Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

For France to issue from this period of darkness and torture alive, though wounded, a miracle was necessary: the miracle that produced Joan of Arc. Yet when the English troops had evacuated a good portion of the country in 1437, the year in which Charles VII. made his solemn entry into the capital he had reconquered, hunger and misery killed more than twenty thousand persons in Paris alone.

France was not alone in her suffering; all Europe was in the same plight. The fifteenth century was a century of misery. In his “Public Alimentation under the Ancient Monarchy,” M. Charles Louandre remarks, with reason, that the impossibility of living, of bringing up a family, of paying taxes and dues, inspired a passion for discovery. There was a general competition as to who should undertake the most distant journeys, the most perilous enterprises. Every unknown land seemed to be an El Dorado. People whispered to one another in the evening, beside the hearth without a fire, of countries beyond the seas where the mountains were of pure gold, where the rivers were of milk, where the animals answered to the voice of man. A search was instituted for these enchanted islands, where there was neither hunger, nor poverty, nor oppression. Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Cortez, Pizarro, opened new paths through which languorous, exhausted, worn-out Europe might be able to reach a happier state. Each province was at that time treated as a separate state, with its own particular frontiers; and each frontier had its custom-house, where duties were levied on all goods imported. Thus, supposing that wheat had been landed at Marseilles, in view of Paris, it would, before reaching the capital, have to pay for the right of passage at six different frontiers, without counting special levies on the way. As for Marseilles itself, however rich the harvest might be in the North of France, the great city on the Mediterranean never profited by it. Even in the last century, Marseilles received all its grain from the Barbary States. On the famous night of the 4th of August, 1789, when the abolition of all the privileges existing in France was decreed, 1,569 places of toll were done away with, 400 on the rivers, and 1,169 on roads. Of the total number 1,426 belonged to the nobility and clergy; the remainder to the towns or to the Government.

Henry IV. was the first king who, thanks to the enlightenment of his minister Sully, took steps for abolishing the impediments to circulation on road and river. By letters patent, dated 1595, corn was to be allowed everywhere to pass free.

Richelieu, whose theory of government, cynically avowed, was that the poorer the nation the easier it would be to govern, re-established, under penalty of death, the old prohibitory edicts. The consequences were what might have been expected, and they are well expressed in a complaint made public by the Parliament of Normandy in 1633: —

“We have seen peasants harnessed to the share like beasts of burden, ploughing the land, munching the grass, and living on roots.” A manifesto from the Duke of Orleans of about the same time set forth that scarcely one-third of the inhabitants of the kingdom ate ordinary bread; one-third lived on oat-bread, while the remainder was dying of hunger, devouring grass and acorns, like animals, or, worse still, bran steeped in blood from the gutters of the slaughter-houses.

To the horrors of famine must be added those of civil war. Such was the misery, that even the most servile courtiers could not remain blind to it. Take, for instance, the memoirs of P. de la Porte, valet de chambre to Louis XIV., which contained the following: “Besides the misery of the soldiers, that of the common people was frightful; and wherever the Court was staying the poor peasants rushed thither, thinking they would find security, because elsewhere the army was devastating the country. They brought their cattle with them, which at once died of hunger, because it was impossible to take them outside for pasture. When their cattle were dead, they themselves died incontinently; for they had nothing more to depend upon but the charity of the Court, which was of the most moderate kind, everyone thinking of himself before all others. The mothers being dead, the children died soon afterwards; and I saw, on the bridge of Melun, three children lying beside their helpless mother, one of whom was still at the breast.”

Louis XIV. was neither more intelligent nor more humane than Richelieu. By his order, free circulation was again punished with death (1693-98). If, during the seventeenth century, there were a few attempts in the way of commercial liberty, these essays were exceptional and limited to particular localities, severely circumscribed. The peasant was more sat upon than ever. It was ordered in 1660 that no labourer should pass from his parish to another without paying double dues during a period of two years; and in 1675 Lesdiguières wrote that the labourers of the Dauphiné had nothing to eat but the grass of the meadows or the bark of trees. Under the great monarch the misery of the nation was excessive; and St. Simon did not exaggerate when he wrote this terrible phrase: “Louis XIV. drew blood from his subjects without distinction: he squeezed it out to the last drop.”

“Two great and benevolent men,” says M. Ducamp, “without any previous understanding on the subject, each published, in the year 1701, a book which might well have opened the eyes of the king and converted his ministers. The “Détail de la France,” by Bois Guilbert, and the “Projet de Dime Royale,” by Vauban, the famous military engineer, are two slight volumes which showed how the safety of the monarchy might be ensured. Both authors had seen misery close at hand. Struck by the misfortunes they had contemplated, they sought a remedy for it, found it, placed it before everyone, but were not listened to.” “The common people,” said Bois Guilbert, “would consider themselves fortunate if they could have bread and water, which is about all they want, but which they scarcely ever get. The products of China and Japan, when delivered in France, cost only about three times their original price; but the liquids which pass from one province of France to another, even though they be adjacent, increase in price twenty-fold, and even more. The wines sold in Anjou and the Orleans country at one sou the measure are sold for twenty and twenty-four in Picardy and Normandy.” Vauban declared that in order to avoid the payment of exorbitant dues levied by the provincial authorities, peasants cut down their apples-trees and tore up their vines.

The people of Paris starved like those of the provinces; but not so quietly. On the 3rd of March, 1709, the market-women – the corporation of “Les dames de la Halle” – started for Versailles, in order to exhibit their perishing children and ask for bread. They were stopped at the bridge of Sèvres, and taken back to Paris. But the tradition of that day remained with them, as was only too plainly shown during the disturbances of October, 1789.

When the dauphin went to the opera, or to hunt the wolf at Marly, he was surrounded by starving bands, who cried out for food, and could only be quieted by having money thrown to them. The soldiers of the Versailles garrison went out armed, to beg and to pillage the country.

Sometimes famine was created, or, at least, developed, by artificial means. One ingenious speculator is said to have bought up all the corn he could afford to purchase in France, and to have exported it from the ports of Normandy and Brittany to Jersey and Guernsey, there to remain until famine had declared itself with some severity. Then the corn was re-introduced from the Channel Islands and sold at immense prices. In 1745, the Duke of Orleans walked into the Council Chamber, threw on to the table before the king a loaf made of all kinds of rubbish, and exclaimed: “That is what your subjects have to feed upon.” Louis XV. knew already to what a degree of misery his people were reduced. One day when he was out hunting, he saw a man carrying with evident difficulty a long box on his back. “What are you carrying there?” asked the king. “A dead man,” was the reply. “What did he die of?” “Hunger.” The king turned away, unwilling to continue the conversation. It was not until the reign of Louis XVI. that serious endeavours were made to improve the condition of the people. In 1774, fifteen years before the Revolution, Turgot set forth, in a decree adopted by the Council, the most just economical principles: “The more commerce is free, animated, extended, the more the people are promptly, efficaciously, and abundantly provided.” Eighteen months afterwards, in 1776, all dues formerly levied at Paris on wheat, flour, etc., were abolished. “There was in France,” says Michelet, “a miserable prisoner called Wheat, forced by the Government to die and rot where it was born. Each province kept its wheat captive.” Strangely enough, the common people were the first to oppose the new legislation. It seemed to them that the exportation of wheat must be ruinous for the inhabitants of the districts from which it was exported, and insurrections were raised in Brie, Normandy, and the Soissons country, in order to prevent the passage of wheat from one province to another.

Of the famine-promoters, three were especially notorious, Foulon, Bertier, and Pinet; and all three came to a bad end at the time of the Revolution. After the taking of the Bastille, Foulon caused a report of his death to be circulated, celebrated his own funeral, and concealed himself at Viry. He was recognised, however, and brought back to Paris, where, received by an indignant multitude at the Barriers, he was taken to the Place de Grève, and hanged to the famous lamp-post. Then his head, with a handful of hay in the mouth, was carried at the end of a pike. The horrible procession met Bertier, who was made to join it, maltreated, and put to death. This happened on the 22nd of July. On the 29th, Pinet was found in the Vésinet Forest, with his head shattered, but still living. He declared that he had been attacked by assassins, but the general opinion was that in his terror and despair he had attempted to blow his own brains out. Pinet died, and with the death of the three famous promoters the famine came, in a great measure, to an end. The Revolution, however, though it could give liberty, could not give bread; and the distribution of corn throughout the country was constantly impeded by the old provincial spirit. When corn was brought in from English ports (for in those days England produced so much corn that it was able to export largely to France), the cargoes had to run the gauntlet to different provinces as they passed up the Seine. On one occasion, a quantity of wheat bought at Havre for the supply of Paris, and embarked on Seine barges, was stopped by the militia of Louviers, and confiscated for the benefit of that town. Such scenes were renewed everywhere. Once within the limits of a particular province, the corn was seized and allowed to go no farther. In 1794, during a period of scarcity, Barrère proposed in the Assembly to institute a patriotic fast. “Formerly,” he said, “we fasted for some saint in the calendar. Let us now fast for liberty.”

Little by little, under successive Governments, the popular prejudices against free circulation and free trade died out. There are material difficulties, moreover, in the way of such interference as used to be practised with cargoes and convoys in the days before the Revolution, and what, perhaps, is equally important, in the days before steam. In former times it was very easy to stop a heavily-laden, lumbering waggon, creeping along on a bad road. It is more difficult to stay the course of a railway train. Exceptionally high prices are still to be feared, but not famine. If the corn supply is insufficient in France, wheat can be imported from Hungary, Russia, and America.

Nor is it for bread alone that France is indebted to foreign countries – which she, in her turn, supplies abundantly with luxuries, natural and artificial, of all kinds. France receives meat and game from Russia; vegetables, fruit, and even wine from Algeria; oranges from Spain; fresh-water fish from Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; and sea-fish from England.

It is a sound maxim that whatever enters the human body should be genuine; and in connection with the Paris food supply a number of special officials are appointed, whose duty it is to examine the products offered to the public. The functions of these agents are not confined to the markets; they extend to the whole of Paris, to every shop in which eatables are sold; to every cart, every barrow from which the Paris costermonger sells fruit, vegetables, or fish. Wine-shops may be entered by these agents, when, if the wine is found to be adulterated, the casks containing it are emptied of their contents into the public streets. Probably, in good neighbourhoods, food is as little adulterated in London as in Paris. The Paris authorities are, in any case, much more particular on the subject of adulteration. With these agents for the inspection, examination, and analysis of articles of diet may be classed the officials charged with the duty of verifying weights and measures. An excellent law, passed in 1839, under the reign of Louis Philippe, prescribes that every dealer on buying a pair of scales, new or second-hand, must at once take them to the office of verification in the district, in order that they may be marked with the stamp of the year.

Private shops, however, have of course played no such part in the provisioning of Paris as has fallen to the lot of the markets, which, in olden times, could only be opened and maintained by the lord of the manor. In distant times, the landed proprietor had the right of life and death over his subjects, and a few years before the Revolution, every market in Paris had its pillory, and even its gallows. It was in the king’s name, however, that justice was executed; and, in most cases, the pillory and the gibbet of the Paris market-place were mere emblems. The Prior of the Temple, the Abbé of St. Geneviève, the Abbé of St. Germain des Prés, had each a pillory in the markets established on their territory.

The royal pillory was situated at the place in the fish-market where sea-fish is now cried. It was an octagonal turret, crowned by a roof in the form of an extinguisher. At the top of the turret, beneath the roof, was a horizontal wheel pierced with holes and turning on a pivot. The holes were for the head and hands of the victim; the wheel was put in movement, and the poor wretch was subjected, circularly and methodically, to the gaze of the crowd. The pillory offered an attractive spectacle to the mob; and it was there that the bodies of criminals, who had been executed at the Place de Grève, were exposed before being hung up at the gallows of Montfaucon. Near the pillory stood the gibbet, here employed only under grave circumstances. On the gibbet of the fish-market was hanged Jean de Montaigu. Later on, in 1418, Capeluche, the executioner of Paris, was beheaded (he ranked, for certain purposes, with gentlemen) for having, it was said, taken too familiarly the hand of the Duke of Burgundy. The known facts of the case were these: – Capeluche had distinguished himself in the massacres which followed the triumph of the Burgundian faction in 1418. The Duke of Burgundy gave publicly his hand to this vile instrument of his vengeance, but had his head cut off soon afterwards. The executioner, with wonderful self-possession, showed his inexperienced assistant how he was to wield the axe so as not to miss his victim. Here also, on a lofty scaffold, constructed expressly for the purpose, and covered over with black, Jacques d’Armagnac perished by the sword. Before ascending the fatal ladder, he had said his last prayers in the fish-market, which had been washed and perfumed with vinegar and juniper, in order to get rid of the disagreeable smell.

Between the pillory and the gibbet, a large cross stretched out its arms of stone. Beneath its shadow insolvent debtors surrendered their property, and received the traditional cap of green wool which the executioner himself placed on their heads. The bankrupts’ cross and the pillory disappeared a few years before the Revolution, in 1786; though it is to the Revolution itself that the credit of the abolition is generally given.

A word must be said about the “market ladies,” the “dames de la halle,” and the privileges they enjoyed. It will be remembered that during a severe famine they went in a body, with their starving children, to beg relief from Louis XV. At happier moments they waited upon the sovereign on some festive occasion, to present him with congratulations and a huge bouquet. It was to their corporation that Mme. Angot and her celebrated daughter belonged. They were notorious for their freedom of speech, and little attention was paid to a police ordinance of the year 1738, which forbade them, under penalty of imprisonment and a fine of one hundred francs, to insult passers-by. But times have changed, and the manners of the “market ladies” with them.

After speaking of “les dames de la halle,” it would be invidious to pass over in silence “les forts de la halle,” the Strong Men of the market. The internal service of this market is entrusted to some five hundred strong men, who earn from sixty to a hundred and twenty pounds a year. These official porters form a syndicate, and offer all possible guarantees of probity, good conduct, and punctuality. Not only must they submit to a thorough examination of their private life, they are also tested physically and in the severest manner. But they go through the regulation exercises as through a game. To the strong men is confided the duty of unloading the carts and the waggons, and carrying their contents to the stalls and shops of the markets. The market regulations in view of fire are very strict, especially those adopted and promulgated in 1865, by which smoking and the use of lucifers and all unenclosed lights are forbidden. Lanterns are alone permitted. The right of selling in the public markets is a privilege sold by the municipality. A butcher’s stall is worth 3 francs a day; a stall for the sale of sea-fish 1·25, for the sale of fresh fish 1·50, for poultry 1 franc, for vegetables 75 centimes; oysters 20 centimes, and sundries 5 centimes a day for each square yard of space.

Some years ago a question was raised as to whether the markets ought to be covered over; and an answer was given in the negative by a high official of the Préfecture, who authoritatively declared that “bad weather was not appreciably injurious to vegetables exposed in the market-place.” It is quite possible that turnips, carrots, and cabbages may suffer little or nothing from hail and heavy rain. But human beings may be seriously affected by inclement weather; and in this belief it has been proposed, hitherto in vain, that covered stalls with glass windows should be constructed for use during stormy nights.

The butchers’ stalls are supplied by rail, and the greatest activity prevails among them after the arrival of the early morning trains. Towards five o’clock arrive a number of women who, like the wise virgins of the parable, are the bearers of lamps. They assemble at the corner of the Rue Rambuteau, and a portable desk is brought forward, at which a man takes his seat. The roll-call of the strong men is then read, and if one of them has not arrived he is released for the day, that is to say, he loses his day’s wages. Five o’clock strikes, and the women with the lanterns may go to work. The time for the sale of water-cress has begun.

Everyone is now at his post – the factor and his clerks, the public crier, the inspector of the market, or his agent, and the collector of municipal taxes.

At each fresh bell signal – and the bells in connection with the markets correspond to the drums of the barrack-yard – new departments of the markets are opened, and private purchasers begin to arrive: non-commissioned officers, accompanied by soldiers bearing large sacks; nuns purchasing for the religious houses; stewards of the gymnasiums, and other large schools, together with various wholesale buyers, who have come to lay in their daily supplies. The arrival of the fish from Dieppe or Havre is always an incident of importance; received with agitation, shouts, and bustle of every kind. Sometimes the wind has been unfavourable; the fishing-boats have not got to shore, and there has been nothing to send. There is then a general feeling of consternation among both dealers and purchasers; though, among the latter, no Vatel stabs himself at the thought of having to serve a dinner in which fish will not be a component part. It is to be feared that when, on one particular day, fish does not arrive, fish of the preceding day is cooked in place of it.

Much of the fish comes from England and Belgium. More than half of the mussels imported into France are of Belgian origin. The Ostend oysters, so much prized at Paris, came until lately from the shores of Essex. But such oysters as England can still afford to export go now to Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna.

Eggs are received in hampers and boxes containing each one thousand eggs, which are so cleverly packed that not one in a thousand ever gets broken. These eggs are sold in mass by the box, though they are all subject to inspection, and at certain times of the year are carefully and individually examined by officials appointed for the purpose. If on being held up to the light an egg is found not to be in good condition, it is condemned, and is then used for industrial purposes, as in connection with the gilding of wood. Eggs that are simply bad are immediately destroyed.

The price of eggs is higher than it otherwise would be in the Paris markets by reason of the competition of English purchasers. Numbers of farmers send their eggs exclusively to London; which, according to statistics prepared some years ago, receives annually from France eggs to the number of 52,000,000.

A great quantity of game is sold in the Paris markets, especially since the year 1867, when for the first time foreign game was admitted. The imports of game are chiefly from Russia, which possesses in abundance partridges of various kinds, ptarmigans, and black game.