THE PARIS RIVER AND PARIS COMMERCE.
The Society of the Water-Merchants of Paris--The Navigation of the
Seine--The Paris Slaughter-Houses--Records of Famine in France--The Lot
of the French Peasant in the Last Century--The Paris Food Supply.
The navigation of the Seine has had remarkable effects on the commerce,
and even the municipal government, of the great city traversed by this
stream. Turning to the annals of the middle ages, one finds that nearly
all the powerful towns seated on rivers profited by their position to
secure as much as possible exclusive rights of navigation. With this
view, the citizens showed themselves as eager and as voracious as the
nobility. Take, for instance, the towns of Cologne or of Mayence, which
in mediæval times forced all the boats passing down the Rhine to stop
for three days and allow the inhabitants to purchase from their cargo
whatever merchandise seemed desirable.
At Paris, the inhabitants showed themselves equally resolved to profit
by their position on the banks of the Seine. A society was formed at an
early date, under the title of “Society of the Water-Merchants of
Paris,” in which were included the principal merchants receiving and
distributing their goods by means of the river flowing through the town.
This association, mentioned for the first time in documents belonging to
the reign of Louis VI., claimed the right of levying sixty sous on every
boat which took a cargo of wine to Paris during the vintage.
It was easy enough for the owners of the vessels to come to terms with
the proprietors of the castles on the river-banks, who desired only to
derive a small profit from the passage of the boats; but it was not so
easy to pass the tradesmen of the towns on the Seine, who, finding their
interests injured by the detention of the Parisians, complained
bitterly, and endeavoured, from time to time, to throw off the yoke of
tyrannical Paris. Burgundy on one side and Normandy on the other
protested against the pretended privileges of the Hanseatic League, but
all in vain. The town of Auxerre made strenuous endeavours at one time
to prevent the Parisian merchants from introducing into their town the
cargoes of salt sent from Normandy. Rouen was far less accommodating
than Auxerre had shown itself. People had forgotten how it was that the
merchants of Paris enjoyed such exceptional privileges. But the Parisian
burgesses were rich and powerful. Besides their river privileges, they
were entitled to half of all the money received in fines; and the richer
the citizens of Paris became, the better able they were to pay the
various taxes levied in the name of the king. The king, moreover,
received half the fines imposed upon smugglers; and anyone who ventured
to land the least merchandise without formal permission from the
water-merchants was exposed to penalties. The corporation of
water-merchants showed no respect for persons in levying its dues. Thus,
it seized on one occasion the wine purchased by the Abbé de St. Germain
l’Auxerrois, because it had been landed without formal permission. The
abbé appealed to the king, who submitted the matter to the Parliament,
which, deciding that the abbé had acted within his rights, ordered the
seizure to be annulled. The Hanseatic League was sufficiently powerful,
however, to prevent the execution of the order, and the Abbé de St.
Germain remained without his wine.
Commerce by land had in those days but little importance, partly by
reason of the badness of the roads, partly on account of the dangers to
which travellers were exposed. There was but one important road to
Paris, that of Orleans; and on this road, at Mont Chéry, a post was
maintained, where dues were levied on cloth, linen, grain, cattle,
sheep, and even hedgehogs. According to the barbarous custom of the
time, a Jew was stopped at this post and made to pay for the privilege
of entering Paris. He was charged something extra if he carried with him
his lamp--probably the lamp with seven branches, used for the
celebration of the Sabbath. His Hebrew books were also taxed.
It was only, in fact, by means of the Seine that the Parisians were able
with ease to receive goods of all kinds from the outside. Accordingly,
the river trade was for a long time the most important branch of the
Parisian commerce. The association of water-merchants was looked upon as
an association of merchants generally, and, naturally enough, a ship
was adopted as principal object in the arms of Paris.
The association of water-merchants prided itself on keeping up a
constant supply of provisions, and boats were constantly reaching the
capital from Burgundy at one end of the Seine or Normandy at the other.
It was on Burgundy for many centuries that Paris depended for its wine,
and it was not until a certain nobleman, dilapidated in constitution,
sought refuge in the Governorship of Gascony, where the wine of the
province restored him to health, that Bordeaux gained the good name it
has since enjoyed among the Parisians.
Great fairs were held at various points along the course of the Seine,
which were scenes at once of commerce and of amusement. Foreign
merchants and tradesmen, students from the university, mountebanks,
drink-sellers, adventurers, and thieves, were brought together by every
fair. Buying and selling came to an end on the ringing of the Angélus,
and the scenes which followed partook, more or less, of the nature of
orgies. All trades were subjected in mediæval Paris to strict
regulations, and for sixty days in the year the Parisians were deprived
of fresh bread. There was a master-baker, or “grand panetier,” who was
held responsible for the acts of the bakers, his subordinates, on whose
behalf he had frequently to appear before the Grand Provost of the
capital. The pastrycooks, like the bakers, formed a corporation of their
own, with special duties and privileges.
The taverns in the middle ages, as now, were frequented by the lower
classes, and they had such a bad reputation that Louis IX., by a special
edict, forbade their frequentation. Nevertheless, the tavern-keepers
formed a corporation, legally established with its own statutes, and
with licences, imposed by the State on very onerous terms. The king’s
proclamation, then, against the frequentation of taverns was without
effect.
At the different landing-places and stations on the Seine, the goods
brought up by boats were cried for sale, preference being always given
to the wine imported from the royal vineyards in Burgundy and elsewhere.
The Seine is a great thoroughfare costing nothing to keep up, and the
chief line of communication between the capital and the Burgundy
vineyards. Naturally, too, it was by the Seine that fish was sent to
Paris from Normandy and Brittany. Ten kinds of fish are mentioned in the
ancient octroi lists as habitually forwarded to Paris. Of these,
herrings were, in particular, supplied very abundantly.
One of the most important trade corporations of medieval Paris was that
of the butchers, who, throughout French history, have shown a constant
tendency to coalesce. At present, however, there is no bond of union
between them, except that which results from their being subjected to
the same regulations in respect to the prices to be charged.
An entertaining account of the privileges and corporate character of the
ancient Paris butchers is given by M. Ducamp, who writes so well in his
bulky work on Paris that even the chapter it contains on the _abattoir_
is not only devoid of horrors, but invested with interest.
“The animals bought in the market do not,” he says, “make a long stay
there, but are promptly conducted to the slaughter-houses, which now
extend from the other side of the Canal de l’Ourcq, over an area of
211,672 metres, opening on to the Rue de Flandres. The two
establishments pronounced necessary by the decree of the 6th of August,
1859, were constructed simultaneously; the slaughter-house was thrown
open on the 1st of January, 1867.
“The names of some of the old Paris streets indicate the site of the
markets in which butchers displayed their stock. One is reminded of
their existence in the city by the church of St. Pierre aux Bœufs,
which was destroyed in 1857; then, near the Châtelet, by St. Jacques de
la Boucherie, by the Rues de la Tuerie, de la Tonnerie, and de la
Vieille-Place-aux-Veaux, surnamed the Place aux Saincts-Jons, after the
name of a celebrated family of butchers; and by the Quai de la
Mégisserie. Formerly, animals were killed everywhere: to each stall a
slaughter-house was attached.” “Blood streams down the streets,” said
Mercier; “it curdles under your feet and reddens your shoes.”
Despite various attempts made to banish beyond the walls these
slaughter-houses, which from every point of view were so dangerous, the
old spirit of routine long predominated, and in the early part of the
present century animals still had their throats cut in front of the very
doors where meat was sold. It required no fewer than three Imperial
decrees (9th Feb. and 19th July, 1810, and 24th Feb., 1811) to put an
end to this intolerable state of things. These decrees prescribed the
immediate construction of five slaughter-houses adjacent to the
Quartiers du Roule, de Montmartre, de Popincourt, d’Ivry, and de
Vaugirard; but the work was not finished till the end of 1818. To-day,
they have partly disappeared, swept away by new thoroughfares; and they
ought to be entirely replaced by the great establishment of the Rue de
Flandres. This latter is not beautiful, and has about it nothing
ornamental; it is joined to the cattle market by a bridge thrown over
the Canal de l’Ourcq.
As well as at the market, the animals are counted when they enter the
slaughter-house, into which they are carefully introduced one by one
through a half-open door. Opposite this door, and beyond a vast paved
court, are thirty-two pavilions, separated into equal groups by three
horizontal and three transversal streets, intersecting each other at
right angles. These pavilions contain stalls, in which the beasts are
kept whilst alive, and 125 tubs (échaudoirs) in which their flesh is
divided up after the slaughtering has taken place within the interior
court, situated in the centre of the buildings. These échaudoirs and
courts are paved with care, and the ground, sloped for drainage,
terminates in a gutter which carries all waste fluids down a sink. There
are a great many fountains and an abundant supply of water.
The thousand workmen who daily attend the place commence their labours
at six in the morning and continue till towards one in the afternoon. At
two o’clock the butchers come to make their purchases from the
“chevillards,” as those men are called whose business consists in
procuring beasts at market in order to kill and sell them in portions to
the retailers. As soon as it is dressed, every animal is hung up to a
strong iron peg, or cheville, whence the name of the wholesale buyers is
derived. One hundred and eighty numbered vehicles, each of an officially
certified weight, ply between the slaughter-houses and the different
quarters of the city. Before leaving, they have to pass before the
pavilion of the _octroi_ clerks, and stand on a weigh-bridge, so that
the exact quantity of meat they carry may be formally attested. The
dues, payable on the spot, are 2·0735 centimes per kilogramme, of which
some two centimes are reserved especially for what are called the
slaughter-house dues.
[Illustration: THE VILLETTE _ABATTOIRS_.]
The work goes on every day; but Good Friday, as may well be imagined,
causes a great rush of activity. The store-rooms are empty, the wants of
the town must be supplied, and the men fall to work; wholesale
slaughtering then takes place incessantly from the middle of the night
until, perhaps, three o’clock the next afternoon. Notwithstanding the
old slaughter-houses still subsisting, it is the one in the Rue Flandres
which employs the greatest number of men and contributes most to the
food of Paris. In 1868, in the general slaughter-house, and in the
slaughter-houses of Villejuif, Grenelle, Belleville, de la
Petite-Villette, and Batignolles, 1,725,365 animals were put to death,
representing a weight of 107,577,968 kilogrammes of meat ready for
retail sale. The average weight of the oxen was 350 kilogrammes, of cows
210, of calves 65, and of sheep 19. The average prices of meat bought at
the slaughter-house were, in 1868, 1·34 francs for ox-beef, 1·25 francs
for cow-beef, 1·65 francs for veal, and 1·35 francs for mutton.
After describing how the slaughterers perform their work, in language
somewhat too graphic for our readers, M. Ducamp points out the
difference between the Christian and the Jewish method of slaughtering
animals. The Jewish butcher in every case cuts the animal’s throat. To
strike with a pole-axe might have the effect of coagulating the victim’s
blood, and the Levitical laws on the subject are strict and not to be
trifled with. No animal, according to the Jewish custom, should be put
to death except in piety, and the Jewish sacrificer, like his
counterpart among the Mohammedans of India, utters solemn words as he
makes the fatal cut.
The history of the alimentation of Paris might be made the subject of an
entire volume. Under the ancient monarchy it was the story of fat years
alternating with lean years; which latter were at times years of famine.
Famine, indeed, was one of the plagues of France until the beginning of
the nineteenth century. Instead of allowing, as in the present day,
supply to follow demand, the Government of the country maintained laws
and regulations for particular provinces and privileges for particular
corporations. Wheat had to be sold at fixed places and nowhere else, and
often it was left to rot in one district, while at another, not many
miles distant, the peasants were dying of hunger. The peasants,
moreover, were burdened with such heavy charges, such distressing dues,
that they sometimes gave up in despair the task of cultivating their
fields.
Desperate and indignant at the oppression practised upon them, they
would from time to time rise against their agrarian tyrants.
“Jacqueries” were organised in which all sorts of horrors were
perpetrated. But in the end the insurgent peasants were reduced to
order. It was found necessary to “hang them a little,” according to the
expression of Mme. de Sévigné--so amiable, so charming, when writing of
persons in her own position of life. Then the poor man went back to his
hut and took up once more the shovel and the hoe. For he had plenty of
work to do, and out of the little he earned he had to pay taxes to the
king, tithes to the clergy, and dues of all kinds to his lord and
master, the landed proprietor. The last-named alone could claim from him
so many days of free labour; so much for every lamb that was born, so
much for every sheep that for the first time gave milk; every tenth
animal from all the animals possessed by the peasant on Christmas Eve; a
certain stipulated piece of meat from the carcase of every animal
slaughtered; and, finally, a share--sometimes a full quarter--of the
harvest, with all sorts of minor dues, such as the feeding of the
proprietor’s hounds.
The obligations of serving in the army, and of lodging and feeding the
king’s troops, were onerous indeed; and what with the charges imposed
and the dues levied by the crown, the landlord, and the church, the
position of the peasant was lamentable indeed.
The laws for the preservation of game were not the least oppressive of
those by which the unhappy serf was crushed. He was bound to cultivate
certain kinds of vegetables and grain to the taste of the birds, to
leave the crops in the ground, and to allow the privileged sportsman to
invade his farm and perhaps destroy everything of value upon it. Nor was
it prudent to make any complaint on the subject, and the Parliament of
Paris, in an edict of the year 1779, punished as rebellious the
inhabitants of a parish which had claimed from sportsmen an indemnity
for damages. A curious characteristic incident took place in Paris
itself on the very eve of the Revolution. In the month of April, 1787,
the Duke of Orleans, in the ardour of pursuit, followed a stag into the
heart of Paris, down the Faubourg Montmartre, across the Place Vendôme,
and through the Rue St. Honoré to the Place Louis V., upsetting and
wounding numbers of persons as he tore along.
The nobility and clergy paid no taxes. Everything fell upon the
labourer, who was borne down by imposts. M. Maxime Ducamp speaks of a
caricature he has seen, published the year before the Revolution, in
which a peasant, old and ragged, is represented leaning forward upon his
hoe, so that he has the appearance of a three-footed animal. On his
bended back rests a sleek bishop and a haughty nobleman. The harvest is
being devoured beneath the peasant’s eyes by rabbits, hares, and
pigeons. Jacques Bonhomme, the typical peasant, is pensive; but his
features, strongly accentuated, express anything but resignation, and he
mutters, in his own provincial dialect, “We must hope that this game
will soon be at an end.”
In Alsace, at the time of the German invasion of 1870, an ancient
traditional caricature might have been seen, evidently the outcome of
feudal times, in which the position of the peasant was still more
forcibly painted. Seven typical figures are presented. The Emperor says,
“I levy tribute.” The nobleman says, “I have a free estate.” The
clergyman says, “I take tithes.” The Jew (mediæval type of the trader)
says, “I live on my profits.” The soldier says, “I pay for nothing.” The
beggar says, “I have nothing.” The peasant says, “God help me, for these
six other men have all to be supported by me.”
In the glorious days of the ancient régime Paris itself suffered
constantly from famine, and looked for its food-supplies to the
provinces and to foreign parts, whence they often failed to arrive, from
the effects of brigandage or of civil war. The bad state of the roads
was another obstacle in the way of this most necessary commerce; and,
worst of all, there were laws in force by which tolls and custom dues
were levied at the entrance of each town through which the provisions
had to pass.
In the “Journal du Bourgeois de Paris,” written in the reign of Charles
VI., there are constant lamentations on the exorbitant prices charged
for provisions. “Meat was so dear,” we read in one place, “that an ox,
of which the ordinary price was eight francs, or at most ten, cost fifty
francs. The laws adopted for remedying these evils were of the strangest
kind. If wheat was worth eight francs the measure, it was forbidden to
sell it for more than four francs; and the bakers were ordered to sell
their bread at prices corresponding with the price fixed for the wheat.
The result was immediate and inevitable. The corn-merchants ceased to
sell, the millers to grind, the bakers to knead, and the whole city fell
into a state of distress impossible to describe. In vain,” writes the
chronicler just cited, “did people press round the bakers’ shops; there
was no bread to be had. Towards evening might be heard through Paris
piteous complaints, piteous cries, piteous lamentations, and little
children calling out, ‘I am dying of hunger,’ while on the dunghills of
the city, in the year 1420, might be found, here ten, here twenty or
thirty children, boys and girls, who were starving and perishing with
cold, so that no heart could remain unmoved. But it was impossible to
help them, for there was no bread, nor corn, nor wood, nor coal.”
“This epoch,” says M. Maxime Ducamp, “was the very saddest of all our
history; never was a nation so near its end. One might have thought that
in this state of suffering, the nation, having reached the last point of
prostration, must lie down and die. Nothing of the kind. Its morbid
energy took possession of it. It gave itself to the devil--so, at least,
say the ballads of the time. It turned into ridicule both famine and
plague, became seized with a vertigo which pathology can explain, and
danced that strange Danse Macabre--dance of death--which, for the
starving, was a sort of consolation; for they were reminded that in
presence of the eternal scythe we are all equal, and that tyrannical
lords are mowed down equally with oppressed serfs.”
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.
[Illustration: A SEINE STEAMBOAT.]
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.
[Illustration: THE SEINE AT GRENELLE.]
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.
[Illustration: THE CHAPELLE SAINT DENIS BARRIER.]