Such being the argument, the jacquerie breaks out afresh: in truth,
it is permanent and universal. Just as in a body in which some of the
elements of its vital substance are affected by an organic disease, the
evil is apparent in the parts which seem to be sound: even where as yet
no outbreak has occurred, one is imminent; constant anxiety, a profound
restlessness, a low fever, denote its presence. Here, the debtor does
not pay, and the creditor is afraid to prosecute him. In other places
isolated eruptions occur. At Auxon,[3259] on an estate spared by the
great jacquerie of July, 1789, the woods are ravaged, and the peasants,
enraged at being denounced by the keepers, march to the chateau, which
is occupied by an old man and a child; everybody belonging to the
village is there, men and women; they hew down the barricaded door with
their axes, and fire on the neighbors who come to the assistance of
its inmates.--In other places, in the districts of Saint-Étienne and
Montbrison, "the trees belonging to the proprietors are carried
away with impunity, and the walls of their grounds and terraces are
demolished, the complainants being threatened with death or with
the sight of the destruction of their dwellings." Near Paris, around
Montargis, Nemours, and Fontainebleau, a number of parishes refuse
to pay the tithes and ground-rent (champart) which the Assembly has
a second time sanctioned; gibbets are erected and the collectors are
threatened with hanging, while, in the neighborhood of Tonnerre, a
mob of debtors fire upon the body of police which comes to enforce the
claims.--Near Amiens, the Comtesse de la Mire,[3260] on her estate of
Davencourt, is visited by the municipal authorities of the village, who
request her to renounce her right to ground-rent (champart) and thirds
(tiers). She refuses and they insist, and she refuses again, when they
inform her that "some misfortune will happen to her." In effect, two
of the municipal officers cause the tocsin to be rung, and the whole
village rushes to arms. One of the domestics has an arm broken by a
ball, and for three hours the countess and her two children are subject
to the grossest insults and to blows: she is forced to sign a paper
which she is not allowed to read, and, in warding off the stroke of
a saber, her arm is cleft from the elbow to the wrist; the chateau
is pillaged, and she owes her escape to the zeal of some of her
servants.--Large eruptions take place at the same time over entire
provinces; one succeeds the other almost without interruption, the fever
encroaching on parts which were supposed to be cured, and to such an
extent that the virulent ulcers finally combine and form one over the
whole surface of the social body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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