Below are two accounts of life in France in the 1600s. The first was written by a
French military engineer who worked in the service of the State. His first-hand
observations of the French people were made in the course of his duty to study
French society, determining its resources and readiness for war.
The second account was written by a parish priest in the village of Rumegies as he
chronicled the lives and struggles of his parishioners.
Source: James M. Brophy, et al. Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations From the Age of
Absolutism through Contemporary Times 3rd edition, vol. 2 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005).
Sebastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban, from Description
Geographique de l’Election de Vezelay
All the so-called bas people [common people] live on nothing but bread of mixed barley
and oats, from which they do not even remove the bran, which means that bread can
sometimes be lifted by the straw sticking out of it. They also eat poor fruits, mainly wild,
and a few vegetables from their gardens, boiled up with a little rape- or nut-oil
sometimes, but more often not, or with a pinch of salt. Only the most prosperous eat
bread made of rye mixed with barley and wheat.
. . . The general run of people seldom drink, eat meat not three times a year, and use little
salt. . . So it is no cause for surprise if people who are so ill-nourished have so little
energy. Add to this what they suffer from exposure: winter and summer, three fourths of
them are dressed in nothing but half-rotting tattered linen, and are shod throughout the
year with sabots [sandal of a strip of leather across the in-step], and no other covering for
the foot. If one of them does have shoes he only wears them on saints’ days and
Sundays: the extreme poverty to which they are reduced, owning as they do not one inch
of land, rebounds against the more prosperous town and country bourgeois, and against
the nobility and the clergy. They lease their lands out to metayage, and the owner who
wants a new metayer must begin by settling his obligations, paying his debts, stocking the
holding with beasts and feeding him and his family for the coming year at his own
expense. . .
The poor people are ground down in another manner by the loans of grain and money
they take from the wealthy in emergencies, by means of which a high rate of usury is
enforced, under the guise of presents which must be made after the debts fall due, so as to
avoid imprisonment. After the term has been extended by only three or four months,
either another present must be produced when the time is up, or they face the sergent who
is sure to strip the house bare.
Since hardship can hardly go much further, its normal effects are a matter of course:
firstly, it makes people weak and unhealthy, especially the children, many of whom die
for want of good food; secondly, the men become idle and apathetic, being persuaded that
only the least and worst part of the fruit of their labors will turn to their own profit;
thirdly, there are liars, robbers, men of bad faith, always willing to perjure themselves
provided that it pays, and to get drunk as soon as they lay hands of the wherewithal . . .
It only remains to take stock of two million men all of whom I suppose to be day-laborers
or simple artisans scattered throughout the towns, bourgs and villages of the realm. What
I have to say about all these workers deserves serious attention, for although this sector
may consist of what are unfairly called the dregs of the people, they are nonetheless
worthy of high consideration in view of the services which they render to the State. For it
is they who undertake all the great tasks in town and country without which neither
themselves nor others could live. It is they who provide all the soldiers and sailors and
all the servants and serving women; in a word without them the State could not survive.
It is for this reason that they ought to be spared in the matter of taxes, in order not to
burden them beyond their strength.
Among the smaller towns, particularly in the countryside, there are any number of people
who, while they lay no claim to any special craft, are continually plying several which are
most necessary and indispensable. Of such a kind are those whom we call manoeuvriers,
who, owning for the most part nothing but their strong arms or very little more, do dayor piece-work for whoever wants to employ them. It is they who do all the major jobs
such as mowing, harvesting, threshing, woodcutting, working the soil and the vineyards,
clearing land, ditching, carrying soil to vineyards or elsewhere, laboring for builders and
several other tasks which are all hard and laborious. These men may well find this kind
of employment for part of the year, and it is true that they can usually earn a fair day’s
wage at haymaking, harvesting and grape-picking time, but the rest of the year is a
different story.
I shall assume that of the 365 days in the year, he may be gainfully employed for 180,
and earn nine sols a day. After paying taxes he will have 75 livres and four sols. Since I
am assuming that this family consists of four people, it requires not less than ten septiers
of grain, Paris measure, to feed them. This grain, half wheat, half rye commonly selling
at six livres per septier will comt to sixty livres, which leaves fifteen livres four sols out
of the 75 and four sols, out of which the laborer has to find the price of rent and upkeep
for his house, a few chattels, if only some earthenware bowls, clothing and linen, and the
needs of his entire family for one year. But these fifteen livres four sols will not take him
very far unless his industry or some particular business supervenes and his wife
contributes to their income by means of her distaff, sewing, knitting hose or making small
quantities of lace . . . also by keeping a small garden or rearing poultry and perhaps a calf,
a pig or a goat for the better-off; by which means he might buy a piece of larding bacon
and a little butter or oil for making soup. And if he does not additionally cultivate some
small allotment, he will be hard pressed to subsist, or at least he will be reduced, together
with his family, to the most wretched fare. And if instead of two children he has four,
that will be worse still until they are old enough to earn their own living. Thus however
we come at the matter, it is certain that he will always have the greatest difficulty in
seeing the year out.
*****
Henri Platelle’s journal from the village of Rumegies
. . . the final misfortune was the utter failure of the ensuing harvest, which caused grain
to reach a tremendous price. And since the poor people were exhausted in like measure
by the frequent demands of His Majesty and by these exorbitant taxes, they fell into such
poverty as might just as well be called famine. Happy the man who could lay hands on a
measure of rye to mix with oats, peas and beans and make bread to half fill his belly. I
speak of two thirds of this village, if not more . . .
Throughout this time, the talk was all of thieves, murders and people dying of starvation.
I do not know if it is to the credit of the cure [priest] of Rumegies to refer here to a death
which occurred in his parish during that time: a man named Pierre du Gauquier, who
lived by the statue of the Virgin, towards la Howardries. This poor fellow was a
widower; people thought that he was not as poor as he was; he was burdened with three
children. He fell ill, or rather he grew worn-out and feeble, but nobody informed the
cure, until one Sunday, upon the final bell for mass, one of his sisters came and told the
cure that her brother was dying of starvation, and that was all she said. The pastor gave
her some bread to take to him forthwith, but perhaps the sister had need of it for herself,
as seems likely to be the case. She did not take it to him, and at the second bell for
vespers the poor man died of starvation. He was the only one to drop dead for want of
bread, but several others died of that cause a little at a time, both here and in other
villages, for that year saw a great mortality. In our parish alone, more people died than in
several ordinary years . . . Truly men wearied of being of this world. Men of goodwill
had their hearts wrung at the sight of the poor people’s sufferings, poor people, without
money while a measure of corn cost nine to ten livres at the end of the year, with peas
and beans corresponding.
The ordinance made by His Majesty for the relief of his poor people cannot be forgotten
here. Every community had to feed its poor. The pastors, mayors and men of law taxed
the wealthiest and the middling, each according to his capability, in order to succour the
poor, whom it was also their duty to seek out. It was the right way to keep everybody
provided. In this village, where there is no court and everybody is his own master, the
cure read out and re-read that ordinance to no avail. The mayeurs and men of law, who
were the richest and would therefore have to be taxed most, fought it with all their might.
With much hardship, August was finally reached. A fortnight [2 weeks] beforehand,
people were harvesting the rye when it was still green, and putting it in ovens to dry it,
and because this grain was unripe and unhealthy it caused several serious illnesses. May
the Lord in his fatherly Providence vouch-safe us to be preserved henceforward from a
like dearth [scarcity, famine].