Daily Life During the French Revolution (44 page)

Another group that menaced the population in the Beauce,
south of Paris, was not disbanded until 1799. In this case, about 120 people,
38 of whom were women, were charged with 95 crimes in the year 1796–1797.
Children as young as 10 had been recruited to spy out likely targets. Among
this motley crew, most were from rural society, some were military deserters,
and some had mutilations and deformities. Some walked with canes or crutches.
To this gang, the
Band d
’
Orgères,
were attributed some 75
murders. They sometimes camped in wooded areas and operated by night, but more
often they slept in country inns and ate well on their stolen spoils. They were
also charged with killing entire households in isolated farms before sitting
down to eat the victims’ dinner. Drunken entertainment among the corpses
followed. Further, they were prone to killing each other. Disobedience or
failure on some mission might result in an individual’s murder; a woman’s
refusal of sex to a male leader could and sometimes did result in her demise.

Smaller gangs, too, kept entire villages on edge and in
some cases mixed their robberies with outright vandalism. In the Vosges, a
farmhouse door was smashed in one afternoon, the house robbed, and all the
crockery and windows broken; the thieves then cooked a meal with the provisions
available, eating it at leisure, and walked away with all the valuables they
could find. Villagers were too afraid to attempt retaliation against bandits,
and these kinds of assaults paralyzed whole towns, villages, and hamlets, where
any passing stranger was treated with the utmost suspicion.

When the centralized power of the Terror was formally
abolished, in April 1795, the National Guard again took up its original duties
of protecting property. In December 1795, the government in Paris empowered
itself to send agents to all towns of fewer than 5,000 people and created a
Ministry of General Police. Military action sometimes put whole departments
under martial law. Some of the most lawless areas then were pacified. Nevertheless,
the Directory continued to be faced with gangs of royalist rebels in the
Haute-Garonne region and in the Atlantic western provinces.

HOMOSEXUALITY

The church considered sexual acts that were not
specifically to procreate a mortal sin. There should be no sex before marriage,
the sole purpose of which was to have children. Anything else, homosexuality or
masturbation, was strongly denounced as a sin against God and nature. On the
other hand, the philosophers believed that anyone who had cast aside the
burdens imposed by the church, including restrictions on sexual activity such
as abstention or repression, had become enlightened; hence, homosexuality was
known as
le crime des philosophes.
Many rationalist and humanist
philosophers who discussed such matters as sodomy considered it to be a
depraved practice, however.

It seems that homosexuality and transvestitism were not
uncommon, especially among the upper classes. In the 1780s, a police register
in Paris recorded the arrest of several hundred men from every social level who
had been found either in homosexual acts or in places that homosexuals were
known to frequent, as well as others who made their preferences obvious by
wearing certain kinds of clothes or hairstyles. The reports mention male prostitution
for cash and parties and other gatherings where homosexuals could meet people
of like mind, as well as sincere relationships between men. Harassment by the
police was common. Anyone identified as homosexual or lesbian could face the
death penalty by burning if the case was pursued. Most such cases never saw the
inside of a courtroom, but if a case did go to court, exile or a short stay in
prison was generally the result. The marquis de Condorcet, who was elected to
the Legislative Assembly and who was known as the last of the philosophers,
argued that the base vice of sodomy should not be a criminal offense since it
violated no man’s rights. Because court cases were few, the extent of
homosexuality may never be known. Those that were prosecuted usually involved
transvestite dress or women who had tried to pass as men.

During the revolution, the Constituent Assembly, in the
interest of usurping political power from the church, drafted a new penal code
that decriminalized all forms of consensual adult sexuality as long as such
activity did not take place in public. This code was ratified in 1791, and
France became the first modern western country to overturn the ban on
homosexuality, so long perpetuated by the church. This penal code, however, was
more liberal in theory than in practice, as persecution by police continued as
it had in the past.

The authorities were even less diligent when it came to
women and were likely to ignore reported acts of lesbianism; priests did the
same, perhaps because procreation was not involved. If the women involved were
nuns, however, the penalties could be severe. The most notable person to be
executed for, among other accusations, debauched sexuality was
Marie-Antoinette.

SMUGGLERS

Under the old regime, punishment was often erratic or out
of proportion to the crime. Groups of five or more armed smugglers of salt in
Provence were sentenced to a fine of 500 livres and nine years in the galleys.
In the remainder of the kingdom, the penalty for smuggling was death. Groups of
fewer than five armed men assembled for the purpose of smuggling paid a fine of
300 livres and served three years in the galleys. Unarmed smugglers who used
carts, horses, or boats for their illicit traffic were fined 300 livres, and,
if this was not paid, they were sentenced to three years in the galleys.
Sentences thus varied from region to region but were drastically increased for
those condemned for a second offense. Unarmed smugglers who carried salt on
their backs were subject to a fine of 200 livres, and, if the fine was not
paid, they were flogged and branded. A second offense carried a penalty of 300
livres and six years in the galleys.

Women and children were treated with lesser fines, but
repeat offenders were flogged and banished from the kingdom. Parents were
responsible for fines incurred by their children and were flogged for
defaulting on payments. Nobles caught smuggling were deprived of their
nobility, and their houses were razed. Soldiers who used arms while smuggling
were hanged; if they had not used arms, they received a sentence of life in the
galleys. Death was the punishment for any employee who worked in the salt works
or who was involved in the transport of salt and who was caught smuggling;
their houses, even if they were of the privileged class, could be entered and
searched for incriminating evidence.

Smuggling salt was considered to be the same as stealing
from the king, since the tax on salt went to him. On average, about 3,500
people a year were arrested for the offense. Evasion of the tax on salt was
most prevalent in the west.

In a country crisscrossed by internal district boundaries
and customs houses and in which the cities charged taxes on items entering
their confines, smuggling was bound to be a big business. Forbidden objects,
such as anti-regime or pornographic books, magazines, and pamphlets from
foreign presses were carried through various customs checks with the aid of a
good bribe.

OTHER CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS

Prior kings had given princes of the blood and other nobles
grants of land that covered all the game animals on that land. A desperate
peasant living on the land who killed an animal often went to prison. Numerous
edicts were passed to prevent any disturbance of game. For example, it was
prohibited to weed or hoe the ground during nesting time lest one disturb the
young partridges or to spread manure of night soil lest the flavor of the birds
be inferior to that of birds that fed on the peasants’ grain, and mowing hay
before a certain time of year was banned because it could expose the birds’
eggs to danger. Removing stubble too early deprived the birds of shelter. These
matters often came up in the
cahiers.

The revolutionaries swept away these noble rights and the
judicial system of the old regime, instead establishing a criminal court in
each department, a civil court in each district, and a justice of the peace in
each canton. The judges of all the tribunals were elected. Buying and selling
of offices, preferential treatment of the wealthy, and bribes to judges became
a thing of the past. Trials by jury, honest courts of appeal, and free legal
counsel for those who could not pay for it were instituted. Torture was
abolished, and sentences were less harsh than before.

NAPOLEONIC CODE

The task of preparing a code of law was entrusted, in July
1800, to a commission, named in honor of Napoleon, that consisted of the most
eminent jurists of France. The code enacted in March 1804 is still in force in
France today. The term applies to the entire body of French law as contained in
five codes dealing with civil, commercial, and criminal law that were
promulgated between 1804 and 1811. This code was a compromise between the
customary law of the northern provinces of France, which was basically
Germanic, and the essentially Roman law of the southern region of the country.
Among its merits are its simplicity and clarity. It has required many judicial
interpretations, however, and has been frequently modified by legislative
amendment. As a result of Napoleon’s conquests, the code was also introduced
into a number of European countries. Some Latin American republics adopted it,
and it also became the model for the civil codes of the Canadian province of
Quebec and the state of Louisiana.

The rise to power of Napoleon no doubt eased the fears of
many people who lived in the areas where brigandage and terror had reigned for
years. His efficient centralized administration, with its effective police and
military, cleansed France of lawlessness, often, however, to the detriment of
liberty.

Bonaparte ending the farce of
égalité at St.-Cloud, 1799.

15 - AFTERMATH

By
1795, the people of France had had enough of revolutionary government. The
decade that began in 1789 was a time of high hopes for many millions of people,
who anticipated a golden age of political liberty, social equality, and
economic freedom. For hundreds of thousands, it was also a time of bitter
despair and bloody civil war. For the 300,000 or so nobles and clergy, the
revolution was a disaster, as it was for those who depended on the upper
classes for employment or the church for charity and for the untold numbers of
families who lost fathers and sons in the brutal wars defending the revolution.

Direct results were the abolition of the absolute monarchy,
the abrogation of the feudal privileges of the nobles, including the total
eradication of the remaining vestiges of serfdom, the elimination of feudal
dues and church tithes, the breakup of large estates, and the principle of
equal liability for taxation. Career advancement became open to those with
talent rather than to members of a particular class, and the bourgeoisie gained
access to the highest positions in the state, which itself was no longer a
federation of provinces or the private property of a monarch. Instead, it now
belonged to the people.

Other social and economic reforms included the elimination
of imprisonment for debt and the abolition of the rule of primogeniture in
inheritance. The revolution managed to give practical application to the ideas
of the philosophers: equality before the law, trial by jury, and, ultimately,
freedom of religion, speech, and the press. It transformed the institutional
structures of France and led to lasting changes in the nature of the church and
the family. The principles of freedom of religion as enunciated in the
Declaration of the Rights of Man resulted eventually in the separation of
church and state and freedom of worship for Protestants and Jews.

Yet memories of the Terror and mass conscription for the
military were never far from the minds of many citizens. The civil war in the
Vendée, which cost around 400,000 lives, turned the inhabitants against
republicanism for generations. The great mass of working people in both urban
and rural settings continued to live in much the same manner after as they had
before the revolution. Their lives in fact changed little before the middle of
the nineteenth century, when migrations to the urban communities increased and
production in large businesses became more efficient. City dwellers and the
sans-culottes were eventually transformed into the working class of the
industrial revolution, while the upper bourgeoisie remained the dominant
element in society. A new social class of capitalists emerged, distinguished
from workers by their ownership or control of the means of production. The poor
and the destitute continued to make up a major and growing underclass. The
local city or village councils could not cope with relief for them, and the
series of work schemes and relief measures proposed by the government were
piecemeal and never adequately financed.