downfall of kings.
(g). The success of the American Revolution, 1776-1783. Across the
sea the Americans had resented and resisted tyranny and oppression;
this fact was all the better known because of French interest, sympathy,
and assistance. Thus the French found a recent precedent for their own
attempt to overthrow a tyrannical government and establish a republic.
ERCKMANN AND CHATRIAN
Erckmann and Chatrian, or Erckmann-Chatrian, as the French write this
collaborative name, were two authors whose joint productions were at
first short stories, and later a series of historical romances which made
their fame. In these they confined their efforts to themes suggested by
the history of their own country, France. The scenes are for the most
part laid in localities which they themselves knew--especially the
Alsace of their youth. Their best characters are from classes of their
beloved people with whom they had lived, and whose virtues and faults
were to them as open books. The chosen time of most of their romances
is the period of the French Revolution, and the purpose--for they wrote
with a purpose--is the glorification of peace and the universal
brotherhood of man.
They had several successes in the dramatic field also, some of their
plays being cordially received not only in France but in other countries.
Their play called Alsace was intensely patriotic, and pleased the people,
whenever a despotic government allowed it to be presented. Their Juif