262 



FRANCE. 



buy lands and buildings or to receive legacies. 

 It was decided to leave orphanages and charity 

 schools undisturbed. In 48 of the departments 

 the schools that received notices closed volun- 

 tarily; in 5 there were no religious schools; in 

 34 decrees were enforced. In many cases 

 where there was resistance or a show of resist- 

 ance, the heads of the order commanded the nuns 

 to leave, and the nuns desired to leave, but were 

 restrained by the lay managers and by Clerical 

 partisans. There were 0,000 monastic educational 

 establishments that had not applied for author- 

 ization. About half of these the ministers de- 

 cided to leave unmolested because they had 

 acted in good faith, believing that no application 

 was necessary. The number of schools thus ex- 

 onerated was about 1,100. Of the others, over 

 1,500 closed voluntarily. Decrees were enforced 

 against 20 schools in Paris and 01 in the Rhone 

 department, and on Aug. 1 decrees of closure 

 were issued against 237 establishments in 32 

 other departments. There were 12,000 applica- 

 tions for authorization, which the Council of 

 State would pass upon as expeditiously as pos- 

 sible. The 324 recusant schools must secure lay 

 teachers if they desired to reopen in October. 

 When the gendarmes went to close them they 

 found the doors locked, and some of them sur- 

 rounded by defenders peasants who stood guard 

 with pitchforks or youths who stoned them as 

 they approached. In many villages the inhab- 

 itants mounted guard or the mayors summoned 

 them by sounding the tocsin, and in some the 

 gendarmes were compelled to retire. In various 

 towns citizens of the two parties fought in the 

 streets. The political leaders of the demonstra- 

 tions counseled only legal resistance, not violence. 

 Some of them suggested and inaugurated a gen- 

 eral refusal to pay taxes. The boycotting of 

 Republicans was begun in many places, and in 

 some a run on the savings-banks was started. 

 The agitation was more intense and general in 

 Brittany than in any other part of France, and 

 there the decrees were carried out last. There 

 the doors of the schools had to be opened by lock- 

 smiths or breaches had to be made in the walls. 

 Women knelt or lay down at the entrances to 

 prevent the passage of the police. Prominent 

 Clericals braved a criminal charge by breaking 

 the official seals placed on the buildings. Priests 

 sometimes headed the resistance. In one instance 

 the nuns armed themselves with scythes to fight 

 the police. Wherever the people were so excited* 

 that the schools could not be closed without a 

 serious conflict the execution of the decrees was 

 delayed, while the ecclesiastical authorities coun- 

 seled submission. The superior of the largest 

 order twice directed the Breton nuns to submit, 

 but the lay owners of the schools and the in- 

 habitants prevented their departure. Royalism 

 as well as Catholic sentiment inspired a revolt 

 which only the military could deal with in this 

 old province, now almost the only part of France 

 that elects royalist Deputies. Court proceedings 

 against the legality of the decrees were insti- 

 tuted in very many places, the course generally 

 recommended by the Church dignitaries and their 

 political friends. One of the bishops advocated 

 the separation of Church and state, since the ma- 

 jority of Frenchmen preferred apparently an 

 atheistic republic. In some of the more troubled 

 districts detachments of soldiers were sent to pro- 

 tect the civil nflicials in their task. In the de- 

 partment of Morbihan Lieut.-Col. Gaudin de Saint- 

 Homy, when ordered to send a squadron to aid 

 in dosing a school at Lanouen. refused to obey 

 his general's orders, saying that as a Christian 



he would not share in an act contrary to his 

 faith and religious feelings. He was immediately 

 relieved of his command and ordered to a fortress. 

 It was only by means of military operations that 

 the decrees could be executed in Brittany. The 

 peasants and fishermen were united in their re- 

 sistance in the districts where loyalty to the 

 Bourbon kings and feudal attachment to the 

 nobility were still a part of their religion. Barri- 

 cades, earthworks, and ditches closed the roads. 

 When the soldiers broke through or turned the 

 barriers and reached the school-buildings, where 

 they had to batter down the doors, they were 

 greeted with cheers for the army, but the com- 

 missaries were assaulted, and sometimes the 

 priests had to rescue their lives. Intrenchments 

 and obstacles protected the buildings, and thoe 

 were filled with people who threw filth and burn- 

 ing oil-soaked sticks into the faces of the gen- 

 darmes who attempted to enter. When an en- 

 trance was at length effected, the nuns marched 

 arm in arm with the aristocratic ladies of the 

 neighborhood to the church, preceded by trump- 

 ets and flags and cheered by the populace, who 

 strewed their path with flowers. Some of the 

 local courts upheld the lay owners, or nominal 

 owners, of the edifices where, after the sisters 

 had left, they removed the seals from the doors 

 and resumed possession. In the departments 

 where the public sentiment sustained the Govern- 

 ment, though many persons were arrested, priests 

 and nuns among them, and ladies of the old aris- 

 tocracy, the sentences inflicted were the lightest, 

 and these were remitted under the law allowing 

 first offenses to go unpunished. The strength of 

 the Clerical and Reactionary movement which 

 made Paris Nationalist and revived royalism and 

 imperialism in the provinces, contrary to the ad- 

 monitions of the Pope, was not derived from the 

 dwindling and impoverished ancient aristocracy, 

 but from the commercial, manufacturing, and 

 professional classes. The bourgeoisie that accom- 

 plished the French Revolution had become enam- 

 ored of the and CH n'f/ime. The spirit was strum: 

 in the army and navy and among the official 

 classes, and when officials refrained from insub- 

 ordinate acts, which invariably led to dismissal, 

 the women of their families flaunted their anti- 

 Republican sentiments in the view of the public. 

 The Government, representative of a new social 

 stratum, of the working classes and the bulk of 

 the peasantry, attributed this to the monopoly 

 of middle-class education by the clergy. Hence 

 the ministers, who found themselves in the awk- 

 ward position of waging war on women, per- 

 sisted in enforcing the associations law. in ap- 

 pearance at least, to betoken their determination 

 to introduce secular education and bring up the 

 youth of France as .Republicans. The Govern- 

 ment was sustained by 65 departmental councils 

 on its policy of closing the schools, and censured 

 by 3, while 15 recommended authorization and 

 restitution of the schools. The belated execution 

 of the decrees in Brittany was finally carried out 

 by Aug. 20, in Finisterre last of all. where Abbe 

 Gayraud, the Deputy, could not dissuade the 

 peasants, who left their .harvest fields to cham- 

 pion the nuns, from fighting the police and sol- 

 diers. The orders after the struggle was over 

 applied for authorization. Since the act of issil 

 lay teachers had been substituted for nuns in 

 4.500 religious schools and 6,000 were still 

 taught by sisters. For most of the closed 

 schools lay teachers, often volunteers, were found. 

 although tliere was a scarcity of available teach- 

 ers po-.sor.ing the necessary certificates. The 

 laicization of communal schools was obligatory 



