276 



FRANCE. (BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.) 



filings, however, prevailed, ami nrrnngements were 

 entered into for satisfying the demands of America. 



Austrian troops having entered the Roman terri- 

 tory in January 1832, for the purpose of maintaining 

 the papal power, the existence of which was threat- 

 ened by the subjects, a French force was sent to 

 Italy, which occupied Ancona, February 22 ; but 

 this movement, which bore a menacing aspect, did 

 not disturb the peace of Europe. 



In the end of March, the cholera made its appear- 

 ance in France, and, early in April, the prime minis- 

 ter was attacked by it. His death, which took 

 place on the 16th of May, made no change in the 

 spirit of the administration. The close of the ses- 

 sions of the chambers was hastened by the alarm 

 excited by the violence of the disease in Paris, and 

 they were soon after prorogued. According to the 

 report of the sanatory commission of Paris, 18,000 

 died in that city from cholera, between the 26th 

 March, and 30th of August, 1832. 



Paris was, soon after, again made the scene of 

 bloodshed. On occasion of the funeral of general 

 Lamarque, June 5, the military having attempted to 

 disperse the crowd, skirmishing continued for several 

 days, and the city was declared to be under martial 

 law. The populace were not overpowered without 

 much slaughter, and several distinguished men of the 

 mouvement party were arrested and tried by a court- 

 martial ; but the court of cassation pronounced their 

 trial to be illegal. See, on this and other subjects 

 relating to France since the revolution, Sarrans' Me- 

 moires sur Lafayette, 2 vols., Paris, 1832. 



After protracted negotiations with the different 

 parties, the king did not reorganize the cabinet until 

 the end of October, when it was thus formed : 

 Marshal Soult, president of the council (in place of 

 Perrier) and minister of war ; the duke de Broglie, 

 minister of foreign affairs, in place of Sebastian!, 

 whose infirm health rendered his retirement neces- 

 sary ; Thiers, minister of the interior, in place of 

 Montalivet ; M. Human succeeded baron Louis in 

 the department of finance, and Guizot, Girod de 

 1'Ain in that of public instruction. M. Barthe, ad- 

 miral de Rigny, and count d'Argout, retained re- 

 spectively the seals and the portfolios of the marine, 

 and of public works. 



In the preceding pages, we have given a brief 

 summary of the history of France; we shall now 

 proceed to consider more minutely the state of that 

 country before the revolution of 1789, as the charac- 

 ter of that revolution cannot be understood without 

 an exposition, at some length, of the state of things 

 which preceded it. 



IV. Before the Revolution. Organization of the 

 Nation. The most profound writers on French history 

 agree, that there was no hereditary nobility under the 

 first dynasty of the Prankish kings, and that, among 

 the Franks, the principles of freedom, which prevailed 

 in the municipal organization, were extended to the 

 general administration of the state. But under the 

 successors of Charlemagne the offices of the empire 

 began to become hereditary ; the hitherto presiding 

 officers of the communities then became hereditary 

 proprietors, and the general liberty of the Franks 

 was merged in the feudal system, which afforded the 

 only protection of the weak against the oppression of 

 the strong. Every individual was obliged to have a 

 feudal superior, every piece of ground its feudal lord. 

 Then arose the maxim, nulle terre sans seigneur. 

 The change of government in 987, when the third 

 dynasty ascended the throne, completed, on the one 

 hand, the general introduction of the feudal system, 

 and, on the other, the independence of the immediate 

 vassals of the crown, the most powerful of whom, as 

 princes and peers of the realm, enjoyed a complete 



sovereignty, restrained only by their cwn vassals. 

 This very circumstance, however, became favoura- 

 ble to the union of the sovereign power in France 

 under one head. For when the kings succeeded by 

 degrees in uniting all these territories, partly with 

 the domains of the crown, partly with their own 

 private domains, they acquired not merely a nominal 

 supremacy (as was the case with the German emperors 

 over the ancient duchies), but an actual sovereignty. 

 These changes had little effect on the liberties of 

 the people, because these were already lost under the 

 feudal system. With the consolidation of the great 

 fiefs, the dignity of princes of the kingdom became 

 extinct. To these succeeded the princes of the blood- 

 royal, and, at a later period, some foreign princes (in 

 1505, Engelbert of Cleves was made duke of Nevers 

 and peer of France.) Finally, in the middle of the 

 sixteenth century, the principal families of the lower 

 nobility were invested with the dignities of peers and 

 dukes, without, however, becoming, on this account, 

 equal to the ancient peers of the realm. The first of 

 these was the baron de Montmorency. In 1789, the 

 secular peerage consisted of forty-four members, of 

 whom the dukes of Uzes (Crussol, 1572) were the 

 oldest, and the dukes of Choiseul and of Coigny(1787) 

 were the most recently created. The six ecclesiasti- 

 cal peers, however, had held the peerage from the 

 earliest times. They were the archbishop of Rheims, 

 and the five bishops of the family duchy of High 

 Capet. The secular peers (among whom the arch- 

 bishop of Paris had a place, from 1690, as duke of 

 St Cloud) merely formed the highest class of the lower 

 nobility ; but there were six families (branches of 

 the houses of Lorraine and Savoy, Grimaldi, Rohan, 

 Tremouille, and Latour d' Auvergne, residing in 

 France) who preserved the rank of sovereign princes. 

 The first estate of the realm was the clergy, which, 

 if it did not enjoy the rank, enjoyed all the exemp 

 tions of the nobility from taxes and most of the public 

 burdens, and had the first voice in the states-general. 

 A distinction was made between the clergy of ancient 

 France, which consisted of sixteen archbishops and 

 100 bishops, with the priests and monasteries under 

 their jurisdiction, on one side, and the foreign clergy 

 (or those of the provinces added to France since the 

 reign of Henry II.,) consisting of two archbishops and 

 twenty-two bishops, on the other. The revenue of 

 the clergy was estimated by Necker at 130,000,000 

 annually. The amount of their real estate was to 

 that of the lay proprietors in the proportion of 1 : 5|. 

 The priests who actually performed spiritual services, 

 and formed the 'most respectable part of the clergy, 

 received about 40 or 45,000,000 of the 130,000,000 

 revenue. The abbeys were assigned by the king, 

 partly to abbes commendataires (q. v.) partly to actual 

 monastic superiors. Those abbeys only were excepted 

 which were the chief seats of an order, as the great 

 Carthusian monastery at Grenoble, the seat of the 

 Cistercians at Citeaux, near Dijon, that of the Pre- 

 monstratenses at Premontre, near Soissons, &c. Of 

 the former kind, there were 225, some of which had 

 very large revenues. The abbe commendatairc 

 received one-third of the whole revenue of the mon- 

 astery, without being obliged to reside in it, or to 

 follow the monastic discipline, which the prior was 

 obliged to observe. Abbeys of this .sort formed 

 pensions for the younger sons of the nobility, only the 

 least valuable ones being sometimes bestowed on 

 learned men. The income of the abbes commenda- 

 taires (therefore one-third of the revenues of these 

 monasteries) is stated, in the Almanack Royal of 

 1789, at about 8,000,000. The regular abbeys in 

 France were 368, of which 115 were monasteries, 

 and 253 nunneries. From the rich revenues of these 

 institutions, the clergy, it is true, contributed somo- 



