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The Seigneur and the Rural Community in Eighteenth-Century France. The Seigneurial Reaction: a Reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Olwen Hufton
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Extract

Amongst problems in eighteenth-century history that of the relationship between seigneur and the rural community continues to intrigue the social historian. The simple fact that in 1789 rural France took upon itself the destruction of the seigneurial régime by widespread attacks on châteaux resulting in the burning of terriers and other seigneurial registers, attacks which constituted perhaps the most single-minded aspect of revolutionary activity in 1789, has presented subsequent generations of historians with a number of problems which have never been satisfactorily resolved but which, given their obvious import, have been periodically aired in light of recent research. Such is my purpose here. In the historiography of the peasant movement two works have shaped the historian's approach more than any other. The most consequential, and without doubt one of the most brilliant works ever written, was Georges Lefebvre's La Grande Peur (1932) which sought to analyse the mechanics of the peasant movement and to delineate a number of epicentres, such as Burgundy, in order to show the ripple of a panic movement along river valleys and significant arteries and to make apparent which parts of France, like the Seine valley and the Beauce, were quite untouched by rural revolt. In so doing Lefebvre raised the inevitable question which has beset historians ever since, that is, why here and not there? Lefebvre was himself drawing upon the researches of Philippe Sagnac, Quomodo jura dominii aucta fuerint regnante Ludovico sexto decimo (Le Puy, 1898). Although he did not invent the idea, Sagnac gave, in this work, some documentary underpinning to the concept of ‘la réaction féodale,’ a systematic attempt on the part, of the seigneur to increase his levies in the last decades of the old régime.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 29 , December 1979 , pp. 21 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1979

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References

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19 A standard interpretation of this kind is found in Mackrell, J., ‘Criticism of seigneural justice in eighteenth-century France’, French Government and Society 1500–1850, ed. Bosher, J. (London, 1973), pp. 138–9Google Scholar: ‘The seigniorial courts, for all their failings, dealt with comparatively unimportant matters. The seigniorial court for the peasant was essentially the place where the payment of feudal and seigniorial dues was enforced …’

20 This documentation forms the basis of Hufton, ‘Attitudes towards authority’, and is presently being investigated by Janet Grant of the University of Reading.

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25 This was in the relatively large town (5–6,000 inhabitants) of Clermont l'Hérault. Certainly the small seigneurs whose troubles are outlined in Hufton, ‘Attitudes towards authority’, were not running regular courts. See Castan, Y., ‘Attitudes et motivations dans les conflits entre seigneurs et communautes devant le parlement de Toulouse au XVIIIe siècle’, Annales de la Faculté des Lettres de Nice, 1969, 236Google Scholar.

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28 Giffard, , Justices seigneuriales, p. 104Google Scholar. Lefebvre, G., Les paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française (Paris, 1924), p. 121Google Scholar.

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30 Hufton, , ‘Attitudes towards authority’, 300Google Scholar.

31 Poitrineau, , ‘Aspects de la crise’, 552Google Scholar.

32 Mackrell, , ‘Criticism of seigneural justice’, 139Google Scholar.

33 Bastier, (La féodalité, pp. 124–5)Google Scholar gives several instances of offended seigneurs having recourse to royal courts rather than to their own; see also Hufton, , ‘Attitudes towards authority’, 284Google Scholar, and Bataillon, J. F., Les justices seigneuriales du bailliage de Pontoise à la fin de l'ancien régime (Paris, 1942), p. 120Google Scholar.

34 None except those for Poitou and the Maine insist upon the usage of the courts to enforce dues-payment, although Lemercier (Lemercier, P., Les justices seigneuriales dans la région parisienne de 1580 à 1789 (Paris, 1933), p. 137Google Scholar) suggests the mere existence of a court may have contributed to prompt payment.

35 Bastier, , La féodalité, p. 115Google Scholar.

36 Poitrineau, , ‘Aspects de la crise’, 527Google Scholar. Here, one issue prompting abandonment of the judicial aspects of the seigneurie was the large numbers enfants trouvés, theoretically the responsibility of the court.

37 Jacob, P. de Saint, Les paysans de Bourgogne, pp. 460–1Google Scholar. Hufton, , The Poor, p. 59Google Scholar.

38 Journal des Voyages en Haute-Guyenne de J. F. Henri de Richeprey, ed. Guilhamon, M. (2 vols., Rodez, 1952, 1967) i, 422–4Google Scholar, in which the writer comments on the sharp practices of such unscupulous ‘new’ seigneurs, owning rights but not necessarily the land on which they were based, as does Goubert, P., Beauvais el le Beauvaisie de 1600 à 1730 (Paris, 1962), pp. 206–21Google Scholar; but neither points to this as an intensifying nor quasi-ubiquitous phenomenon.

39 Forster, R., The House of Saulx-Tavanes (Baltimore, 1970), pp. 100–1Google Scholar. Here, throughout the eighteenth century, a totally capitalistic attitude was adopted towards dues and they formed a very significant element in seigneurial revenue. None the less rèvision des terriers was only made upon a new succession to the dukedom.

40 Le Roy, Eugène, Jacquou le Croquant, introduction by Ladurie, E. Le Roy, (Presses Pocket, 1978), p. ivGoogle Scholar, and Bercé, , Croquants et Nu-Pieds, pp. 10–16Google Scholar.