EARLY HISTORY OF FORESTS. , ii 



them, little by little, they gnawed away the forest, which 

 was replaced by cultivated fields. (2) With time the 

 community became rich, lost its civilising energy : it no 

 longer uprooted to fertilise; it devastated to enjoy. The 

 secular clergy themselves looked favourably on the up- 

 rooting of woods, that they might have the tithes of the 

 produce of the land, which they claimed as theirs of right. 



'A very great many of these attacks upon the woods 

 were in the beginning made legitimate by a regular 

 licence, a deed granted by the seigneur or the king in a 

 fit of liberality. The deed, it is true, did not confer more 

 than a usu-fruct / but in these times of disorder no police 

 put limits to the abuse of this, and the consumption of 

 timber and of firewood increasing with the progress of 

 industrial operations and of comfort, the disorder of pro- 

 cedure became general. In vain did every seigneur, 

 and the king himself, establish regulations, and appoint 

 forest agents; nothing could now arrest the accelerated 

 and truly frightful progress of deboisement the destruction 

 of woods, and the men, then indeed few in number, who 

 looked to the public weal, began that united cry of lamen- 

 tation of which we hear still, even to-day, the prolonged 

 echo. 



' The first ordinnance in regard to forests was that of 

 Philippe- August, 1219 A.D. Already, and even previously, 

 high personages had taken, like the king, the title of Lords 

 of the Waters and Forests ; but their rights were not estab- 

 lished till they were confirmed, towards the close of the 

 century, by an ordinnance of Philippe le Bell, 1291 A.D. 

 It appears, from the considerations embodied in the ordin- 

 nances issued, that the forest-agents were the cruellest 

 enemies of the forests; they encouraged abuses of them 

 that they might draw profit from them. Saint Louis 

 forbade the foresters to accept of any present.* Charles 

 V., surnamed le Sage, and who deserved the name for 



* On one occasion the king himself accepted a present or gift made to him, but being 

 reproved by his seneschal, he acknowledged he had done wrong. Histore de Saint 

 Louis, par JourvilU. Paris, 1S67 ; p. 439. 



