GAME LAWS. 
283 
sion of tlie forest and the enforcement of the game laws, 
iuduced several of the French kings to consent to some relaxa¬ 
tion of the severity of these latter. Francis I, however, re¬ 
vived their barbarous provisions, and, according to Bonne- 
mere, even so good a monarch as Henry IY reenacted them, 
and “ signed the sentence of death upon peasants guilty of 
having defended their fields against devastation by wild 
beasts.” “ A fine of twenty livres,” he continues, “ was im¬ 
posed on every one shooting at pigeons, which, at that time, 
swooped down by thousands upon the new-sown fields and 
devoured the seed. But let us count even this a progress, for 
we have seen that the murder of a pigeon had been a capital 
crime.” * 
Hot only were the slightest trespasses on the forest domain 
—the cutting of an oxgoad, for instance—severely punished, 
but game animals were still sacred when they had wandered 
from their native precincts and were ravaging the fields of the 
peasantry. A herd of deer or of wild boars often consumed 
or trod down a harvest of grain, the sole hope of the year for 
a whole family; and the simple driving out of such animals 
from this costly pasturage brought dire vengeance on the head 
of the rustic, who had endeavored to save his children’s bread 
from their voracity. “ At all times,” says Paul Louis Courier, 
speaking in the name of the peasants of Chambord, in the 
“ Simple Discours,” “ the game has made war upon us. Paris 
was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its envi¬ 
rons, now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to 
support the gamekeepers.” f 
In the popular mind, the forest was associated with all the 
* Histone des Paysans , ii, p. 200. 
t The following details from Bonnembre will serve to give a more com¬ 
plete idea of the vexations and irritating nature of the game laws of France. 
The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling up of thistles 
and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before St. John’s day 
[24th June], in order that the nests of game birds might not be disturbed. 
It was unlawful to fence-in any grounds in the plains where royal resi¬ 
dences were situated; thorns were ordered to be planted in all fields of 
