Charity and bienfaisance
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Charity and bienfaisance
Charity and bienfaisance the treatment of the poor in the Montpellier region 1740-1815
COLIN JONES
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge London New York New Rochelle Melbourne Sidney
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521245937 © Cambridge University Press 1982 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1982 This digitally printed first paperback version 2005 A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 82 — 4398 ISBN-13 978-0-521-24593-7 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-24593-1 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-02188-3 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-02188-Xpaperback
For Nicole
Contents
List of maps, graphs, figures and tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations
page
ix xiii xiv
Introduction: Charity and bienfaisance in the Enlightenment
1
PART I THE SETTING
1 Montpellier and its region 2 The eighteenth-century problem of poverty
11 29
PART II THE TREATMENT OF POVERTY UNDER THE ANCIEN REGIME
3 4 5 6 7
Poor relief in Montpellier and its region The crisis of traditional charity Popular attitudes towards poor relief: (i) Charity Popular attitudes towards poor relief: (ii) Medicine Government, poor relief and the repression of begging
45 76 95 113 131
PART III THE TREATMENT OF POVERTY UNDER THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMPIRE
8 9 10
Towards a 'welfare state, 1789-f. 1795 Retreat from the 'welfare state/ c. 1795-r. 1800 Poor-relief institutions from the Concordat to the Restoration
159 184 201
PART IV CONCLUSION
11
The government and poor relief in the early nineteenth century
235
viii
Contents
Appendices A Inmate population of Montpellier hospitals, 1700-1815 261 B Hospitals and home-relief institutions from the Ancien Regime to the Empire 263 Bibliography A Manuscript sources B Printed sources 1 Primary 2 Secondary Index
274 287 290 307
Maps
1 Department of the Herault, 1790 xvi 2 Montpellier in the eighteenth century 13 3 Geographical origins of strangers to Montpellier admitted to the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi in the eighteenth century 16 4 Hospitals and hospital capacity in the Montpellier region at the end of the Ancien Regime 47 5 Distribution of boxes of medicines within the future department of the Herault, 1787-9 138 6 Pensions on the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale' per hundred head of the population 180 7 Doctors in the department of the Herault, 1817 238 8 Surgeons and officiers de sante in the department of the Herault, 1817 238
Graphs 1 The price of fneteil on the Beziers market, 1720-1813 2 Monthly admissions to two Bas Languedoc hospitals in the eighteenth century 3 Receipts of Montpellier's charitable institutions from their Maundy Thursday and Spring Collections in the eighteenth century 4 Arrests of beggars and vagrants by the brigades of the four Lieutenances of the Languedoc marechaussee, 1768-86
33 36 79 149
c
Figures
Figures 1 2
The social problems of the 1780s and early 1790s. Pressure on Montpellier's charitable institutions Stagnation and decline in voluntary charity in Montpellier, 1780-92
163 165
Tables 1
Alms given by tithe-owners to communities in the diocese of Montpellier at the end of the Ancien Regime 2 The availability of hospital care and home-relief funds in the Montpellier region at the end of the Ancien Regime 3 Amount of charitable resources for home relief available in communities in the Montpellier region at the end of the Ancien Regime 4 Annual average accounts of the Misericorde of Montpellier in the 1740s and 1780s 5 Annual average accounts of the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi of Montpellier in the 1740s and 1780s 6 Annual average accounts of the Hopital General of Montpellier in the 1740s and 1780s 7 Composition of the average annual charitable income of the three major poor-relief institutions in Montpellier during the 1740s 8 Recipients of charitable bequests in Montpellier wills in 1740 and 1741, and in 1785 and 1786 9 Death-rates in hospitals in the Montpellier region in the final decades of the Ancien Regime 10 Expenditure on medicines and medical services in hospitals in the Montpellier region at the end of the Ancien- Regime 11 Arrests of beggars and vagrants made by the brigades of the Languedoc marechaussee, 1768-86 12 Pensions from the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale' per thousand head of the agrarian population 13 Applications from the districts of the department of the Herault for inscription into the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale' 14 Average annual accounts of the three main poor-relief institutions of Montpellier under the Empire
40 48
49 55 58 65
80 88 102 122 144 179
181 214
Tables 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Importance of the octroi in the income of several hospitals in the Montpellier region, Years IX-XIII Average annual income of the hospitals of Lodeve and Marseillan under the Empire Communities with funds for distribution as home relief in the department of the Herault in 1808 Smallpox vaccination in the Herault, Year XI-1817 Categories of individuals admitted to Montpellier's depot de mendicite'm 1813 Occupations of individuals admitted to Montpellier's depot de mendicite'm 1813 Age of individuals admitted to Montpellier's depot de mendicite in 1813
xi 215 216 227 240 248 250 250
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Professor Richard Cobb for his warm encouragement and advice at every stage in the writing of the present book. My interest in the subject was first kindled in the scholarly and convivial atmosphere of his Oxford seminar; he supervised the D. Phil, thesis on which the work is based; and his approach to France and to French history remain an inspiration. There are other debts I have incurred which it is my pleasant task to record. In Montpellier, the staff of the Departmental Archives of the Herault — notably M. J. Gigot, Mile D. Neirenck and Mme A. Sahraoui — took great pains to facilitate my research on documents formerly unclassified or inaccessible. The administrators of the city's Protestant church and its charity pawnshop, the Pret Gratuit, kindly allowed me to consult their archives. On this side of the Channel, Professor Olwen Hufton, Dr Colin Lucas, Dr Gwynne Lewis and Dr Alan Forrest all helped at various key stages. The Ernest Cassel Educational Trust and the Universities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Exeter granted me research funds to enable me to undertake visits to Montpellier archives. Vicky Annis, Judith Say well, Janet Stiling and Hilary Tolley patiently and painstakingly undertook the typing and retyping involved in the composition of the present work. Sean Goddard and Mike Rouillard drew some of the maps and advised in the preparation of others. My parents, Joyce and Lawrence Jones, and my parents-in-law, Gertrude and Frederick Holdaway, have given moral and financial support with unstinting generosity. Finally, I wish to record my especial thanks to my wife, Nicole Jones, who has cheerfully lived with the research project behind this book from its very inception. The end product can only be dedicated to her. Exeter, August 1981
Xlll
Abbreviations
References are given in full the first time they occur. Thereafter, primary sources are referred to by the name of the author and op. cit.\ secondary works by the name of the author and the date of publication. A.H.R.F. A.M. Am. H.R. A.N. Ann. demog. hist. Ann. du Midi Ann. E.S.C. Ann. I.E.O. A.S.L.M.(S.L.) Ball.
B.M. B.N. B.S.L.G. B.H.E.S.R.F. Bull. Hist. Med. C.F.H.L.M.R.
Annales historiques de la Revolution frangaise Archives municipales American Historical Review Archives nationales Annales de demographie historique Annales du Midi Annales. Economies. Societes. Civilisations Annales de L'lnstitut d'Etudes Occitanes Academie des Sciences et Lettres de Montpellier. Section de Lettres Ballainvilliers, 'Memoires sur le Languedoc. Memoires sur les hopitaux', manuscript, 1788, Bibliotheque municipale, Montpellier Bibliotheque municipale Bibliotheque nationale Bulletin de la Societe languedocienne de geographie Bulletin d'histoire economique et sociale de la Revolution frangaise Bulletin of the History of Medicine Congres de la Federation historique du Languedoc mediterraneen et du Roussillon Congres national des societes savantes
C.N.S.S. Et. Pe'z. reg. Etudes sur Pezenas et sa region Eur. Stud. Rev. European Studies Review Fr. Hist. St. French Historical Studies xiv
Abbreviations Inf. hist. LR.S.H. J. Eur. Ec. Hist. J. Soc. Hist. Mons. Hip. Montpellier en 1768
Information historique International Review of Social History Journal of European Economic History Journal of Social History Monspeliensis Hippocrates 'Montpellier en 1768, d'apres un manuscrit anonyme inedit', in Archives de la ville de Montpellier, edited by J. Berthele, iv, Montpellier, 1909 M.S.A.B. Memoires de la Societe Archeologique de Beziers M.S.A.M. Memoires de la Societe Archeologique de Montpellier Rev. fr. La Revolution frangaise Rev. hist. Revue historique Rev. hist, de VArmee Revue historique de I'Armee R.H.E.S. Revue dhistoire economique et sociale R.H.M.C. Revue dhistoire moderne et contemporaine R.H. Sci. Revue dhistoire des sciences Societe d'histoire du droit et des institutions anciens de S.H.D.LA.D.E. droit ecrit. Memoires et travaux
Lodeve + Montpeyroux • Aniane St.Andr6-de-Sangonis« C ^ Gignac
Pezenas
Cessenon St.Chinian • .
Cruzy
Servian Cazouls-ies-Beziers
Map 1 Department of the Herault, 1790
/
•Montagnac
MONTPELLIER
Frontignan
Maugu|Q
Mars.llargues
Introduction Charity and 'bienfaisance' in the Enlightenment Bienfaisance (Morale), C'est une vertu qui nous porte a faire du bien a notre prochain. Elle est la fille de la bienveillance et de l'amour de l'humanite.* Over the past few decades, studies by both French and Anglo-Saxon scholars have completely revised our understanding of the nature of Ancien Regime society.2 One of the products of this historiographical overhaul has been to uncover a serious and endemic problem of poverty in late eighteenth-century France. 3 The roots of this problem lay in the gap between population growth and economic expansion, the former consistently and even increasingly outpacing the latter in a pattern familiar to many developing economies. Contemporaries seem to have been only dimly aware of many of the changes through which they were living, 4 but all deplored the consequences: social disharmony, nascent political unrest and, especially in comparison with neighbouring England, economic backwardness. There was general agreement too that existing levels of poor relief were insufficient to cope with the scale of the problem. Many Catholic luminaries saw the answer to this in the more thorough-going application of the time-tested virtue of almsgiving which, in the absence of a compulsory poor-rate such as was levied in England, for example, at parishional level, still comprised the basis of all assistance. Enlightenment thinkers, however, reflecting the period's modish anti-clericalism, criticised such ready-made answers to a problem which seemed to be getting increasingly out of hand. Firmly rejecting the religious premise that 1 Supplement a I'Encyclopedie. i, Amsterdam, 1776, 888. 2 Excellent syntheses are to be found in P. Goubert, The Ancien Regime. French Society 1600—1750, English translation, London, 1973; F. BraudelandC.E. Labrousse(eds.), Histoire economique etsociale de la France. II. 1660-1789, Paris, 1970; and G. Duby and H. Wallon (eds.), Histoire de la France rurale. II. Uage classique des paysans, 1340-1789, Paris, 1975. 3 O. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750—1789, Oxford, 1974, provides an admirable description of this problem of poverty. 4 It was long held, for example, that population was actually declining rather than growing. M. Reinhard, A. Armengaud and J. Dupacquier, Histoire generale de la population mondiale, Paris, 1968, 242.
1
2
Introduction
poverty was an inevitable consequence of man's imperfection, they groped unsurely towards an appreciation of the societal origins of poverty and, vaunting the provision of employment as the harbinger of social cohesion and economic regeneration, sought remedies in constructive political and administrative action. Eighteenth-century reflection on the nature of poverty was thus conducted in the shadow of a raging polemic involving on one side traditional charity and on the other a more secular and optimistic system of values to which Enlightenment thinkers attached the term bienfaisance*
As with so many key Enlightenment concepts, the term bienfaisance, coined in the early eighteenth century by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre and popularised by Voltaire, 6 belied its somewhat anodine formal definition by being in practice a machine de guerre against established religious values. Philosophes expatiating on the supposedly universal propensity to bienfaisance in the face of human suffering gleefully highlighted the sectarian and denominational character of Christian charity. The latter, it was further argued, was more geared to the spiritual than to the material well-being of the poor. It also adjudged the terrestrial fate of the recipient as of lesser account than the salvation of the giver: almsgiving was a method of easing the charitable donor's soul through the after life and the recipient was merely an incidental means to a more lofty end. In the Enlightenment critique, therefore, charity could be berated as an egotistical, even ungenerous act. 7 The same was felt to apply to charitable foundations. In his famous article Tondation' in the Encyclopedie, for example, Turgot denounced the Vanite frivole' of individuals who made religious and charitable foundations. 'L'utilite publique', he fulminated, est la loi supreme et ne doit pas etre balancee ni par un respect superstitieux pour ce qu'on appelle I'intention des fondateurs, comme si des particuliers ignorans et bornes avoient eu le droit d'enchainer a leurs volontes capricieuses les generations qui n'etoient point encore; ni par la crainte de blesser les droits pretendus de certains corps, comme si les corps particuliers avoient quelques droits vis-a-vis l'etat.8 This citation also captures another of the charges which Enlightenment thinkers made against traditional charity: that it was an occasional virtue, whose incidence and effect on need varied according to the availability and goodwill of donors. Bienfaisance, on the other hand, was a rational and methodical activity which sought an appropriate response to suffering as circumstances required, and exuded a reassuring pragmatism. This was 5 See definition at the beginning of the Introduction. 6 F. Brunot, Histoire de la langue frangaise des origines a 1900, vi, premiere partie, Paris, 1930, 113. 7 Cf. the clearly anti-clerical connotations of remarks under the Encyclopedic's entry on 'Bienfaiteur': 'celui qui fait du bien pour en tirer profit ne merite point d'etre appelle un bienfaiteur; son action est un commerce et un trafic'. 8 Encyclopedic, vii, 1757, 75.
Charity and 'bienfaisance' in the Enlightenment
3
thought to contrast with the charity embodied in foundations for, as Turgot had maintained, La societe n'a pas toujours les memes besoins; la nature et la distribution des proprietes, la division entre les differens ordres dupeuple, les opinions, les moeurs, les occupations generales de la nation ou de ses differens portions, le climat meme, les maladies et les autres accidens de la vie humaine eprouvent une variation continuelle: de nouveaux besoins naissent, d'autres cessent de se faire sentir.9 The inflexible and donor-orientated nature of charitable foundations thus made them unresponsive to changing social circumstances - a weighty charge in a period of rapid social transformation like the late eighteenth century. In particular, it was argued, charity was not attuned to discriminating between 'deserving' and 'undeserving' cases of poverty. The handouts established by foundation outside monastery gates, to take an example much cited in the literature, benefited the vagrant and idle good-for-nothing as much as the aged widow and incapacitated pauper. There was, moreover, a geographical as well as a sociological dimension to the notion of the 'deserving' poor. Regions in visible need of assistance many remote country areas, for example — lacked proper relief provision, while more affluent localities enjoyed a plethora of charities. Turgot was not alone in claiming that the effect of a superabundance of relief was to 'rendre la condition du faineant preferable a celle de l'homme qui travaille'. 10 Instead of palliating, it merely aggravated the problem of poverty by licensing improvidence and sloth and discouraging enterprise. And from the avoidance or evasion of work to a life of vice and crime was felt to be only a short step. The stern and unbending work ethic preached by the proponents of Enlightenment bienfaisance fuelled a host of diatribes against existing poor-relief institutions, not least against the so-called hopitaux generaux. The hopital general was France's paradigmatic poor-relief institution. Other types of hospital - the hotels-Dieu located in the main cities for the reception of the sick, for example, or the small country hospitals which acted as catch-all institutions for most local varieties of distress — to a certain extent only fitted within the interstices of the nation-wide network of hopitaux generaux which had been established in the second half of the seventeenth century under the dual influence of the royal government's concern to contain the social threat which the poor comprised, and of the post-Tridentine church's renewed involvement in poor-relief provision. n Within the forbidding hopitaux generaux, the differing elements within 9 Ibid., 74. 10 Ibid. 11 See in particular E. Chill, 'Religion and mendicity in seventeenth-century France', I.R.S.H., 1962; M. Foucault, Folie et deraison. Histoire de la folie a I'age dassique, Paris, 1961, 54ff.; and C. Paultre, De la repression de la mendicite et du vagabondage en France sous I'Ancien Regime, Paris, 1906, 137ff.
4
Introduction
the worlds of poverty and vice were to be confined, and moralised into sound habits and religious orthodoxy by a combination of enforced labour and piety. To Enlightenment critics, the rationale behind the hopitaux generaux seemed a throwback to a bygone age. If nothing else, the discrepancy between theory and practice had proved gapingly wide. The crowding together of the needy and distressed caused acute sanitary problems which dogged every hospital. In practice too, cash shortages had always limited the extent of the so-called grand renfermement des pauvres, which was never total. After the first few decades of the eighteenth century, and often before, most hopitaux generaux admitted only the 'impotent poor' (invalides) - the aged, the infirm, the unwanted child, for example - and abandoned their assigned social mission of also institutionalising the able-bodied poor (valides) unwilling or unable to work. Furthermore, the hopitaux were urban institutions, a point which was not lost on the numerous Enlightenment thinkers influenced by Physiocratic views of the importance of a strong agrarian interest. The economic function of the hopitaux was also called into question. Some critics maintained that the workshops within the hopitaux distorted market forces and should be shut on these grounds. Others pointed out how rarely the works schemes of the hopitaux operated at all effectively and maintained that, just as almsgiving encouraged sloth, so the traditional poor-relief arrangements had signally failed to set the poor to work. Enlightenment bienfaisance thus accorded hospitals short shrift. There was, it is true, a current of social thought more kindly disposed towards the hotels-Dieu. The latter institutions, orientated around the care of the sick poor, should, it was argued, be reformed and reshaped so as to facilitate the clinical study of disease.12 This was evidently an idea with a great future before it. Yet, in the Ancien Regime, it represented a minority view and did not detract from the general agreement that, for a variety of social and economic reasons, the vast majority of hospitals should be scrapped and more flexible and less religiously orientated schemes of assistance introduced which did not take the poor receiving relief off the labour-market and which were geared around the home of the pauper. The strength of the arguments adduced by the critics of Catholic charity and its works was considerable and it certainly influenced supporters of the traditional social ethic. Many almsgivers and charitable overseers of the poor appear to have been increasingly aware of the need to discriminate 12 The works of Michel Foucault are particularly illuminating on this aspect of Enlightenment thought. See in particular his The Birth of the Clinic. An Archaeology of Medical Perception, English translation, London, 1973; and M. Foucault et al., Les Machines a guerir (aux origines de I'hopital moderne), Paris, 1979.
Charity and 'bienfaisance' in the Enlightenment
5
between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor. 13 There was a similar convergence of views over poor-relief institutions. When in 1777, for example, the Academie of Chalons-sur-Marne held a prize essay competition on 'les moyens de detruire la mendicite en France en rendant les mendiants utiles a l'Etat sans les rendre malheureux', only one out of a host of entries urged a positive role for the hopitaux. 14 The consensus among entrants to this popular competition was that home relief should be extended at the direct expense of institutionalisation. There was a considerable amount of agreement too - again, among clerical and anti-clerical writers alike — that central government would have to take a leading role in any reform that was attempted. The existence of such a strong consensus of opinion is perhaps not as surprising as might initially appear. It has long been established, for example, that there was a considerable amount of common ground in the world views of Catholics and 'unbelievers' in the eighteenth century. 15 In addition, recent research on the sociology of the Enlightenment has emphasised the strong participation of clerics in many quintessentially 'enlightened' activities. 16 There is a strong case for arguing that the critics of voluntary charity were also influenced, partly at least, by the actual performance of poor-relief institutions over the course of the eighteenth century — that beyond polemic and hyperbole lay a groundswell of unaffected common sense. This point needs emphasis since the Enlightenment critique has sometimes been viewed as an elitist infatuation with ratiocination in a mental vacuum sealed tight against empirical reality. The roots of such a view lie in the polemics against a rational and methodical approach to the problem of poverty in the Enlightenment itself. The view was considerably strengthened following the failure of the Revolutionary assemblies in the 1790s to recast the nation's poor laws in accordance with ideas current in the Enlightenment. Historiographically, it won a measure of acceptance in the acrimonious and anti-clerical debates which accompanied the extension of state involvement in assistance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In order to denigrate the supposedly baneful influence of the state on everything related to poor relief, the ultra-reactionary Catholic writer Leon Lallemand, for example, devoted much of his life to cataloguing the 13 O. Hufton, 'Towards an understanding of the poor of eighteenth-century France', in J.F. Bosher (ed.), French Government andSociety, 1500—1850. Essays in Memory of Alfred Cobban, London, 1973, 164 and passim. 14 Summary of entries in Abbe Malvaux, Les Moyens de detruire la mendicite en France en rendant les mendiants utiles a l'Etat sans les rendre malheureux, Chalons-sur-Marne, 1780. 15 R.R. Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-Century France, Princeton, New Jersey, 1939. 16 See especially D. Roche, Le Siecle des lumieres en province. Academies et academiciens provinciaux, 1680-1789, 2 vols., Paris, 1978.
6
Introduction
glories of voluntary charity and decrying the hardships visited on the poor by central government's legislative experimentation during the Revolution. The bienfaisance of the Enlightenment thus came to be tarred with the Revolutionary brush. And although it had long been a commonplace of Revolutionary historiography that the very poor had suffered in the Revolutionary decade, Lallemand's insistence that the cause of misery was over-attachment to the supposedly Utopian theorising of the Enlightenment encouraged a rather disparaging view of the practicality and seriousness of bienfaisance even among historians far better aware than Lallemand had been of the shortcomings of private charity. 1T A fresh and more dispassionate examination of a problem whose historiography still bears the scars of the anti-clerical disputes of the Third Republic is therefore long overdue. 18 History as well as politics has evolved since then, and the debate over the rival claims of charity and bienfaisance in the Enlightenment and Revolutionary period can be reviewed using historical methods and approaches largely beyond the Lallemand generation of scholars. The latter's impressionistic approach, for example, though often based on an admirably wide variety of sources, easily lent itself to partisan judgements based on a selection of available facts. Obviously, there is still an important place for historical impressionism in a topic as wide-ranging as this. Nevertheless, there are many crucial areas germane to the main debate in which a more rigorous approach, using quantitative techniques where possible, will pay dividends - as indeed has already proved the case in the recent revision of analysis of the nature and patterns of eighteenth-century poverty. The cautious use of quantification in the use of records of agencies of poor relief, for example, allows more firmly based conclusions to be drawn on central points of earlier contention such as the performance of poor-relief institutions and the implementation of various poor-reliief measures. Similarly, the systematic and methodical use of the preambles of wills allows the pattern and evolution of charitable giving to be gauged over the long term, thus permitting the historian to penetrate to underlying mentalites concerning the poor and their relief. Such materials complement and nuance the largely literary sources on which earlier historians based their analyses of charitable opinion. To take a further example, the recent growth of interest in history 'from below' encourages a closer look to be taken at popular attitudes towards poor relief. The 17 See, for example, the acerbic comments of Olwen Hufton on the Enlightenment approach to the problem of poverty in her contribution to A. Cobban (ed.), The Eighteenth Century, London 1969, 306. 18 Even a work as seemingly detached and serene as Camille Bloch's master work, UAssistance et I'Etat en France a la veille de la Revolution, Paris, 1908, which is by far the most impressive intellectual monument to this generation of scholars of poor relief, is not without its ritualistic anti-clerical sniping.
Charity and 'bienfaisance' in the Enlightenment
7
Lallemand school and its opponents were united in assuming that recipients of relief could only adopt an attitude of humble gratitude to their social superiors. In fact, this is a point which needs substantial revision. The writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries worked on a massive canvas, usually embracing the whole of France in their analyses. To examine the 'charitable tissue' of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France in the way envisaged here, however, calls for microscopic analysis. This, consequently, is a regional study. The Montpellier area recommends itself on a number of practical counts. First, many of its poor-relief institutions have retained copious archives. Second, the region contains a wide variety of different types of terrain and local economy, ranging from the fertile Bas Languedoc plain to mountain fastnesses on the fringes of the Massif Central: the contentions of Enlightenment social theorists on the geographical unevenness of charitable resources are thus particularly relevant here. Third, there is a high degree of correlation between pre- and post-Revolutionary boundaries which facilitates comparisons over time: the department of the Herault which was created in 1790 followed very closely the outline of a clump of five Ancien Regime dioceses - those of Agde, Beziers, Lodeve, Montpellier and Saint-Pons - which form the area under study. 19 The fourth relevant point is that the region comprised one of the best-endowed and most charitable areas in the whole of France - and one therefore in which the Enlightenment critique of charity may be fairly rigorously tested. Finally, the area was also the home of what was throughout the period the premier medical city of provincial France, and one therefore in which relations between poor-relief institutions and the medical profession on the eve of the so-called 'medical revolution' seem particularly interesting. Within the narrow geographical framework of the present study, charity and bienfaisance are examined in the longue duree. In an analysis of long-term changes in social policy and mentalites, it seemed erroneous to call a halt, as is often done in studies of poor relief, in 1789, 1795, 1797 or some other rather arbitrary midway point. The period covered therefore ranges from the last half-century of the Ancien Regime through to the end of the Napoleonic era, when changes adumbrated at the height of the Enlightenment and Revolutionary decade had largely worked themselves out. Within the general course of development here outlined, the events of the 1790s inevitably stand out. The Revolution, after all, presented a generation of politicians and social theorists with a golden opportunity of bringing into existence a comprehensive and humane social programme grounded in the values of bienfaisance which they had been ingesting in the 19 For boundaries, see the handy guide of E. Appolis, Manuel des etudes heraultaises, Valence, 1943.
8
Introduction
decades prior to 1789. In the event, their hopes and ambitions were not fulfilled — any more than they were in educational policy, which was another sphere in which the Revolutionaries were accorded the chance of putting Enlightenment ideas into practice. 20 The failure of the men of the 1790s to create the kind of 'welfare state' which was, as we shall see, the ideal of the Constituent Assembly's Comite de Mendicite in 1790 and 1791, was not total: in spite of the revival of traditional charity in the late 1790s and the declining stock ofbienfaisance, there were a number of ways in which state involvement in poor relief was increased by the Revolutionary experience. Nevertheless, despite the bright start to the decade, the 1790s were to witness the withering of Enlightenment ideals under the influence of social, economic and political turbulence, and the definitive shelving of plans to recast the nation's poor laws. The basic premise of the present study is that the full meaning of concepts like charity and bienfaisance in this key period in the history of French poor relief can best be drawn out not by the elucidation of the texts of social theorists and commentators, but rather by a close examination of how they fitted into a wide range of differing and often only slowly evolving social practices and attitudes. In spite of the study's restricted geographical framework, I hope to illuminate the wider context of Enlightenment and Revolutionary social thinking and the long-term significance and effects of the Revolution on French social development. 20 For convenient summaries of both the educational and philanthropic legacies of the Revolutionary era, see in particular J. Godechot, Les Institutions de la France sous la Revolution et I'Empire, Paris, 1968.
PARTI
The setting
1
Montpellier and its region
Entering eighteenth-century Montpellier was an education in the social, economic and cultural contrasts of Bas Languedoc and in the city's pre-eminence in the region. If, like most travellers, one approached the city along the post-roads of the coastal plain it was easy to be impressed by the appearances of prosperity. Most communities observed the time-honoured precepts of Mediterranean mixed farming: the lion's share of cultivable land was devoted to cereals with vines, olives, fruit trees, vegetables and mulberries as secondary crops; while arable farming was complemented by the upkeep of flocks of sheep and goats which were to be found in particularly large numbers in those communities which spread into the garrigues, the low and scrub-covered limestone hills bordering the alluvial deposits of the littoral. 1 The landscape in places formed, in the words of Arthur Young, the celebrated English agronomist who visited the region in the 'animated and joyous' harvest-time atmosphere of the summer of 1787, 'a beautiful mixture' of its different elements. 2 Young was also struck by the high quality of the network of communications: the much praised Canal du Midi which linked the Atlantic with the Mediterranean at Agde, and the fine roads — 'stupendous works' — constructed on the orders of the provincial Estates. 3 There were numerous villas and country houses to admire too, 'well-built, clean and comfortable . . . spread thickly through the countryside', testimony to the wealth of regional elites and the importance of urban capital in the transformation of the countryside.4 Away to the 1 Valuable contemporary accounts of the economy of Bas Languedoc in the eighteenth century include C.S. Bernard de Ballainvilliers, 'Memoires sur le Languedoc, divises par dioceses et sub-delegations', manuscript, 1788, B.M. Montpellier (henceforth cited as Ball.); and de Genssane, Histoire naturelle de la province de Languedoc. Partie mineralogique et geoponique, 5 vols., Montpellier, 1776—9. The best secondary accounts are E. Le Roy Ladurie, Les Paysans de Languedoc, 2 vols., Paris, 1966; L. Dutil, L'Etat economique du Languedoc a la fin del'A ncien Regime (1750—1789), Paris, 1911; and R. Dugrand, Villes et campagnes en Bas Languedoc. Le reseau urbain du Bas Languedoc mediterraneen, Paris, 1963. 2 A. Young, Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789, edited by C. Maxwell, Cambridge, 1929, 40, 42. 3 Ibid., 39f. Admiring comment on the roads and canals of Languedoc was a banality of eighteenth-century travel literature. 4 Ibid., 43.
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12
The setting
south, beyond a chain of picturesque lagoons, lay the Mediterranean, reminding the traveller of the maritime vocation of the coastal towns and ports of the region, and of far-flung commercial contacts in the Levant, in northern Europe and in the Americas. Approaching Montpellier from the south, Young must have observed from afar the splendid prospect of the city with its two recently completed public monuments towering above the mundane bustle of the southern faubourgs with their workers' quarters, business premises and luxuriant market-gardens: the huge aqueduct which brought water supplies from the garrigue village of Saint-Clement, five miles distant; and the Place du Peyrou, the airily spacious leisure-garden to the west of the city. 5 Although Montpellier's population was not much in excess of 30,000, the overall impression, Young noted, was of 'a great city [rather than] a provincial town'. 6 At closer quarters, the city was something of a disappointment. The streets were 'ill-built and crooked', and although the city was clearly an important business centre specialising in the manufacture of silk handkerchieves, woollen blankets, perfumes, liqueurs and verdigris — to which Young might have added cotton fabrics, chemical products, sugar-refining and a host of minor industries — the scale of its enterprises was more modest than he had anticipated. Young's vivid portrayal of the region is, however, misleadingly incomplete. The traveller who approached Montpellier from the north or north-west rather than along the coastal plain, and who journeyed in mid winter rather than at harvest time as Young had done, obtained impressions vastly different from — and in many respects complementary to — those of the English agronomist. On a clear winter's day on the Place du Peyrou in Montpellier it is possible to see not only the belt of low-lying land skirting the sea and stretching far away towards Spain in one direction, Italy in the other, but also, in snowy profile to the north, the other great reality in the life of the Montpellier region: the mountains. Despite their geographical proximity, mountain and plain were worlds apart. The domesticated landscapes of the latter contrasted strikingly with the rugged wildness of highland areas in the Cevennes and their outcrops where - even within the confines of the future department of the Herault — shepherds went in pairs for fear of attack by wolves.7 Many were the mountain villages snowed in for weeks and months each year, while the plain enjoyed winters renowned throughout Europe for their 5 A superb eyewitness account of eighteenth-century Montpellier has been published as 'Montpellier en 1768, d'apres un manuscript anonyme inedit', published by J. Berthele in volume iv of the Archives de la ville de Montpellier, Montpellier, 1909 (henceforth Montpellier en 1768). 6 A. Young, op. cit., 43. 7 B.N., Collection de Languedoc (Benedictins), 18 (comments concerning Argelliers in the diocese of Montpellier).
Approximate scale of metr
Map 2 Montpellier in the eighteenth century
14
The setting
mildness. 8 Even at the best of times communications were fraught with difficulties: transportation beyond Lodeve, for example, by anything more sophisticated than mule-back was out of the question until very late in the Ancien Regime. 9 Humanity seemed of a rougher and ruder stamp in the mountains: the polite and even sycophantic plainsman cut quite a different figure from the mountain-dweller, cloddish and unlettered, so the stereotype ran, and with his hair tied into a pigtail hanging down his back which made him resemble the livestock which he brutishly guarded. 10 Markedly different standards of living further illuminated the contrast between mountain and plain. In the latter, even the very poor aspired to a daily diet of bread — normally a rough loaf made from mixture or meteil, a mixture of rye and wheat. Extensive zones in the mountains, in contrast, were part of that 'internationale de la misere', 11 whose subsistence crop was the indigestible and nutritionally inferior chestnut. 12 The geographical structures of poverty and affluence in Bas Languedoc had long fuelled a strong migratory current from north to south, from mountain to plain. For the mountain-dweller, the latter represented l e mirage du bonheur, l'attrait du soleil et du pain facilement gagne'. 13 Such attractions were at their most alluring at the time of the crises of subsistence which periodically swept the region: the classic crises of 1693 and 1709, for example, had brought floods of hungry refugees pouring forth into the plain. Migration was a normal and customary as well as an emergency phenomenon. 14 Massive numbers were involved, for example, in the seasonal migration which brought down mountain-dwellers en masse to help in the annual hay, cereal and wine harvests and caused the population of some labour-starved coastal communities to double, triple, quadruple or 8 Its reputation as a balmy winter health-resort gained Montpellier a great number offoreignersand travellers. 9 P. Marres, 'L'Amelioration des liaisons routieres entre le Bas Languedoc et la montagne au XVIIIe siecle', Ann. I.E.O., 1966, 182. Cf. E. Appolis, 'La Construction au XVIIIe siecle de la route du Languedoc vers l'Auvergne', Revue du Tarn, 1939. 10 An observation made by J. A. Amelin, Guide du voyageur dans le departement de I'Herault, ou Esquisse dun tableau historique, pittoresque, statistique et commercial de ce departement, Paris, 1827, 560. 11 E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 213. 12 For a striking illustration of the dichotomy between plain and mountain, see the department of the Herault's replies to the enquiry of the Constituent Assembly's Comite de Mendicite in 1790: the highest proportions of 'individus qui ont besoin d'assistance' and of 'mendiants vagabonds' were to be found in the highland cantons. Archives departmental de I'Herault (henceforth all primary material cited without other indication is from this source) L 2972. Cf. C. Bloch and A. Tuetey (eds.), Proces-verbaux et rapports du comite de mendicite de la Constituante, 1790—1791,
Paris, 1911. 13 E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 97. 14 For migrations within this region, see especially E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 91—110; P. Marres, 'Migrations rurales en Bas Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle', Ann. I.E.O., 1966; and M. Derruau, 'Un "village tombeau" dans le Bas Languedoc (Capestang, He"rault)', Revue degeographie alpine, 1953. For more general comments on migrations, cf. J.P. Poussou, 'Les Mouvements migratoires en France et a partir de la France de la fin du XVe siecle au debut du XIXe siecle: approches pour une synthese', Ann. demog. hist., 1970; and O. Hufton, 1974, 69-104.
Montpellier and its region
15
more. The plain possessed a range of other well-remunerated seasonal jobs for which the mountain-dweller might compete: the digging of ditches and drains during the winter, for example, or the carrying, portering and sedan-carriage trade in Montpellier during the meeting of the provincial Estates each December and January. The discontinuous nature of seasonal work might lead the migrant to prolong his absence from home. Although the journeyman artisan striving to learn his trade, the servant or chambermaid engaged in domestic service, the wandering pauper or manual worker begging his living between jobs were generally accepted by the host community, they might not have renounced a desire to return to their home villages one day. In the case of some at least, temporary migration might be prolonged: the serving-girl made pregnant and too ashamed to go home, the harvester haplessly fathering a child and agreeing to assume his paternal responsibilities, the journeyman lucky enough to step into his master's shoes — all might become permanent fixtures in the plain. Transfusions of fresh blood from the mountains had long since been renewing the human stock of the plains. The towns and cities of Bas Languedoc would never have expanded as they did in the eighteenth century without constant population renewal. Over half the marriage partners of a town like Ganges, perched half-way between mountain and plain, came from the mountain villages to the north; and between 25 and 40 per cent of marriage partners in the different parishes of Montpellier were strangers to the city. 15 The total number of immigrants was likely to be far higher than these figures suggest, moreover, in that a large proportion of temporary and seasonal immigrants—particularly those in the more menial jobs — would not settle and marry. The admissions registers of Montpellier's Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi — which prided itself upon opening its doors to the needy from anywhere outside the city - provide a matchless insight into the main patterns of the migrations of the poor. 16 The great providers were clearly the mountain dioceses of Mende and Rodez. They and other dioceses in the Massif Central — Ales, which provided a particularly high proportion of female immigrants, Albi, Clermont, Le Puy, Saint-Flour, Uzes and Viviers — collectively far outdistanced the dioceses of the plain. Administrators and social-thinkers concurred that the immigrants' labour comprised a vital contribution to the economy of the plain. 17 It was 15 R. Dugrand, 'Ganges. Etuded'unepetitevillesub-ceVenole', B.S.L.G., 1953, 28f.;L. Dermigny, 'De la Revocation a la Revolution', in P. Wolff (ed.), Histoire du Languedoc, Toulouse, 1967; E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 105. 16 Map 3. 17 Compare the remarks of the Montpellier savant Amoreux, 'Memoire sur les abus qui s'opposent aux progres de l'agriculture aux environs de Montpellier', manuscript, 1789, B.M. Montpellier; and Coulomb, the Montpellier sub-delegue in 1773, C 2833.
16
The setting
H I Over 5 percent BBS Over 3 percent W& Over 1.5 percent I ° I Over 0.5percent
i
XI
Map 3 Geographical origins of strangers to Montpellier admitted to the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi in the eighteenth century no less essential for the mountainous areas themselves. It meant fewer mouths to feed on local resources for at least part of the year, while the injection of cash wages earned in the plain could also stimulate the relatively underdeveloped mountain economy. The mutual interdependence of mountain and plain was the keynote of another type of migration: that of livestock. Arable farming was difficult in much of the Massif Central. Many areas had come almost by default to specialise in the rearing of livestock which, in the form of meat, wool, hides and dairy produce, found its way down towards the sea by way of regional fairs such as those held at Clermont in the diocese of Lodeve and Montagnac in the diocese of Beziers. Each year, moreover, shepherds from the sweltering plains conducted their flocks along age-old paths, or drailles, to
Montpellier and its region
17
the more temperate climes of the Causses and the Cevennes.18 The sheep were welcomed wherever they pastured, for they represented a rudimentary but effective dung-spreader. The deposits they left on the slopes of mountain and garrigue were crucial in maintaining the fertility of habitually poor soils. Rural industry was a further example of the interpenetration of the economies of mountain and plain. The mountains might be povertystricken and difficult of access, but they possessed substantial mineral deposits; important raw materials in the form of the wool and hides of the livestock which populated them; plentiful cheap labour away from the corporatist restrictions of the urban guilds; and, in the fast-flowing streams which ran through them, sources of energy which the plain could not as yet match. The commercial techniques and capital of the plain were, however, essential if these natural endowments were to be utilised so as to make of Languedoc — as it became in the course of the century — one of France's foremost manufacturing regions. There was an impressive tally of paper mills, glassworks, commercial tanning centres, nail-making villages and timber works in the hilly crescent bordering the future department of the Herault. The most impressive product of local capitalism was, however* the textiles industry. Ganges in the diocese of Montpellier, for example, was an important silk town and, though not rivalling nearby Nimes, supplied work to a great many Cevenol villages, whose numerous mulberry trees provided foliage to feed the voracious silkworm. Cotton fabrics too began to be manufactured with great enthusiasm towards the end of the Ancien Regime. The biggest sector of the textiles industry here, however, continued to be based on the backs of the province's half-million sheep. Some coarse woollen cloths — manufactured particularly in the diocese of Saint-Pons — were designed for the lower reaches of the home market. A more substantial branch of the industry, centred on Lodeve, manufactured uniforms for the French army under the provisions of a franchise which a native son — the Abbe Fleury — had first awarded the town's manufacturers in 1730. Probably the most lucrative branch of all, however, was that which worked for the export market in the Levant. This sector of the woollen industry was concentrated mainly in the diocese of Carcassonne and in the Lodevois town of Clermont, though several towns and villages in the Biterrois and Saint-Ponais also came to work for it. Given the absence of advanced forms of mechanisation in the region, the expansion of every branch of local industry was labour intensive. Fortunately, rural industry dovetailed neatly into the requirements of the 18 P. Rouquette, La Transhumance des troupeaux en Provence et en Bas Languedoc, Montpellier, 1913.
18
The setting
peasant family, for it was based on the home rather than the factory or even the workshop; the men were only too eager to find some supplementary form of work during the 'dead season' of the agricultural year between November and April or May; and the work was neither too physically demanding for wives nor too skilled for the children of the family. Family income from this source comprised a vital supplement to the exiguous living which many peasant households eked out of their land or their flocks. A populous mountain society which lived in close symbiosis with the plain and whose sterility and isolation were partially offset by a rural industry which flourished particularly in winter: this was the hidden face of Bas Languedoc which the summer traveller such as Arthur Young, dazzled by the agrarian and commercial well-being of the plain, was likely to miss if he did not approach Montpellier from the north. The mountain, moreover, cast a long shadow. The garrigue insulating it from the littoral was in many areas little more than an extension of the material environment of the land to the north. The rags and barefootedness of the Massif continued well towards the coast, and villages almost at the gates of Montpellier vied amongst themselves for the title of the most destitute spot in the region. 19 Set against this backdrop, Montpellier dazzled — and never more than during the sessions of the provincial Estates, which were held here in December and January each year and which marked the city out as the quintessential symbol of regional pride. 20 In contrast to Arthur Young, who found Montpellier in the summer relaxed and unbuttoned, the winter traveller who timed his arrival to coincide with this great regional celebration would find the city proudly on its mettle as both an administrative centre and as a showcase of luxury and ostentation. The extent of the powers actually enjoyed by the hundred or so individuals who together made up the delegations of the Clergy, Nobility and Third Estate was, it is true, severely limited in comparison with the Estates' salad days in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when they had on occasion openly resisted the demands of central government. Even the occasional baring of teeth — as in the Estates' refusal to ratify the government's new vingtieme tax in 1750 — now resulted in fiasco. From mid century they concentrated most of their energies on the economic 19 See, for example, the plaintive remarks of the cures of the diocese of Montpellier in reply to enquiries in 1774 and 1790 concerning charitable resources (notably the parishes of Vic, Fabregues and Clapiers), C 5955, C 5957. 20 For the Estates, see in particular E. Appolis, 'Les Etats de Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle. Comparaison avec les Etats de Bretagne', Commission Internationale pour I'histoire des assemblies a*etats, Louvain,
1937—43. The famous description by A. de Tocqueville in his L'Ancien Regime, edited by G.W. Headlam, Oxford, 1962 (first published 1904), 217-27, is still useful.
Montpellier and its region
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regeneration of the province, often working hand-in-glove with the Intendant to subsidise industrial and agricultural enterprises, for example, or build bridges and roads or provide subventions to the needy. For all the seriousness of the deliberations of the Estates, therefore, and for all the tradition of thorough and conscientious local administration which they embodied, there was already much about their meeting which was little more than show. To the idle bystander or casual traveller, moreover, it was precisely this aspect which most impressed. The meeting of the Estates was an exercise in ritualistic splendour. Procession gave way to procession, credentials were verified and reverified, ceremonial visit followed ceremonial visit in a whirl of etiquette and attention to preseance which made all but the most hardened maitre de ceremonies blench. The white dress-uniforms of the troops mingled kaleidoscopically with the red ermine of the great magistrates, the splendid purples of more than a score of bishops, the silken and sombre hues of the Third Estate, the showy liveries of servants and lackeys, the eye-catching costumes of assorted hangers-on, wives and mistresses. The numerous administrative institutions, provincial organisms and corporate bodies which were located in Montpellier now donned their ceremonial finery. Most prestigious of all was the military commander (gouverneur) of Languedoc who had had his official residence in the city since 1682 and whose hospitality during the meeting of the Estates was renowned for its prodigality. The prevot general of Languedoc's marechaussee also had his permanent seat here, and in addition, Montpellier contained a military garrison so numerous as to make the city at times resemble an armed camp — a grim reminder of its seventeenth-century role as bulwark against Protestant influence in the region. Although the surrounding area fell within the jurisdiction of the Parlement situated in Toulouse, Languedoc's other capital city, Montpellier too had its own sovereign court, the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances, as well as important Presidial and Senechaussee courts. The Intendant, royal viceroy in the generalite of Montpellier, was also stationed in the city, and around him swarmed a host of bureaucrats and petty officials as well as businessmen, financiers and provisioners on the constant qui-vive for government contracts and provincial franchises. The wealthy business sector of the region was also represented by the great financiers who staffed the Bureau des Finances and by the mercantile dynasties who controlled the Bourse des Marchands of the generalite. Finally, Montpellier was an influential ecclesiastical centre: its bishop ranked fourth in the whole of Languedoc behind the archbishops of Narbonne, Toulouse and Albi; the city boasted a handful of chapters and a score of religious houses; and also under the aegis of the church were the University — internationally renowned for its legal and especially its
20
The setting
medical faculties — and the two largest hospitals of Bas Languedoc, the Hopital General and the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi. The wide range of corporate bodies and important institutions located in Montpellier suggest something of the prestige and variety of the upper classes of the city. In the past, sectional interest had separated the proud robins of the Cour des Aides from wealthy businessmen, Protestant from Catholic merchants, the great provincial administrators from noblemen of ancient lineage, and ecclesiastical dignitaries from the prestigious financiers who together composed the city's - and indeed the region's - social elite. There was a greater community of interest among these groups than appeared likely at first sight. Most, for example, derived their income from the same gamut of sources. All were important landowners. Income from land — in the form of rents, seigneurial dues and tithes, the interest on usurious loans to farmers and of sales made on the national and international markets — formed the basis of the city's pre-eminence, especially in the eighteenth century when rising demand for agricultural products was pushing prices upwards. Landed income was not only the basis of the wealth of the moneyed elite. It also provided much of the capital on which local trade and industry were built. The ports of Sete (Sette), Agde and Marseilles and the international trade fair held each year at nearby Beaucaire on the river Rhone provided outlets for wines, alcohol, cloths and other local goods and produce. In addition an important import and entrepot trade was centred on Montpellier. Swift and easy credit furthermore was available within the city from many of the provincial organisms located there through whose hands colossal sums of money passed; and also from along the lines of the Protestant diaspora consequent on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 which had scattered Protestant businessmen and bankers throughout Europe from Cadiz to London and from Geneva to Amsterdam. Similar social aspirations and cultural interests also aided the fusion of the different fractions of the city's moneyed elite. 'II n'y a aucune distinction entr'eux', an anonymous chronicler reported of them in 1768, 'pour la maison, la table et la parure'. 21 Intermarriage was important in this. So too was the emergence of a more patrician culture than had been current earlier in the century. Up until the 1720s at least, all classes in the city had joined in the same festivals, carnivals, dances and charivaris, played the same communal games, exhibited the same willingness to drink heavily. As the century wore on, however, the upper classes distanced themselves from their social inferiors and began to take pride in a more exclusive, more refined — and less intemperate — outlook. The use of the 21 Montpellier en 1768, 68.
Montpellier and its region
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French language became the passport into their elitist culture, and the delicate and malleable Montpellier patois with which all were brought up was shunned save in contacts with servants, shopkeepers, clients and bosom companions. With the French tongue came all the cultural baggage of the Enlightenment: a strong university and academic sector; a flourishing book trade; a Societe Royale des Sciences which in its more pretentious moments liked to imagine itself the equal of the Paris Academy, and a clutch of masonic lodges whose often fabulously wealthy members could give full vent to the fashionable language of equality and philanthropy in cliquishly select surroundings. The patrician culture of the urban elite came into its own at the time of the Estates. The great private hotels of local families, many of them grouped around the ancient quarter of Notre-Dame-des-Tables, most notably in the hyper-exclusive Rue des Tresoriers, for most of the year presented a deceptively, almost jansenistically, austere and drab exterior to the outside world. These residences now threw open their doors to high society. The Rue des Tresoriers district was transformed into a glittering ghetto of extravagant display. Evenings were a round of receptions, balls, masques and firework displays. Lavish entertainments were held in the beautiful shaded courtyards of the hotels with their ornate staircases and baroque embellishments or in the sumptuously decorated interior rooms, stuffed museum-like with costly and refined objets d'art. There were also the concerts, plays and operas for which the municipal theatre, with its modish repertoire, was opened in 1757. The presence in Montpellier of a large number of very wealthy individuals and corporate bodies, and the annual orgy of conspicuous consumption which occurred during the meeting of the Estates, strongly influenced the social composition of the city. Montpellier contained the usual mixture of menial workers, sturdy artisans, agricultural labourers and members of the liberal professions who made up any eighteenth-century city; but it also had a disproportionately large number of artists and artisans working in the luxury trades. Indeed, the minds of the more austere inhabitants were agonisingly torn between condemning such luxury as morally reprehensible and admitting on the other hand the powerful contribution which it made, in the form of jobs and income, to the r
i
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22
prosperity or the city. Less respectable trades flourished too - testimony to the city's growing notoriety as a city of all the pleasures. 23 Over the course of the eighteenth 22 Ibid., 99, 150. For the full range of trades and professions followed in the city, ibid., 92—8 and 100-110. 23 For the city's growing notoriety in this sphere, see my article 'Prostitution and the ruling class in eighteenth-century Montpellier', History Workshop. A Journal of Socialist Historians, 1978.
22
The setting
century the number of inns and bars increased rapidly. Billiard halls, usually run by former servants on the make, also proliferated. The throng of customers was at its densest during the meeting of the Estates, when the city bid fair to live up to its reputation as 'une ville remplie d'etrangers, d'aventuriers et de beaucoup de canaille'. 24 Travelling salesmen, fairground entertainers, quacks, charlatans and wandering players would always include Montpellier on their itineraries at this time of the year. So too would the professional prostitutes from the major cities in the region who came to swell the floating population who already made their living in the chambres garnies of what was fast becoming Montpellier's red-light district, along the infamous Rue des Etuves. The tawdry, ephemeral glamour — and underlying misery — of this street struck a resounding contrast with the ostentatious display of wealth centring on the adjacent municipal theatre, and on the Rue des Tresoriers, only a couple of streets away. Even at the best of times Montpellier was a city of yawning social contrasts. For all the colossal wealth of the few, the cures of the parishes in 1789 estimated that over 40 per cent of the urban population could be accounted indigent. 25 The gulf between the huge dowries which the city's millionaires accorded their daughters and the humble sums which the bulk of the population had to scrape together before they could afford to establish a household underlined the wide range of social conditions present in Montpellier. 26 The contrasts were heightened by the winter 'season', when an influx of down-and-outs, paupers, beggars and petty criminals poured into the city, seemingly splitting it into two opposing camps. The general impression, the young Jean Jacques Rousseau had noted during a stay in Montpellier during the 'season' of the Estates, was that 'Les habitans y sont moitie tres riches, et l'autre moitie miserable a l'exces'.27 Here then, crammed promiscuously together in unholy alliance, were the extremes of the province of Languedoc's wealth and poverty. In the atmosphere of high, conspicuous spending which the Estates engendered, the pickings for the needy-looking Cevenol beggar or the adept pickpocket were high. The most redoubtable beggars performed their supplications in Latin, a language well suited to give a twinge to residual Catholic consciences over the enormity of the divide which separated down-and-outs from the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the whole province. 28 24 Montpellier en 1768, 86. 25 C 5955. Using a coefficient of five for the two parishes in which the actual number of indigents is given in terms of families rather than individuals, the estimates amount to some 13,085 indigents in the four parishes of a city whose population was generally reckoned to be 33,000. 26 L. Dermigny in P. Wolff (ed.), 1967, 434. 27 J.J. Rousseau, Correspondancecomplete, vol. I, 1730-1744, edited by R. A. Leigh, Geneva, 1965, 61. 28 J.A. Amelin, op. tit., 213; A. Tandon, Fables, contes et autrespieces en verspatois de Montpellier, 2nd edn, Montpellier, 1813, 175f.
Montpellier and its region
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The Estates themselves, prompted by the seasonal sight of impoverished and motley hordes, provided an object lesson in formal beneficence by earmarking sums for distribution to the hospitals, charities and mendicant orders of the city and province. As the Ancien Regime drew to a close, however, such gestures recalling a corporate sense of responsibility for the needy seemed increasingly ritualistic and obsolete. More significant was the anxiety which beset Montpellier's over-worked Bureau de Police at the growing difficulty of maintaining social discipline among the paupers, beggars, vagrants and petty criminals attracted magnetically to the city by the presence of the regional elite. Problems of policing, administration and control were particularly severe in a region in which intense localism had always constituted a perennial constraint on the exercise of regional or national authority. In Languedoc, the esprit de clocher was less a psychological aberration than an inherited, almost genetic trait. Age-old geographical and cultural influences in a Mediterranean region in which the longue dureewas a potent factor had helped form distinct local identities. An important cultural boundary, for example, could be traced along a line roughly following the valley of the river Herault. The eastern and western halves of the future Herault department on either side of this line — which may even correspond to the boundary between the tribes of the Tectosages and Areconici whom the Romans had found inhabiting the region when they first invaded - were to be found on opposing sides in almost every significant historical occurrence from the Albigensian crusade to the spread of Protestantism and the Wars of Religion and beyond. 29 The framework provided by the Ancien Regime dioceses was also most significant in the expression of distinct local identities. The dioceses of Montpellier, Beziers, Agde and Lodeye, for example, corresponded surprisingly closely with Gallo-Roman civitates and pagi — Magalonensis, Biterrensis, Agadensis and Lutovensis. The diocese comprised the most important administrative and cultural unit of Ancien Regime Languedoc, and in many respects it may not be exaggerated to say that the Estates was simply a federation of dioceses. There was, significantly, a close correlation between the boundaries of religious and civil dioceses into which the bulk of local administration was broken down. Languedoc's bench of bishops, moreover, played a leading role in the Estates and their voices were respectfully listened to in debate. Public figures such as Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse from 1763 and the future principal 29 Geographie generate du departement de I'Herault, 3 vols., published under the auspices of the Societe languedocienne de geographie, Montpellier, 1891. The division is still observable today: it marks, for example, the eastern frontier of the rugby-playing Herault! G. Cholvy, Geographie religieuse de I'Herault contemporain, Paris, 1968, 30.
24
The setting
minister of Louis XVI, cut their political teeth in the sessions of the Estates. Xes Etats de Languedoc sont episcopaux', quipped the Marquis d'Argenson in 1740, 30 while Saint-Priest, Languedoc's Intendant from 1750 to 1786, sardonically characterised his position within the province as that of *un homme isole qui fait en quelque sorte la chouette a vingt-trois eveques et a leurs adherents'. 31 The Archbishop of Narbonne was ex officio chairman of the Estates. Bishops headed the special commissions in which most of the business of the body was done. They also chaired the diocesan assemblies (assiettes), held one month after the Estates, in which the designated tax load was subdivided among communities. There was in addition a host of other matters over which the bishops were in almost complete control within their dioceses. The Intendant had far less leeway in certain aspects of education and poor relief, for example, than was the case in the pays dfelection. Indeed, even the Estates themselves, aware of the sensibilities of local bishops in such spheres, eschewed more than a hortatory role. Below the level of the diocese, the village community, the base unit of social life, was also the focus of fierce loyalties which made its management from above a far from simple task. 32 Unlike northern France, where only the larger communities had their own corporate organisations, every one of Languedoc's 2,500 communities had its own elected or appointed officials, normally called consuls, and its own assembly of inhabitants. Despite insistent efforts from the late seventeenth century to reduce the representative aspect of local assemblies, they were less effectively subordinated to the wishes of the constituted authorities than was the case elsewhere. Feelings of local identity at village level were accentuated by a variety of additional factors: by the frequent correlation between communities and parishes; by extensive kinship networks in many localities in which tout le monde etait cousin and where the spirit of the nuclear family had been slow to seep, and by the fact that the majority of communities took the form of nucleated villages. Moreover, the presence of a wider range of social classes in the numerous bourgs and 'urbanised villages' of the coastal plain than was normally found outside towns also encouraged a strong corporate sense.33 The couple of dozen or couple of hundred households which composed 30 Cited in A. Babeau, La Province sous I'Ancien Regime, 2 vols., Paris, 1894, i. 28. 31 Cited in L. Dutil, 1911, 47. 32 On the Languedoc village community, see in particular G. Freche, Toulouse et la region Midi-Pyrenees au siecle des lumieres, vers 1670-1789, Paris, 1974, 3 9 7 - 4 3 7 ; and Y. Castan, Honnetete et relations sociales en Languedoc, 1715—1780, Paris, 1974. For some comparisons with Bas Languedoc, G. Fournier, 'Communautes rurales en Bas Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle', in D. Fabre and J. Lacroix (eds.), Communautes du sud, 2 vols., Paris, 1975, ii, 327—61. 33 Although villages in the mountainous areas, and notably in the Saint-Ponais, were often dispersed settlements, the large 'urbanised village' was very common in this region, as in Basse-Provence. Cf. M. Agulhon, 'La Notion de village en Basse-Provence vers la fin de I'Ancien Regime', C.N.S.S., 1966.
Montpellier and its region
25
the Bas Languedoc village seemingly defined the limits of the peasantry's moral community. Despite the general tolerance of the wandering pauper, the stranger was still viewed with initial suspicion as an outsider, and might be considered an enemy. The Franchiman — the individual from northern France who could neither speak nor understand the occitanian patois — was a celebrated figure of mistrust. 34 The mountain-dwelling gavach too — the Irishman of Bas Languedoc — upon whose peregrinations the economy of the plain so much depended, was the butt of the humour and sometimes of the violence of the inhabitants of the plain. Even individuals from adjacent villages might be viewed in contemptuous light as creatures who scarcely merited acceptance as fellow members of the human species. The traveller had only to stray a few miles from the gates of Montpellier, for example, to find himself in the thick of villages allegedly populated by cuckolds ('lous coucuts') caterpillar-eaters ('lous mangatoros'), mosquito-eaters Clous manga-mouissals'), pimps Clous macarels'), ne'er-do-wells ('lous acabaires'), misers ('lous ladres'), bare-feet ('lous peses descaous'), scared folk ('lous espourats'), bald-heads ('lous plumats') and idiots ('lous cabours'). 35 The converse of this hostility towards outsiders was a deep local patriotism. Religious ceremonies and family rejoicings could become the expression or affirmation of shared communal values. The village jeunesse — unmarried adolescents and young men - played an important part in this. They presided over festivities and on occasion acted as moral censor, employing ceremonies of ritualised violence such as charivaris against any individual who infringed the community's implicit code of behaviour. Often organised on pseudo-military lines under a cap de jouvent, they also defended their community's honour in gang fights against youths from neighbouring villages. 36 The material embodiment of local self-government was the assembly of inhabitants and the consuls. One of the most important functions of the latter was fiscal. Basing themselves on the cadastral surveys, or compoix, which they were periodically enjoined to revise, the officials split up the tax load imposed by the Estates of Languedoc. They watched over the communal budget, borrowing and lending in the community's name, ensuring the regular payment of income, paying out the honorariums of 34 Abbe Boissier de Sauvages, Dktionnaire languedorien-frangais, ou Choix des mots lesplus difficiles a rendre en frangais, Nimes, 1756, 217, 290. 35 The inhabitants of the villages within the diocese of Montpellier of Cournonsec, Baillargues, Lattes, Laverune, Castelnau, Saint-Bres, Palavas, Saint-Drezery, Valergues, and Saint-Vincent-deBarbeyrargues respectively. Cited in C. Seignolle, Le Folklore du Languedoc (Gard, Herault, Lozere), Paris, I960, 74—9. The nicknames are undated, but may be presumed to be of long standing. 36 For the jeunesse, seeD. FabreandJ. Lacroix, La Vie quotidienne des paysans du Languedoc au XI Xe siecle, Paris, 1973, 157—71 and passim. Cf. the information relating to the diocese of Lodeve, evidently collected by E. Appolis, in C. Seignolle, I960, esp. 8 3 - 9 and 163-7.
26
The setting
salaried communal officials who might range from the schoolmaster, doctor or surgeon to the gatekeeper or street-sweeper. They usually had general rights of supervision over facilities and institutions shared by the community too, where these existed: a school, for example, a hospital, a bureau de charite or a wine-press; and over important matters of economic policy, choosing the dates on which to start harvesting or grape-picking, for example, or supervising communal rights such as grazing rights on private property. Distrust of outsiders, shared social values and a vigorous communal life did not preclude the possibility of bitter dissensions within communities — disagreements whose number and intensity seemed, moreover, to be increasing. Disputes often followed the Vertical' lines of clientage patterns. A great many Mediterranean villages appear to have been run by, or competed for between, local mafias which drew their leaders from the local bourgeoisie and their followers from the rest of the rural population. Frequent changes in government legislation relating to local government particularly after 175037 — provided a fruitful terrain for all kinds of clan struggles and intra-communal wrangling in this sort of group; and indeed the Revolution was often to derive at least part of its local significance from the alternation of power among such cliques. Local disputes might alternatively be on the more conventional lines of class, thus mirroring the highly pyramidical social structure which characterised most villages. Communities of any substance comprised three distinct social levels. At the apex of rural society were the occasional residential noble, the 'Ancien Regime bourgeois' (that is, the untitled individual living in leisured style and aping the mores of the nobility) and members of the more prestigious liberal professions (notaries, doctors, lawyers and the like). Although they represented scarcely a couple of per cent of the total rural population, this group was probably more widely spread in the 'urbanised villages' of Bas Languedoc than in most non-urban areas of northern France and owned a disproportionately large amount of the land. Below the level of the bourgeoisie, a second, broader stratum of rural society was composed of the economically independent peasantry — that is, peasants whose holdings were substantial enough to feed themselves and their families.38 The importance of this group varied enormously in time and place. One-fifth or more of the inhabitants of some of the rich terroirs on the plain might fall into this category, while in the more disinherited areas, only a tiny number of individuals — if any — could be said to do so. 37 Cf. M. Bordes, 'La Reforme municipale du Controleur-general Laverdy et son application dans certaines provinces', R.H.M.C., 1965; and id., Xe Rachat des offices municipaux en Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle', Ann. du Midi, 1968. 38 For the criterion of economic independence, see the lucid exposition of P. Goubert, 1973, 113—15.
Montpellier and its region
27
Moreover, the aftermath of any collective disaster could drastically reduce their numbers. This was particularly important in that the climate was more extreme, and human means of control much less effective, than in the twentieth century. The river Vidourle in the diocese of Montpellier, to take a random example, burst its banks and caused extensive damage to neighbouring fields on no fewer than sixteen occasions in the course of the eighteenth century. 39 Three-quarters to four-fifths of the rural community - and sometimes more — were economically dependent: that is, they did not possess sufficient land from which in normal times they could feed themselves and their families. Their exact status, occupation and legal position varied. They included a number of artisans as well as individuals working part-time or full-time in rural industry. Among the peasantry, there were those who owned their own lands, those who held it under a variety of forms of tenure (fermage, metayage), those who worked the land under the orders of a wealthy owner (mattres-valets), and finally a very substantial group of agricultural day-labourers (travailleurs de terre or brassiers) who owned no land, or very little. The fact that some peasants possessed land and others did not was not in itself an important social or economic criterion. In the Midi, property often represented not wealth but sweat and effort.40 It was relatively easy, for example, for day-labourers in many communes to carve out an assart from the extensive commons, and very little initial capital was needed to plant it in rye or vines. What was required, however, was unremitting labour to bully the usually barren or semi-fertile soil into regularly supporting a crop. What gave the poorer members of the rural community a sense of a shared purpose and destiny was not lack of property but rather their dependence on the condition of the labour-market and the cerealsmarket. This widespread economic dependence - and the tensions and resentments which it inevitably engendered — was a further facet of local social life which the casual observer, dazzled as Arthur Young had been by the glittering wealth of Montpellier or by the enthusiastic and harmonious atmosphere of harvest-home, could easily miss. Initial appearances were misleading in this Bas Languedoc of contrasts and obscurities which did not willingly offer up its secrets. The region's prosperity was not a chimera, but it was a facade. Beneath the polished veneer lay critical, long-enduring social realities of sombre hue: the endless give-and-take between plain and 39 M. Daumas, 'LeLunellois', B.S.L.G., 195land 1952, 221. Cf. J. Segondy, Umanciennechatellenie royale du Saint-Ponais. Cessenon-sur-Orb. La seigneurie — la c&mmunaute — le consulat — la paroisse,
Montpellier, 1949, 57ff: the river Orb at Cessenon flooded causing extensive damage on twelve occasions in the eighteenth century. For comparisons with the climate in the present century, cf. E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 17-49. 40 J. Sion, 'Sur la structure agraire de la France mediterraneenne', B.S.L.G., 193-7, 124.
28
The setting
mountain; the gaping social divisions of urban social life; the wildly uneven distribution of wealth, hardship and employment opportunities; local class tensions and struggles; the introverted face of communal life; the complex interplay of coteries, clans and regional identities. All in their different ways imparted a particular Languedocian rhythm to the quickening pulse of social and economic developments in the course of the eighteenth century.
to^to^
The eighteenth-century problem of poverty
The problem of poverty was perhaps the most serious social question which faced Enlightenment France. The countless memoires, treatises and projects, the debates and polemics, the pamphlets and brochures, the occasional writings and reflections of social critics and the opponents of the established church, the moralising sermons and homilies of anxious ecclesiastics, the piecemeal reforms sometimes adopted by municipal and provincial authorities, the plans dabbled with and increasingly espoused by the central government, all in their different ways bore witness to an underlying conviction that poverty was a distemper which led on ineluctably to begging, vice and crime and which no society which was humane, economically sound or socially cohesive could tolerate.* This epiphenomenon in the history of mentalites may be largely ascribed to the course of French social development in the eighteenth century. Up to the seventeenth century, mortality crises, normally associated with any one or a combination of the three 'Malthusian' checks on population growth — war, famine, disease — had decimated the population frequently enough to keep its size in proportion to the available economic resources: roughly speaking, at around 18 to 20 millions from the late medieval period. In the eighteenth century, however, as war was 'tamed' and was increasingly conducted away from French territory, as plague died out and as famine receded, these crises became fewer and further apart, bit less deeply - and thereby lost their pristine role as demographic regulator. Hunger and epidemic disease were still prevalent, of course; but they now despatched people to their beds rather than to the tomb. 2 How else could France's population have grown from about 20 millions in 1700 to 26 millions on the eve of the Revolution? For the national economy did not match 1 Camille Bloch's unsurpassed UAssistance et I'Etat en France a la veille de la Revolution (Generalites de Paris, Rouen, Alengon, Chalons, Soissons, Amiens), 1764—1790, Paris, 1908, is an invaluable vade mecum to this complex of texts. 2 The latter remark is adapted from a comment of E. Le Roy Ladurie in G. Duby and H. Wallon (eds.), 1975, 366.
29
30
The setting
demographic rates of growth. French capitalism made real advances in the course of the century; but the gap between population rise and economic growth probably increased as the century wore on. Larger numbers of French men and women found themselves having to compete for relatively scanty economic resources: this was the Enlightenment's problem of poverty in a nutshell. 3 The equation which led remorselessly towards mass pauperisation on the national level was, it is true, rather more nuanced within Bas Languedoc. Rates of population expansion were not startling here, for example. They were almost certainly lower than the 45 to 55 per cent growth which Haut Languedoc experienced between 1700 and 1789 and probably lower than the 30 per cent national increase. 4 The economic growth which the region witnessed over the same period was, in contrast, impressive. Profits boomed and the other indices of economic activity were unmistakably, and often triumphantly, in the ascendant. The value of goods passing through the international trade fair at Beaucaire, for example, rose dramatically over the course of the century, a sure sign of the expansion of Languedoc's exports. Traffic on both the Canal du Midi and, at a humbler level, the Canal de Lunel also flourished.5 There was an often spectacular rise in industrial output. The silk industry entered upon a period of great prosperity after the Seven Years War. The production of woollen cloths for export to the Levant and for uniforms for the French army also advanced by leaps and bounds. Even this was eclipsed, however, by the meteoric rise from the middle of the century of the cotton industry which in the space of a couple of decades made some of the largest fortunes in Languedoc. Minor industries too showed great powers of expansion: coal and minerals began to be exploited on a capitalistic footing towards the end of the Ancien Regime, 3 The general pattern of demographic development outlined here is ably expounded in M.W. Flinn, 'The stabilisation of mortality in pre-industrial western Europe',/. Eur. Ec. Hist., \9lA. For the relationship between demographic and economic development, cf. the relevant sections of F. Braudel and C.E. Labrousse (eds.), 1970; and M. Morineau, Les Faux-semblants dun demarrage economique: agriculture et demographie en France au XVllle siecle, Paris,. 1970. Olwen Hufton has demonstrated
the ramifications of this form of development for the poorer sections of society (O. Hufton, 1974). 4 The study of the population of Bas Languedoc in the eighteenth century is largely terra incognita apart from a number of valuable village monographs. From his study of Haut Languedoc, G. Freche has shown that aggregate material from the great provincial enquiries is wildly and erratically inaccurate, and may be used to demonstrate either a rise or afellin population over the course of the century. (G. FrSche, 'La Population du Languedoc et des intendances d'Auch, de Montauban et du Roussillon aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles', Population, 1971). No studies exist for Bas Languedoc utilising the demographic techniques employed by Freche in estimating the population growth of Haut Languedoc (G. Fre"che, 1974, 59). Prior to the appearance of Freche's thesis, L. Dermigny suggested the province's population grew from 1.3 millions in 1700 to 1.7 millions in 1789, a rise of 32.5 per cent. The figure for Bas Languedoc would have to be considerably lower than this if it were to accommodate Frdche's findings for Haut Languedoc. 5 Graph showing value of goods at the Beaucaire fair in P. Wolff (ed.), 1967, 411; for the Canal du Midi, G. Freche, 1974, 632-7; and for the Canal de Lunel, P. Wolff (ed.), 1967, 411.
The eighteenth-century problem of poverty
31
while the chemical works which the Montpellier savant Chaptal — the future Minister of the Interior- established in the suburbs of Montpellier in 1781 was among the first such factories in the whole of France. Although many of the factors which contributed towards pauperisation at the national level certainly applied here, it was less the sluggardliness of the regional economy than the fatal unevenness of what development was achieved, and the capitalist form which it took, which contributed most towards Bas Languedoc's problem of poverty. The unevenness of economic growth in the region was something of an Achilles' heel. Most progress was made in trade and industry. The traditional subsistence base of the local economy remained relatively stagnant and Bas Languedoc remained well into the nineteenth century the home of archaic agricultural techniques and dishearteningly low cereal yields. 6 What development there was lay in the extension of cash crops: above all, the vine, which already by 1789 was cutting deep swathes into the lowland terroirs of the dioceses of Agde, Beziers and Montpellier. This element of agricultural diversification was encouraged by the changing pattern of land-ownership. For most of the eighteenth century, the general direction of land-ownership was towards greater concentration, particularly in the hands of wealthy urban notables. 7 In a period of population growth, this meant an increase in the number of landless and of those with smallholdings too insubstantial on which to feed a family. It also produced a change in the conditions of land-ownership. After the 1730s the wealthy owners of big estates found themselves in an excellent position to profit from the increased demand for agricultural produce consequent on national population growth, on the increase in the size of towns and on better marketing conditions. After 1750, some began to introduce the more intensive farming techniques pioneered in England and the Low Countries. The exigencies of scientific farming, and a straightforward desire to raise production, led to an onslaught on various customary rights and practices, including grazing rights and the use of the commons. A series of decisions of the Parlement of Toulouse upholding the supposedly absolute rights of private property in such matters severely aggravated the plight of the more marginal members of the village community — the landless, the aged, the impoverished smallholders — who depended heavily on such rights for their livelihood.8 Even the recrudescence of small properties after 1770 failed to arrest the progress of 'agrarian individualism', since the increase in the number of landowners was achieved by the 6 E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 76ff.; M. Morineau, 1970, 59ff. 7 E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 567-81. 8 E. Appolis, 'La Question de la vaine pature en Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle', A.H.R.F., 1938;andM. Bloch, 'La Lutte pour l'individualisme agraire dans la France du XVIIIe siecle', Annales cthistoire economique et sociale, 1928.
32
The setting
further fragmentation of peasant smallholdings under demographic pressure rather than by a counter-attack on the big estates. In addition, smallholders often took advantage of the high price of wine and alcohol in the 1760s and 70s to plant vines rather than cereals. The same was true of the application of the royal edict of 1771 relating to land reclamation: the quality of the land brought under cultivation by the peasantry was often too poor to support cereals, and thus had to be planted in vines, faute de mieux.9
Improved communications also facilitated the progressive diversification of the economy of Languedoc. The propinquity of the sea and the availability of overseas foodstuffs in times of need had in the past saved the Montpellier region from the worst excesses of the crises of subsistence which had afflicted the population of many more land-locked areas elsewhere in France. In the eighteenth century better roads and - above all - the Canal du Midi now also allowed the swift and cheap transfer towards the coast of the grain surpluses from the excellent grainlands of the Toulouse region. Easier transportation thus promoted a greater division of labour on the regional scale — with Haut Languedoc specialising in grains, Bas Languedoc in cash crops and in manufacturing — and bid fair to make famine a thing of the past. 10 Only an extraordinary conjunction of political and economic circumstances — such as in 1795 and then again in 1811 and 1812 — would cause the reappearance of crises of subsistence on their former scale. The price which the growing population of Bas Languedoc paid for the diversification and specialisation of the regional economy was a greater dependence on the state of the market. A larger proportion of peasant families than ever before — to say nothing of the expanding urban population — did not produce enough of their staple foodstuffs to feed themselves. Many peasants now bought some or all of their food with the income which they earned from marketing their cash crops; others from their own or their family's wages from rural industry or from agricultural labour performed for better-off farmers;, others from a combination of these sources of income. The economic dependence of the wage-earner was all the more serious in that the real value of wages over the last half century or more of the Ancien Regime was in decline. Wages simply could not keep pace with the rise in the price of meteil, the mixture of wheat and rye which composed the daily bread of the inhabitants of the plain. The mean price of a local setter of meteil on the important regional market at Beziers in 1740 9 A. Soboul, Les Campagnes montpellieraines a la fin de I'Ancien Regime. Propriete et cultures dapres les compoix, Paris, 1958, 72. 10 For the progressive regional division of labour, see especially P. Wolff (ed.), 1967, 398ff.; G. Freche, 1974, 763ff.; and G. Gangneux, Economie et societe en France meridionale, XVIIe—XVIIIe siecles. Les Grands Prieures de Saint-Gilles et de Toulouse de I'Ordre de Malte, 2 vols., Lille, 1973, ii,
849-50.
The eighteenth-century problem of poverty
33
= no data
15
10
1i
AAA
5
1720
/
\JV
A/ \AA^\j^jl vy
i
i
i
1
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-L
30
40
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60
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80
90
1800
10
Graph 1 The price of meteil on the Beziers market, 1720—1813
and 1741 was 6 Iivres 10 sols; in 1785 and 1786 it was 9 Iivres 8 sols — z. rise of some 43.1 per cent. 11 Between the same years, the daily wage of a building-worker in the Montpellier area rose from 30 to 40 sols, and that of an agricultural day-labourer from 20 to 24 sols — a rise of 33.3 and 20.0 per cent respectively.12 The worsening plight of the wage-earner's family over this period is well illustrated in the light of the general assumption that each consumer each year ate bread equivalent to five local setiers of meteil.13 In 1740 and 1741, the building-worker would have to spend 42.1 per cent of his estimated annual income14 on grain to feed himself, his wife and three children. In 1785 and 1786, he would have to spend 46.4 per cent of his income to purchase as much. The situation of the agricultural day-labourer 11 Graph 1. Source: A.M. Beziers HH 4, HH 5: weekly or fortnightly market prices. The graph is based on the arithmetic mean of all September and October readings. The price of meteil rarely figures in price series drawn up by historians on the grounds that the exact proportions of the two grains, rye and wheat, of which it is composed are rarely known and may alter. (See for example G. and G. Freche, Les Prix des grains, des vins et des legumes a Toulouse
(1486-1868), Paris, 1967, 8). While these points have their force, the fact remains that all the evidence agrees that meteil was the foodstuff of the common people. From the point of view of the poor as consumers, therefore, the price retains its usefulness. Finally, it should be noted that the price of grain on the Beziers market was taken as the yardstick for price fixing on all other local markets, including that of Montpellier (A.M. Montpellier HH [unclassified documents]). 12 Wage-rates based on figures in the accounts of the Chapitre Saint-Pierre of Montpellier. For building-workers in Montpellier: G 3105, G 3111 (1740 and 1741), G 3412, G 3413, G 3418, G 3420 (1785 and 1786). For agricultural workers, for work performed at the chapter's domain of Aresquiers near Vic in the diocese of Montpellier: G 3105, G 3111 (1740 and 1741); G 3412, G 3418 (1785 and 1786). For comparative materials, cf. E. Deshours-Farel, 'Notes et renseignements agricoles sur l'exploitation d'un domaine aux environs de Montpellier pendant le XVIIIe siecle', Bulletin de la Societecentrale d? agriculture et des cornices agricoles du departement de I'Herault,
1865, 89ff.; and D. Zolla, 'Des variations du revenu et du prix des terres en France au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siecle', Annales de I'Ecole libre des sciences politiques, 1894, 209, 423ff., 429. 13 A.M. Montpellier HH (unclassified documents). 14 The working year, once account has been taken of Sundays, religious holidays, etc., has been calculated to have consisted of 254 days. G.Rude, The Crowd in the French Revolution, Oxford, 1959, 251. The working year of an agricultural labourer would be even shorter owing to lay-offs, above all in the winter months.
34
The setting
was worse; the proportion of his annual income which went on grain rose from 63.2 to 77.4 per cent. Even so, he was probably not as badly off as manual workers elsewhere in France, nor as workers in rural industry in the region. Clermont weavers, for example, experienced no rise at all in their daily wage from 1720 to 1791! 15 These artificial calculations do not register the full gravity of the position of the wage-earner over the last decades of the Ancien Regime. Quite apart from the problems which the increasingly and jaggedly ascendant rise in the price of bread brought the local consumer, a series of economic crises and business failures in all aspects of the regional economy caused a reduction in general levels of prosperity. Over-planting in vines, for example, produced a glut of wine on the national market which brought prices tumbling down between 1779 and 1787 and bankrupted many of those peasants who had come to rely on their sales of wines and alcohol.16 The animal distemper of 1774 which killed one-fifth of the livestock of Languedoc and Gascony also had an adverse effect on local agriculture. 17 So too did the bad winters of 1766, 1768, 1776, 1782, and in particular 1789 which caused the loss of the olive crop and killed many olive trees. Difficulties in the agrarian sector of the economy coincided with — and aggravated — those in the commercial and industrial sectors. Much of the woollen-cloth industry, for example, was in decline from the middle of the 1760s — most notably the important branch which worked for the export market in the Levant, where French goods were being outstripped both in price and quality by English manufactures. The tale was much the same with the silk industry: the closure of the Spanish and Spanish-American markets after 1778 along with changes in fashion which set a premium on a type of fine silk manufactured in neither Nimes nor Ganges produced a number of substantial business failures. The agricultural crisis of the late 1780s was also important in causing a slump in demand for manufactured goods which led in turn to lay-offs and a generalised crisis in all branches of local industry. The worsening living standards of a substantial section of the population over the course of the eighteenth century may have led to increased vulnerability to disease by reducing the capacity of hunger-stricken and poorly nourished bodily organisms to resist infection. The apparently growing use of garlic, aubergines and rotting salt fish as staple ingredients of the popular diet in place of bread augured ill for the indigent population's 15 For information on Clermont weavers J.P. Bobo, 'Une communaute languedocienne au XVIIIe siecle. Clermont l'Herault (Etude sociale)',unpublished memoire de mattrise, Montpellier, Lettres, 1965, 202. The Bas Languedoc plain and in particular Montpellier and its immediate environs still constituted a high-wage area at the end of the Ancien Regime. Cf. L. Dutil, 1911, 83f.; G. Freche, 1974, 554ff.; and Amoreux, 1789, manuscript cited. 16 C.E. Labrousse, La Crise de I' economie frangaise a la fin de I'Ancien Regime et au debut de la Revolution, Paris, 1944, 336f.; L. Dermigny, 'Le Prix du vin en Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle', Ann. du Midi, 1964. 17 E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 121.
The eighteenth-century problem of poverty
35
general nourishment. 18 Bas Languedoc in any case had a reputation for unhealthiness, much of it due to the virtual absence of all but the most elementary forms of sanitation. 19 The word hygiene had no exact occitanian equivalent, and poverty combined with neglect to give civilisation here its own characteristic stench. Dung-heaps, proudly defended as sources of invaluable fertiliser, abounded in the midst of human habitation; rotting debris and refuse left untended threatened to contaminate water supplies; houses were ill-protected against climatic extremes; rooms in town and country alike were dank, humid and filled with fetid odours; sleeping quarters were shared with, farm animals; parents and children crammed together into the same lice-ridden beds; and personal cleanliness was neglected to the point that the area became one of the worst in the whole of France for skin disease.20 Such conditions formed a favourable context for the spread of disease which the heat of high summer aggravated. Local doctors counted the months from July to October as the period in which their services were most in demand, and when the hospitals had their annual maxima of admissions. 21 Particularly deadly were the malariabearing mosquitoes which flourished in the lagoons and swamps that bordered the Mediterranean from beyond Narbonne to Aigues-Mortes and which were responsible for the annual hecatombs which struck many littoral villages and reduced the inhabitants of the coast to a condition of apathetic languor. Malaria was also one of the epidemic diseases which, along with typhus, typhoid fever, smallpox, scarlet fever and several others, periodically afflicted the inland towns. Montpellier, for example, was stricken by no fewer than five major epidemics in the last quarter-century of the Ancien Regime. 22 Epidemic disease, combined with poor hygiene and the summer heat, made the risks to the lives of infants horrifyingly high. Even mountain areas were not safe from the diseases of the coast: seasonal 18 Amoreux, 'Memoire sur la topographie medicale de Montpellier et de son territoire', 1779, manuscript, B.M. Montpellier, fo. 11. Cf. E. Appolis, 'L'Alimentation des classes pauvres dans un diocese languedocienau XVIlie siecle'. C.N.S.S., 1971, 55ff.;andF. BaqueandA. Rouquette, Un village du littoralau cours des siecles. Bouzigues des origines a 1914. Saint-Pons, no date (= I960?), 205. 19 The doctors' reports on local epidemics under the First Empire collected in 89 M 1 can be taken as providing a picture of hygiene and sanitation which holds good for the Ancien Regime. Also informative are the numerous medical topographies of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, some of which are listed in the bibliography. 20 See previous note. For the high incidence of skin ailments among army conscripts from the department in the 1820s, seeM. Demonet, P. DumontandE. LeRoy Ladurie, 'Anthropologie de la jeunesse masculine en France au niveau d'une cartographie cantonale (1819—1830)', Ann. E.S.C., 1976, 740, 742. 21 Graph 2. The hospitals of Montpellier and Marseillan are the only two institutions for which this information is available, with the exception of local hopitaux generaux, whose population of aged and infirm individuals and abandoned children make their admissions figures less susceptible to seasonal variations. 22 J.A. Mourgue, Essai de statistique, Paris, Year IX, 19 (epidemics in 1766, 1770, 1774, 1778, 1783). Cf. the heavily indented graph of deaths in the city in P. Wolff (ed.), 1967, 382.
36
The setting
M
Graph 2 Monthly admissions to two Bas Languedoc hospitals (Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi, Montpellier, and Marseillan Hospital) in the eighteenth century Sources: for Montpellier, HD I F 2, F 3, F 11 (sample years 1741, 1742, 1777, 1778); for Marseillan, HS Hop Marseil 45 (sample years 1772, 1773 and 1774) Presentation: in both cases, 100 — arithmetic mean of monthly admissions. For Montpellier, 100 = 1067; for Marseillan, 100 = 21.8 migrants from the mountains were apt to return home after the harvest had been gathered in only to languish and die from fevers acquired on the plain. No surer sign of the importance of nutrition in resisting infection was the axiomatic assumption that the poor always suffered more from epidemic disease than the rich. Indeed, it was considered a datum requiring detailed explanation if disease were not socially selective. Poverty in Bas Languedoc was not merely then something which observed the contour lines dividing mountain from plain; nor was it solely the perennial problem of need located in the faubourgs and workers' quarters of every Mediterranean city. As well as this, poverty was also a product of fundamental changes in local society and economy. The new social order emerging slowly over the course of the eighteenth century secreted profit; but it also secreted need — and a need which grew apace as the century wore on. The consequences, moreover, were dangerous in that if hunger and poverty bred disease, they also nurtured discontent. 23 The last decades of the Ancien Regime were to witness the articulation of a whole complex of popular resentments. The period was punctuated, for example, by bread and grain riots, most notably in 1747 and 1748, in 1773 and 1774 23 H. Bourderon, 'Recherches sur les mouvements populaires dans la generalite de Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle', C.N.S.S., 1953; id., 'La Lutte contre la vie chere dans la generalite de Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle', Ann. du Midi, 1954; J.C. Nicod, 'Les Seditieux en Languedoc a la veille de la Revolution', unpublished memoire de maitrise, Montpellier, Law, 1969; id., 'Les "Seditieux" en Languedoc a la fin du XVIIIe siecle', in Droit penale et societe meridionale sous I'Ancien Regime, S.H.D.I.A.D.E., 1971; M. Sonenscher, 'La Revoke des masques armes en 1783 en Vivarais', Vivarais et Languedoc. 54e C.F.H.L.M.R., 1972; N . Castan, 'La Justice expeditive', Ann. E.S.C., 1976; id., Justice et repression en Languedoc a I'epoque des lumieres, Paris, 1980.
The eighteenth-century problem of poverty
37
and, not least, in 1789. Social tension was also in evidence in the waves of popular crime and collective violence which cropped up — especially in the 1780s — in many cities and in the mountainous hinterland, where the forces of law and order were at one point stretched to the limit by the revolt of the masques armes.
To a certain extent these outbreaks of crime and social disorder may be viewed as 'coping mechanisms' employed by those sections of the population most exposed to sufferings caused by the vagaries of wider social developments. Theft, petty crime, 'collective bargaining by riot', begging, prostitution were all methods by which the poor could 'make out', could thread their way through the thickening jungle of capitalist social relations and material need. 24 Many of the local poor's 'hate figures' were 'outsiders' associated with the wider developments: grain merchants and corn factors anxious to make huge profits by satisfying the ravenous appetites of the towns or by utilising transport improvements to profit from national price disparities; bourgeois stewards brought in to manage the estates of absentee landlords; urban notables entering the land-market in earnest and thereby disrupting established patterns of landholding; 'improving' landlords brimful of the agronomic theories so fashionable in Paris. Significantly, however, the targets of protest and resentment also included figures in the social landscape closer to home: namely, seigneurs and clergy. There was a strong tradition in this area of these local dignitaries performing charitable functions which might offset external pressures on the poor. As the sub-delegate of the Montpellier diocese noted of localities where there existed no formal structures of relief: 'il est vraysemblable que dans le cas ou il se trouve quelque pauvre qui ne peut se passer de secours, c'est le prieur ou le seigneur du lieu qui y pourvoit'. 25 Yet the functions of aid and protection which such individuals afforded must have been on the decline, for it was they who often bore the brunt of the local population's hostility and resentment. The burden of what the Revolutionaries were to label 'feudalism' weighed far. less heavily in the Montpellier region than in many areas to the north. 26 The existence of Roman law in the Midi, first, made the area one of those in which written proof was necessary before a seigneur could claim rights over a contested piece of land. Second, the extent of noble land-ownership was diluted by the presence of strong urban patriciateswhose properties diminished the more archaic aspects of 'feudal' landholding. Third, Languedoc was a pays de taille reelle, in which both noble and 24 This is very much the central theme of O. Hufton, 1974. 25 C 5957. 26 On the limited importance of'feudalism' in this region, see the classic works of E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966; G. Freche, 1974; A. Soboul, 1958; and E. Appolis, Unpays languedocien au milieu du XVIIIe sikle. Le diocese civil de Lodeve. Etude administrative et economique, Albi, 1951.
38
The setting
commoner were obliged to pay taxes on any non-privileged land which they possessed. Fourth, the precocious commutation of feudal dues into cash and the 'price revolution* of the sixteenth century had massively reduced the real value of many dues. Fifth, the existence of strong and independently minded village communities acted as a counterweight to seigneurial domination. Indeed some erstwhile seigneurial rights had been purchased by communities, who levied them in a relatively equitable manner. Sixth, important reserves of communal land — more than a fifth of the land surface in the diocese of Montpellier, for example - acted as a cushion against the distress of the poorer classes. As a result of these factors, seigneurial relations in the region lacked the tinge of violent animosity which coloured the atmosphere in many areas of northern France. Evidently, seigneurs had a direct and personal interest in the prosperity of the villages from which they obtained dues and rents. Very infrequently, however, did carefully nurtured charitable responsibilities on their part outweigh the hostility which their exactions aroused. In times of collective hardship, seigneurs might, it is true, make some conspicuous gesture of generosity. 27 They could also offer credit to the needy - although often only at usurious rates of interest. The death-bed wishes of seigneurs might include some provision for 'their' peasants. This happened increasingly rarely however. Most of the nobles and high officials who made wills in Montpellier in 1740 and 1741 would have owned seigneuries in the surrounding region. Yet only one-fifth of them made bequests to peasants living on them. In 1785 and 1786, moreover, none did so. 28 Ecclesiastical personnel and bodies were no more renowned for seigneurial charity than the laity. The great Jansenist Bishop Colbert of Montpellier, for example, was the generous promoter of the interests of the hopital general of his diocesan capital; yet he was a harsh, even rapacious landlord on his numerous estates, who gave very little away even under the guise of rural philanthropy. 29 And wages were as depressed on ecclesiastical estates as on lay ones. The relics of seigneurial power in the region were thus for the most part heartily detested. Seigneur-baiting was a popular leisure-time activity. A great deal of litigiousness, furthermore, opposed seigneurs on one hand and rural communities on the other over economic matters such as grazing rights and the enclosure of commons, and over political affairs, too, relating 27 See, for example, the philanthropic endeavours of the Marquise de Murs in the area around Notre-Dame-de-Londres in the diocese of Montpellier during the 1770s. C 563, C 5957. 28 Eight bequests from 41 wills in 1740 and 1741. For details on the use of wills, see below, Chapter 4, passim. Cf. too the complaints against the Marquis de Castries in Castelnau, cited in A. Villemagne, Plaquettes castelnwiennes. I. Le bureau de charite, Montpellier, 1913, 13. 29 V.Durand, Lejansenisme au XVIIIe siecle et Joachim Colbert de Montpellier (1696-1738),
1907, 5f.
Toulouse,
The eighteenth-century problem of poverty
39
to the amount of control a seigneur might exercise over the action of communal officials. The Parlement of Toulouse's determined stand on the side of the privileged classes in the last decade of the Ancien Regime only exacerbated the ill feeling occasioned by such questions. 30 The tithe was if anything an even more vexatious issue than seigneurial power. 31 Usually hovering at about one-twelfth of the gross agricultural product, its proceeds normally carted off in bulk to swell the storehouses of ecclesiastical dignitaries in the diocesan capitals, the tithe constituted in effect an urban levy on the countryside. Very little was funnelled back within the community to fulfil the tither's traditional obligations to maintain the local church, to pay the parish clergy and to provide poor relief. Popular opposition to the tithe - as towards seigneurial dues - was inflamed by the firm support which the Parlement of Toulouse gave the privileged parties in all pertinent disputes which came before it. Churchmen who fought for their tithes could only appear grasping. For while the living standards of the majority of the population dropped over the course of the century, the size and value of the tithe increased in massive proportions as a result of growth in production and perhaps also in productivity. 32 Furthermore, the sums which the tithers set aside to cover the various services they were supposed to provide the community were either forgotten about altogether or else were not allowed to grow as rapidly as the rise in tithe-income. Only 44 of the 106 parishes in the diocese of Montpellier received annual tithe-alms for the local poor at the end of the Ancien Regime, for example, and the sums involved rarely surpassed a couple of dozen livres.33 Indeed, tithers stubbornly refused to pay more, to the evident detriment of good will between the two parties. Towards the end of the Ancien Regime, the cathedral chapter of Saint-Pierre of Montpellier was paying out tithe-alms valued at just under a thousand livres — at a time when its gross annual receipts from tithes were not far removed from a quarter of a million livresl34 Although resentment of the tithe could be accompanied by a strong attachment to the local parish priest, the geography of nineteenth-century anti-clericalism was being roughly delineated in the period prior to the Revolution over such 30 For 'seigneur-baiting', O. Hufton, 'Attitudes towards authority in eighteenth-century Languedoc', Social History, 1978. Cf. G. Freche, 1974, 537f.; M. Bordes, 1965, 263. 31 Together with the main regional studies, see J. Goy and E. Le Roy Ladurie (eds.), Les Fluctuations du produit de la dime. Conjoncture decimale et dominiale de la fin du Moyen Age au XVIHe siecle, Paris, 1972. 32 For bitterness over the lack of tithe-alms in the diocese of Montpellier, on the part of the communities of Argelliers, Candillargues, Cournonterral, Frontignan, La Boissiere, Lunel, Montarnaud, Pignan, Poussan, Saint-Genies-de-Mourgue, Saint-Just, Saint-Nazaire, Saussan, Valergues and Villetelle, C 563, C5957. For the bourg Bouzigues in the diocese of Agde, F. Baque and A. Rouquette, I960?, 233f. 33 Table 1. 34 G 1889; E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 858.
40
The setting
Table 1. Alms given by tithe-owners to communities in the diocese ofMontpellier at the end of the Ancien Regime Amount (in litres)
Number of communities
0-9 10-19 20-29 30-39 40^9 50-59 60-69 70-79 unknown
2 7 6 7 7 5 4 1 5 44
Sources: C 561, C 5957
issues. 35 If ecclesiastical landholding was far from strong in the region, 36 the fact that many of the great tithers were also seigneurs doubtless amplified the rural population's hostility. The semi-literate consul of the village of Fleury caught the tone of angry resentment of many a Bas Languedoc community over the rapaciousness and insouciance of the local tither: son benefice qui ne l'oblige pas a dire un seul pater lui rapporte cependant annuellement trois mille livres, nest-il pas plus quetrange et a quoy pourrons nous lattribuer, que ce decimateur ne puisse pas payer une aumone annuelle de trente livres. Jeus lhonneur dy Ecrire l'annee derniere que nos pauvres en avoient grand besoin. Mais son procureur fonde qui me fit lhonneur de ne pas repondre se contenta de dire au porteur que M. le precempteur etoit parti pour paris avec cinquante louis dor qui etoient tout le reste de ses revenus et quainsi que ceux qui laissent a des chantres gages le soin de louer dieu, il avoit laisse le soin de faire l'aumone a ses fermiers. . . 37 The manner in which the monastic clergy fulfilled their traditional charitable responsibilities - as seigneurs and landlords, as tithe-owners and as the executors of religious and charitable foundations — was also the object 35 This is the conclusion of G. Cholvy in his doctoral thesis, Religion et societeau XlXesiecle. Le diocese de Montpellier, 2 vols., Lille, 1973, ii, 1,578. 36 The church owned only about 4 per cent of land in the future department of the Herault, a figure well below the national average. P. Cambon, La Vente des biens nationauxpendant la Revolution dans les districts de Beziers et de Saint- Pons, Montpellier, 1950; M. Gallix, La Vente des biens nationaux pendant la Revolution dans les districts de Montpellier et de Lodeve, Montpellier, 1948. 37 Cited b y G . FournierinD. FabreandJ. Lacroix(eds.), 1975, 335. Fleury is in the department of the Aude, bordering on the Herault.
The eighteenth-century problem of poverty
41
of acerbic lay criticism. The brilliant fortunes which many religious houses, like most privileged and propertied groups in the eighteenth century, amassed as a result of the long-term rise in food prices were seen as conflicting with the vows of holy poverty. This was particularly so in view of the shrinking number of monks and nuns: in 1696 there had been 972 inmates in the fifty-eight monasteries and convents of the future department of the Herault; in 1789, sixty-three institutions housed a mere 696 individuals and possessed an annual income little short of 400,000 livres.38 While the living conditions of the poor deteriorated, monks and nuns rarely went short of a good square meal. 39 The services which the regular clergy performed within the wider community showed little sign of increasing, moreover. On the contrary, monks and nuns were the target of accusations not only of scandalously unbecoming extravagance and general social inutility, but also of dishonesty, peculation and inefficiency in their management of charitable funds. The clandestinity in which they shrouded their activities struck the public authorities as both irritating and highly suspicious. Les distributions manuelles qui se font en argent, en pain ou en legumes aux portes des monasteres, [complained Saint-Priest, the Intendant of Languedoc following the 1770 enquiry into charitable resources] n'ont rien de fixe et dependent entierement de la volonte des superieurs ou de la misere plus ou moins grande des temps. On a fait tout ce qu'on a pu pour avoir des notions certaines ou par approximation sur cet objet mais on n'a pu y parvenir, la plupart des superieurs et superieures ayant repondu qu'ils n'avaient aucun compte a rendre attendu qu'ils n'avaient aucune obligation a remplir et que leurs dons etaient purement gratuits.40 A dispute in the 1750s involving the Benedictine house of Saint-Thibery in the diocese of Agde was highly revealing of the depth of feeling provoked by the monastic clergy and the nature of the issues involved in their un-cooperative administration of charities. 41 At a time when the nearby hospitals at Pezenas and Agde were in dire financial straits, and while the resident poor of Saint-Thibery went shamefully neglected, the Benedictines preferred to distribute their alms with little discrimination, and with no public accountability, to 'mendiants et pretres passants' who called at their 38 H. Creuze de Lesser, Statistique du department de I'Herault. Montpellier, 1824, 323f. 39 Cf. the remarks of Lefranc de Pompignan, Voyage de Languedoc et de Provence, The Hague, 1745, 7f. 40 C 563. Saint-Priest, the Intendant of Languedoc, was highly critical of the parsimoniousness of the province's clergy. Cf. F. Buchalet, L'Assistancepubliquea Toulouse au XVHIe siecle, Toulouse, 1904, 138. 41 C 5 51. For a similar dispute between the Benedictine abbey at Valmagne in the diocese of Beziers, 8 F 24, C 560. For other local disputes involving the regular clergy, C 5957 (monks of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert), and G. Cholvy. 'Le Legs religieux de l'Ancien Regime au departement de l'Herault', Ann. du Midi, 1973, 315ff. (Aniane, Quarante, Saint-Chinian, Saint-Genies-deMourgue, Saint-Pons).
42
The setting
door, bringing in their train hordes of professional vagrants and other undesirables. The charge of the Agde hospital board was frank and deeply felt: the Benedictine abbey had 'fait diminuer le patrimoine des pauvres tandis qu'ils ont un superflu immense'. 42 The angry resentment of the last remark illuminates the social tensions thrown up by worsening social pressures over the course of the eighteenth century. The gulf between rich and poor seemed to be getting deeper and wider. This caused acutely severe problems for the poor. As Olwen Hufton's studies have amply demonstrated, as the poor's demands for aid were progressively less listened to, they had to try to cope with their problems to the best of their ability and by whatever method lay close at hand. 43 More pertinent from the point of view of the present study, however, is the effect that social changes were having on the supply of aid and relief. Clearly, by the last decades of the Ancien Regime, the traditional informal mechanisms of assistance to the needy were rusting for lack of use. Monastic houses seemed no more willing than tithers and seigneurs to combat or offset the declining living standards which, as the eighteenth century unfolded, ever larger numbers of people were experiencing. Nor was the resultant shortage of charitable provision in the countryside appreciably altered by the activities of formal institutions of relief. As we shall see, the latter tended to be town-based and had problems which were severely reducing their capacity to aid either the rural or the urban poor. 42 C 551.
43 O. Hufton, 1974
PART II
The treatment of poverty under the Ancien Regime
*to^(r*to^
Poor relief in Montpellier and its region
Anciennement, il n'y avait presque point de petit lieu qui n'eut son hospice. Thus Saint-Priest, the Intendant of Languedoc, in 1753 drew the attention of the central government to the unevenness of the map of institutions of formal relief in Bas Languedoc.1 What had formerly been a dense network of hospitals had been eroded in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries by a variety of factors: civil dissension, the closure of leper-houses, the expropriation of Protestant charities, eventually aborted government plans to divert the resources of many small country hospitals to the military orders of Mont-Carmel and Saint-Lazare, and the pooling of the funds of many scattered charities so as to allow the creation of multi-purpose hopitaux generaux in the major cities. 2 The social and economic upheavals of the early modern period had also taken their toll. Furthermore, as a consequence of France's failure to develop anything like the compulsory poor-rate at parish level which characterised relief provision in England, religious almsgiving continued to be the major financial prop of all the local establishments. Inevitably, therefore, social structure and the distribution of wealth remained powerful influences on the availability of hospital care. The widespread presence of the bourgeoisie in the towns and 'urbanised villages' of the littoral meant that, in the normal course of events, charity there was more plentiful than in most upland communes, where the population was less socially differentiated and less prosperous. On the plain, a village with a population of 1,100 or 1,200 inhabitants might well have a hospital, and possibly other charitable institutions to boot. Even smaller villages, such as Montblanc, Le Pouget and Thezan in the diocese of Beziers, each with a population less than 800, had their own small hospitals. 3 In the mountains, in contrast, a community seemingly 1 C 566. 2 A summary of changes in hospital organisation in the seventeenth century may be found in F. Dissard, La Reformation des hopitaux et maladreries au XVIIe siecle, Paris, 1938. 3 Population figures in 1780 (C 6549): Montblanc, 705; Le Pouget, 705; Thezan, 790. The main exception to this lay in the Montpellierais, where the amalgamation of small hospitals in the seventeenth century had been exceptionally thorough.
45
46
Poverty under the And en Regime
needed 2,000 inhabitants before it could support a hospital. Some very substantial mountain villages such as Boussagues in the highland part of the diocese of Beziers, Saint-Andre in the diocese of Lodeve and Cessenon in the diocese of Saint-Pons, each with a population from about 1,500 to 2,000 inhabitants, did not contain a hospital. 4 Social and economic influences thus combined with historical and contingent factors to produce very marked geographical discrepancies in the availability of hospital care. Towards the end of the Ancien Regime, there existed one hospital bed for every hundred head of the population in the diocese of Montpellier. The situation in the other dioceses of the future department of the Herault ranged from about twice as bad (the diocese of Beziers) to more than six times worse (the diocese of Saint-Pons). The mountainous half of the region was much worse equipped than the more prosperous and more socially advanced lowland areas.5 Disparities between localities were just as pronounced in the case of funds available for home relief. Ancien Regime investigations showed that four-fifths and two-thirds of the communities of the dioceses of Agde and Montpellier respectively possessed charitable sums for distribution as home relief. At the other end of the scale, less than a third of the communities of the diocese of Lodeve did so. In virtually all cases, moreover, the sums involved were meagre in the extreme. 6 About two-thirds of those communities with funds possessed less than 100 livres, and in most the sum hovered between thirty and fifty livres. At the price levels of 1785 and 1786, fifty livres would have fed a family of five for less than three months. 7 The department of the Herault's replies to the enquiries of the Constituent Assembly's Comite de Mendicite in 1790 underlined the paucity of local funds for home relief. For every hundred head of population, there were only twenty-five livres available for distribution to the poor in their homes. Local variation ranged from thirty-five livres in the district of Montpellier to a mere sixteen livres in the district of Lodeve.8 Such figures are of course highly artificial. In practice, the meagre funds available tended to be spent not on keeping large numbers of individuals on the breadline, but rather on providing occasional — and usually deficient — subsidies to marginal members of the local community. 4 Population figures: Boussagues, 1,925 in 1789 (C 6549); Saint-Andre, 1,447 in 1788 (C 39); and Cessenon, 1,681 in 1801 (131 M 1). The bourg of Montpeyroux — population, 1,635 in 1761 (C 6554) — was the only mountain locality in the future department of the Herault with a population of less than 2,000 inhabitants which contained a hospital. 5 Map 4, Table 2. Cf. Appendix B. 6 Table 3. 7 Cf. above, page 33. 8 L 2972. The figures, by district, were as follows: Lodeve, 16.0; Beziers, 20.2; Saint-Pons, 22.1; Montpellier. 35.5. Overall: 24.6.
0
£\
30 km
1
1 -
c
Oo ('
••s
.) (.
f Map 4
o°
O
O c
o O °°o o
(
(799) _ J _ / ?*—^^
^ — ^
>
Hospitals and hospital capacity in the Montpellier region at the end of the ancien regime. * Sources: As Appendix B. Hospitals outside the Ancien Regime dioceses of Agde, Beziers, Lodeve, Montpellier and Saint-Pons but inside the boundaries of the future department of the H6rault
Hospitals with 6 beds or less Hospitals with 7-12 beds Hospitals with 13-25 beds Hospitals with 26—50 beds
Hospitals of Beziers (Hopital Mage, 67; Hopital Saint-Joseph, 160 beds; 227 beds)
Hospitals of Montpellier (Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi, 300 beds; Hopital General, 493 beds; Protestant hospital, 6 beds: 799 beds)
Table 2. The availability
of hospital care and home-relief funds in the Montpellier region at the end of the Ancien Regime Communities with home relief funds Com mnnifips
No.
Diocese Agde Beziers Lodeve Montp'r St-Pons
Popln
No.
communi- hospi- ties tals
34000 80000 40 000 81300 38 000
20 101
273 000
323
53 106 43
12
14 3
with hospitals no.
%
12
60.0 12.8
4
13 3 4 4
40
36
7
Hospital capacity
Head of popln per bed
9.3
176 324 72 826 63
193.2 246.9 555.6 98.4 603.2
11.1
1461
187.1
5.7 3.8
Bureaux de
charite
- Hospitals but no other reother sources funds
91
%
3
14
1
20
80.0 46.5 30.2 69.8 46.5
70
12
173
53.6
2
16 5 33
11
no.
47 16 74
11
26 38 5
Communities with some fnrm of relief
3 5
16
Sources: As Appendix B (NB details on institutions within the frontiers of the future department of the Herault but outside these dioceses are not included in the calculations)
49
Poor relief
Table 3. Amount of the charitable resources for home relief available in communities in the Montpellier region at the end of the Ancien Regime TOTAL
Amount (in livres)
0-49
50-99 100-149 150-199 200-249 250-499 500-999 1000-1999 2000 plus unknown
Dioc. Agde
Dioc. Montp'r
Dioc St-Pons
5 1 2 2
43
4 — — —
6
2 —
1 2 — — 1 1
5 2 1 — 1
42
16
71
Dioc. Beziers
4
20 8
1
3
—
3 — 2 1 2 — 13
1 2 1 1 — —
Dioc. Lodeve
18 1
4
5 3 —
No. 73
33 8 7 11 8
6
2 —
1 7 7
19
161
%
20.3 5.0
4.4 6.7 5.0 3.7 0.6
4.4 4.4 100.0
Source: As Appendix B.
In most cases, home-relief funds were in the hands of bodies variously called bureaux de charite, Charites or Misericordes. In practice there was a degree of overlap between these establishments and the hospitals: certain hospitals provided some outdoor relief; a substantial number of institutions which were called 'hopital' or 'hospice' had come to devote themselves entirely to home care; while on the other hand one or two 'bureaux de charite' in fact contained beds and offered hospitalisation to local indigents. 9 A few bureaux de charite dated back to the Middle Ages, but all had been regenerated, and a host of new creations established, during the religious revival of the seventeenth century. In 1689 and 1690, for example, the bishop of Montpellier had invited to conduct an extensive mission within his diocese two of the progenitors of the national network of hopitaux generaux, the Jesuit fathers, Chaurand and Guevarre. i0 As a result of their efforts, more than half the parishes within the diocese of Montpellier were endowed with bureaux de charite. In many localities, they were complemented by religious confraternities of lay-women, modelled on the Misericorde of Montpellier, in which well-off ladies from the city's social elite foregathered to engage in mutual spiritual 9 So-called 'hopitaux' confining themselves to the distribution of home relief at the end of the Ancien Regime included Servian and Thezan in the diocese of Beziers, C 567; Loupian in the diocese of Agde, Ball.; and Puisserguier in the diocese of Narbonne, C 561. 'Bureaux de charite' offering hospital care included those of Ganges in the diocese of Montpellier and Olargues in the diocese of Saint-Pons, Ball. 10 G 1353.
50
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
edification and the practice of good works. Both bureaux de charite and Misericordes were placed under the direct tutelage of the bishop who declared that their social mission was to be *le soulagement des pauvres et la decharge des mendiants'. The policing aspect of this task soon fell into abeyance. Financed mainly and often solely by the alms of local inhabitants — and thus keeping alive the spirit of the Edict of Blois of 1560 in which the king had declared that every parish had the obligation of succouring its poor — these institutions came to concern themselves primarily with the provision of home care to the local needy. They had their counterparts in all the Bas Languedoc dioceses. In one or two of the larger towns, nursing sisters from orders such as Saint Vincent de Paul's Filles de la Charite were brought in to assist in the operations of either the bureau de charite or the Misericorde.11 The ecclesiastical form of the Misericordes was not exceptional: despite the communal framework of their activities, the religious imprint lay heavy on all poor-relief institutions, as indeed one would expect of bodies so reliant on private almsgiving. In villages and small towns, the cure would often run the hospital or bureau de charite and would also probably keep a fatherly eye on the local Misericorde. In the case of larger institutions, royal letters patent or the royal declaration of 12 December 1698 on hospital administration normally fixed the composition of the boards which regulated their affairs. Local parish priests might find a place on such boards, but the latter's composition was very mixed. Their most prominent members were local dignitaries reflecting the varied interests of the community as a whole. The hopital general of Montpellier, for example, had six intendants appointed annually and by turns from the members of the Cour des Aides, the Bureau des Finances, the Presidial and the cathedral chapter of Saint-Pierre; twelve recteurs whose tenure was for two years and who were drawn from the city's major professional and corporate bodies; and six syndics perpetuels who, as their name suggests, served for life and brought a measure of continuity to deliberations. 12 This mixture of appointed and ex officio, lay and ecclesiastical, personnel was typical of the administrative boards of all hospitals of any size. Despite their mixed appearance, the religious element was often disproportionately strong. In keeping with his ancient role, reaffirmed by the post-Tridentine church, as pere des pauvres, the bishop was ex officio supervisor of all charitable 11 Saint Vincent de Paul'sfilksde la charitehaA been called in to help run Montpellier's Misericorde in the mid seventeenth century, Fonds Mis.; after 1765, they also ran the Charite at Agde, 8 F 112. Other nursing orders represented in the region included the Filles de la Charite de Saint Augustin (the Beziers Misericorde since 1688. . . . C 567); and the Filles de la Congregation de Nevers (Clermont's Oeuvre des Orphelines after 1782, HS Hop Cler III A 1). 12 HG I A 1.
Poor relief
51
institutions within his diocese.13 He could inspect the establishment, audit its accounts annually and chair all meetings either in person or else through a deputy. Such was his moral standing, that administrators often looked first to him when any major issues arose, and indeed even viewed unsolicited interest in their affairs by secular authorities as unwarranted interference in bodies enjoying ecclesiastical privilege. 14 The clerics, magistrates, professional men, bourgeois, financiers and merchants who occupied posts on the administrative boards of Montpellier's main poor-relief institutions constituted a broad cross-section of the city's social elite and collectively embodied management skills and financial acumen more than sufficient to ensure that the interests of the establishments were respected.15 The seemingly inexhaustible supply of prestigious individuals willing to assume such posts owed something to a sense of civic duty among the ruling elite, mixed with the air of distinction which such posts flattered and the occasional family tradition of service. There was also a strong element of religious motivation in membership. Administrators approached their task as an act of piety made in a spirit of altruism. As a gage of Christian humility, for example, all conventions of preseance based on the social status of individuals in the outside world were prohibited — in theory at least. The time-consuming and even arduous work which the administrators devoted to the institutions was unremunerated. In addition to attending weekly meetings of the board at which major business was discussed, the members of the board of the Hopital General of Montpellier, for example, had also to take their place on a weekly rota for the day-to-day running of the establishment, and to sit on various committees for different items of hospital business. The administrators — particularly the treasurers — were often also called upon to place their personal credit at the disposal of the institution and to make sizeable interest-free loans in times of need. All would normally make a substantial legacy on their deaths to the institution which they had served. Some went even further, placing their daughters within the hopital as servants of the poor in the congregation of nursing sisters first established there in 1684. 16 Two particular religious duties were integral to the pious altruism which the administrators of Montpellier's poor-relief institutions exuded. Like all 13 J. Imbert, 'Les Prescriptions hospitalieres du Concile de Trente et leur diffusion en France', Revue d'histoire de I'Eglise de France, 1956. 14 C 5956, for a case involving the Montpellier Hopital General. 15 For lists of administrators with some indications of their social origins, HG II E 23 for the Hotel-Dieu (sic); HG I B 26, E 156 and E 349 for the Hopital General; and Fonds Mis. for the Misericorde. 16 HG I E 289, F 19.
52
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
poor-relief administrators, they felt a responsibility, first, to the benefactors of the institutions and, second, towards their charges. The first of these responsibilities consisted of ensuring the proper observance of the wishes of founders and benefactors relating to the destination of their charities — a traditional orientation which Turgot had excoriated in his article in the Encyclopedie.17 The spirit of the hopital's benefactors, for example, whose portraits gazed benignly down from the walls of the administrative offices, presided over the deliberations of the board as they sat sedately around the sombre, green-felt-covered table beneath the leather-bound chair left vacant for the bishop. 18 The board's corporate desire scrupulously to uphold institutional conventions introduced an element of inflexibility into their operations. For all their great wealth, the poor-relief institutions of Montpellier could scarcely be said, as a result of this inflexibility, to have provided a co-ordinated service for the needy. There was, first, some duplication among the different bodies. Both the hopital and the Misericorde, for example, supplied the local poor with home relief. Similarly, although the hotel-dieu was clearly the major medical organisation within the city, the Misericorde also distributed medicines to the sick poor in their homes. The hopital too, although it usually turned away the temporarily ailing, was bound by legacies to provide certain surgical operations and various specific forms of treatment. Besides the overlapping functions of the city's institutions, there were also customary restrictions on entry which sprang from their foundation- and benefaction-orientated character. The board of the hotel-Dieu prided themselves on the hospital's reputation as Tazille de toutes les nations et de toutes les religions du monde'. 19 Yet for all the alleged catholicity of their appeal, they refused admittance not only to individuals suffering from permanent or chronic illnesses, which they regarded as the province of the hopital, but also to cases with smallpox, venereal disease, certain skin ailments and to all pregnant women. The admissions policy of the other institutions was even more stringent: the hopital opened its doors only to individuals from the city and diocese, and was increasingly accused of neglecting the interests of those from outside the city;20 and the Misericorde was custom-bound to succour only the resident poor of the parishes of the city. Institutional duplications and restrictions highlighted the private, religious and autonomous character of poor-relief institutions. In some respects, the latter were more directly under the aegis of the church, 17 See above, page 2. 19 HD I E 22.
18 HG I E 446. 20 C 5957.
Poor relief
53
guardian of the rights of founders, than of the public authorities. Their deference to benefactors deflected them from viewing their joint activities as constituting a system of relief or offering an integrated service for the ten thousand individuals or more within the city who were classified as indigent, to say nothing of the needy in the whole diocese or the surrounding region. These corporate institutional features also strongly influenced the attitudes of administrators towards their charges. The boards of the hospitals and the members of the confrerie of the Misericorde displayed a protective concern for the welfare of the poor who came into their care. On occasion, this took the form of defending them from what were regarded as harmful outside influences — the state, the medical profession, and so on. 21 The specifically religious element of their paternalism was heightened by the fact that the intermediaries between themselves and the poor were nursing sisters who had taken vows dedicating their lives to the service of the needy. The congregation of sisters within the hopital general, numbering about a dozen by the end of the Ancien Regime, 22 was under the strict supervision of the bishop. Aided by a posse of paid helpers, they dealt with the everyday running of the institution, keeping basic accounts, washing and changing the linen, cooking for and caring for the poor. The same tasks in the hotel-Dieu and Misericorde were performed by sisters from Saint Vincent de Paul's nation-wide nursing order of Filles de la Charite. The administrators of both institutions saw fit to increase the number of sisters over the course of the eighteenth century, from eight to sixteen in the hotel-Dieu and from five to nine in the case of the Misericorde.23 Religion dictated the manner in which these nursing professionals set about their tasks. Their concern was not only with the bodily health of their charges: their souls mattered too. The sentiments of the chaplain of the hopital general, as he reminded the sisters of their duties towards the poor, might have stood as the watchword of every dedicated hospital servant: Ce n'est pas seulement a ce service corporel que vous leur devez [he told them], mais la charite vous oblige a travailler a leur sanctification tant que vous pourrez. II faut, mes cheres soeurs, se faire aimer plus que craindre; la crainte fait des esclaves, la charite fait des Chretiens . . . Tout notre soin doit etre de nous sauver et de gagner les ames a Jesus-Christ.24 The preoccupation with religion was particularly marked in the case of the Misericorde. This body recruited by co-option from amongst the 21 Cf. below, page 123ff. 22 Ball. 23 Fonds Mis.; HD I F 22; A.N., S 6171.
24 8 F 34.
54
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
wealthiest families in the city. 25 Members included the wives and daughters of the Intendant of Languedoc, the military commander, the Premier President of the Cour des Aides and the female members of the cream of local dynasties, women whose husbands were often to be found on the administrative boards of the two hospitals. The Dames de la Misericorde met together in a mood of spiritual self-improvement which expressed itself in good works. Their activities were originally defined by the traditional Works of Mercy, though foundations and legacies had swelled the range even further. By 1740 they were running a weekly workshop, the chambre de travail, which made clothes for the poor and where girls from needy homes were at the same time taught to sew and to spin; they provided four or five annual dowries to poor brides; they ran a charitable dispensary; they organised primary-school classes for the daughters of the poor; they were responsible for the Bon Pasteur, a reformatory for prostitutes and for young women confined at their family's request for moral correction; and they also directed the Oeuvre des Prisonniers, which supplied the inhabitants of the city's gaols with bed-linen, clothes and food. Their major service, and the one which consumed most of their revenue was the provision of home relief to the poor and sick of the city. 26 The basic form this took was a daily ration consisting of two portions of bouillon, plus meat, a little poultry and a one-W loaf of bread. In addition, a two-livre loaf and one livre of rice might be awarded to deserving cases. The Misericorde also distributed bed-linen, mattresses, pillows, blankets, nightshirts and nightcaps as well as coal, firewood, and other necessaries during the winter months. Six — later eight — salaried doctors provided the recipients of relief with medical care in their homes. The aid which the Misericorde provided had a strong denominational and moralising charge. Visitors from the confrerie made arrangements for the poor to receive in their homes communion, confession and, if necessary, the last rites. They were also enjoined to make enquiries into the religious as well as the economic circumstances of candidates for relief. They were to ascertain, for example, whether the family went to church regularly or sent their children, whether they worked on Sundays — a notorious sign of Protestantism — and whether any scandal concerning them existed in their 2 5 Membership lists and formal regulations in Fonds Mis., which constitutes the most important source for the history of this organisation. Documents historiques sur I'oeuvre de la Misericorde de Montpellier,
Montpellier, 1840; B. Cabanel, 'L'Oeuvre de Misericorde de Montpellier' in Melanges de litterature et dhistoire religieuses, publies a Voccasion du jubile de Mgr de Cabrieres, vol i, Paris, 1899; and A.
Leenhardt, La Misericorde et le bureau de bienfaisance, Montpellier, 1936, should all also be consulted as they contain citations from documents which appear no longer to be extant. For the Bon Pasteur which, although an offshoot of the Misericorde, never lost its connection with the parent body, see my article, 1978. 26 Table 4 (item: 'monthly expenditure').
Poor relief
55
Table 4. Annual average accounts of the Misericorde of Montpellier in the 1740s and 1780s 1740s
1780s
Amount (in livres)
Amount %
(in livres)
%
11297
30.9
1000
2.7 —
16827
46.1 — — 20.3
A. Income
1. Income from investments -rentes constitutes etc.
—land and property
[5 159]
[ 601]
2. Diocesan and municipal subsidies 3. Municipal tolls 4. Charity 5. Fees 6. Work 7. Miscellaneous
5 760
30.1
700 —
3.7 —
12 632 — — —
[ 9 728] [ 1569]
—
66.2
— —
— — —
7 400 36 524
19092 B. Expenditure
1. Food and provisions —normal monthly expenditure —extraordinary expenditure 2. Drugs and medicines 3. Buildings and repairs 4. Salaries and administration 5. Particular services 6. Miscellaneous
[ 10 607 ]
[15 977]
[ 1 708]
[ 2 586] 12315 1076 1397
65.6 7.4
18 563 5 084 574
21.3
— — 11614
5.7
— —
4012 18 800
58.8
14.2 1.6
32.4
35 835
Sources: Fonds Mis. 1740s=accounts for 1742 to 1751, the figures for 1740 and 1741 being missing; 1780s =1780 to 1789
neighbourhood. This screening for religious and moral orthodoxy, which gave the impression that worthiness to receive aid was judged by willingness to partake in the sacraments, had the effect of reducing the potential number of clients. In practice, hard-pressed gentility was often preferred to outright distress. The favoured recipient of relief was the
56
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
pauvre honteux, the individual of breeding and estate — often a widow — who had fallen on bad times. 27 Institutions such as the Misericorde not only dispensed religiously inspired charity; they also depended for their very existence on the outward manifestations of charity. The services of the administrators and the nursing sisters comprised one such form of charity. Another was the alms, donations, benefactions and legacies which the institution received. Just how important these were in the running of the Misericorde may be seen in its accounts in the 1740s. 28 Charity comprised about two-thirds of gross income. Most of the remainder came from rentes constitutes — the return on investments made usually with sums deriving from outstanding legacies. Charity and rentes were still the predominant source of income in the 1780s too, although income accruing from the dispensary which the Filles de la Charite ran was a valuable adjunct. Proof of the value of charity was the fact that the institution's turnover had nearly doubled between the two periods, and expenditure on monthly distributions had increased by nearly half. By the last decades of the Ancien Regime, the Montpellier families which the Misericorde assisted numbered over two hundred, where a century previously they had barely surpassed a dozen. 29 The increase in the operations of the Misericorde registered something of the growing demand on resources which all the city's poor-relief institutions experienced over the course of the eighteenth century. Between the turn of the century and the 1740s, for example, the daily capacity of the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi virtually doubled, from about one hundred to nearly two hundred inmates. 30 The bulk of the clientele of this establishment were able-bodied individuals — mostly between late adolescence and middle age, and predominantly male — who were temporarily incapacitated by illness or disability. The main exceptions to this rule were, first, the motley crew of down-and-outs dumped dying on the steps of the hospital; and, second, the insane, who since 1715 had been assigned special cells or loges within the hospital's premises, where they were kept secure with few if any efforts at cure being made upon them. 31 The administrative board of the hotel-Dieu was very much aware of a growing demand for places within their establishment. Although they had passed a regulation in 1715 stipulating that each inmate was to have a bed 27 Besides the assorted materials in Fonds Mis., see also on this point L. Cahen, 'Les Idees charitables a Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, d'apres les reglements des compagnies paroissiales', R.H.M.C., 1900; and J.P. Gutton, LaSocieteet lespauvres. L'exempledela genera lite deLy on, 1534-1789, Paris, 1970, 373ff. 28 Table 4. 29 C 5957, G 1353. 30 Appendix A. 31 See my article 'The treatment of the insane in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Montpellier. A contribution to the prehistory of the lunatic asylum in provincial France', Medical History, 1980.
Poor relief
57
to him or herself,32 such was pressure on space in the 1740s that inmates were piled up more than two to a bed at times, and lightning epidemics sporadically revealed the low level of hygiene to which overcrowding reduced the hospital. 33 In order to make more space available, the board began in the 1730s an extensive building and rebuilding programme. They were to devote well in excess of 100,000 livres to this purpose in the period down to the early 1750s. 34 It would have been little short of Utopian on the part of the hotel-Dieu's administrators to expect private charity to bear the added financial burden. The hospital still bore the stigmata of the 'system' of John Law in the 1720s when the fiasco of state credit had cost the establishment much of its income from government bonds. 35 Income from charity represented only about one-seventh of the hotel-Dieu's annual gross income. 36 There was little chance of being allocated more funds by the central government. The latter did not like spending money on hospitals. It preferred negative subsidies enshrined in letters patent — allowing an institution a fixed amount of tax-free salt, rights of alms collection or whatever. Income from municipal tolls and from the subsidy from the municipality promised little either. Indeed, the municipality, itself nearly a million livres in debt, 37 was seeking to reduce its expenditure on charity and in 1754 managed to obtain royal permission to reduce its annual subsidy to the hotel-Dieu from 12,200 to 6,200 livres™ The hotel-Dieu was obliged to have recourse to borrowing in order to fund its growing commitments and its building programme. The form of loan which the administrative board favoured was the so-called fondsperdu. This was a loan in return for which the recipient undertook to pay each year a fraction of the principal sum until the lender's death, when all further obligation lapsed. The exact rate of interest was fixed according to the age of the lender. In the absence of accurate actuarial tables, and given the rising levels of life expectancy especially among middle-class lenders, such loans were probably highly risky. 39 There was no shortage of willing lenders, however, and the element of risk may have seemed initially attractive. In the two decades from the mid 1730s the administrative 32 L. Dulieu, Essai historique sur I'hopital Saint-Eloi de Montpellier. 1183-1950, Montpellier, 1953, 66. 33 HD I E 13 (15/7/1786), E 27, F 37. Cf. A.M. Montpellier, GG (unclassified documents). 34 A.M. Montpellier, BB Reg., (5/2/1734) and GG (unclassified documents). 35 C 561. 36 Table 5. 37 A. Babeau, La Vilk sous I'Ancien Regime, 2 vols., Paris, 1884, ii, 370. 38 HD I E 22, E 25; A.M. Montpellier, GG (unclassified documents). 39 This was certainly the opinion of Jean Colombier, the experienced Royal Inspector of Hospitals and Prisons, who visited the Montpellier hospitals in 1785: A.N., F 15 226. For actuarial tables, P.J. Richard, Histoire des institutions d'assurance en France, Paris, 1956, 7. For life expectancy,
M. Reinhard et al., 1968, 197ff.
58
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
Table 5. Annual average accounts of the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi of Montpellier in the 1740s and 1780s 1780s
1740s
Amount
Amount (in
(in
livres)
%
livres)
%
12 019
15. 7
41 109
38.1
12 200 3 826 12 052
15. 9 5. 0 15. 7
6 200 3 183 18 137
5.7 2.9
16.8
A . Income
1. Income from investments —rentes constitutes etc.
—land and property 2. Diocesan and municipal subsidies 3. Municipal tolls 4. Charity 5. Fees [-soldiers] [13 064] [-insane] [ 3 039]
[13710] [ 6828] 16 103
21. 0
20 538
19.0
20446
26. 7
18 868
17.5
—
6. Work 7. Miscellaneous
—
76 646
—
108 035
B. Expenditure
1. Food and provisions -bread -meat -other 2. Drugs and medicines 3. Buildings and repairs 4. Salaries and administration 5. Particular services 6. Miscellaneous
[ 6 872] [13 864] [11778]
[10 127] [16 767] [23 638] 32 514 3 967 4 385
42. 3 5. 2 5. 7
50 532 4434 4 353
45.6 4.0 3.9
2 190
2. 8
4913
4.4 — 42.1
—
33887
—
44.0
76 943 Sources: 1740s=HD I E 79 to 88; 1780s=HD I E 119 to 128
46 588 110 820
Poor relief
59
board borrowed afondsperdu the not inconsiderable sum of 420,255 livres.40 The prominence of this item in the hotel-Dieu's accounts was clear by the 1740s. Although much of the miscellaneous items of income included loans, a very large proportion of the item of miscellaneous expenditure — which accounted for nearly a half of the institution's annual outgoings — was devoted to building projects and to the payment of rentes on loans a fonds perdu.
The board of the hotel-Dieu was able to prevent this potential source of weakness in its finances from becoming more dangerous by prudently exploiting a particularly valuable item of their income, namely, the reimbursement which they received for different types of fee-paying inmates. Already in the 1740s, fees received for the confinement of the insane and for the treatment of soldiers accounted for about one-fifth of the hospital's gross annual income. This source of funds was expanded over the last decades of the Ancien Regime. The hotel-Dieu had charged fees for the treatment of the insane within its walls ever since the loges in which they were kept had been built in 1715. The number of loges and the size of fees were progressively increased over the course of the century. By 1789, nine were available to the nominees of the municipality which paid an annual pension for each; eight were paid for by the diocese and were in the gift of the bishop; and there were a further nine places at the disposal of the board itself. The latter were normally filled with individuals whose families were able to make a substantial payment towards their upkeep. 41 Prior to the 1730s, the number of soldiers admitted to the hotel-Dieu appears to have been relatively small. When in 1734, however, the Minister of War raised from six to eight sols the sum which the government was willing to pay for each day's treatment (Journee) which soldiers received in civilian hospitals, the hotel-Dieu's administrators seized with alacrity on this opportunity of raising additional revenue.42 Down to the Revolution, they were often to bewail the fact that rising costs made the price which they were entitled to charge the Ministry of War an uneconomic one. In 1774, for example, when the daily fee was increased from twelve to sixteen sols, the board produced figures which purported to demonstrate that the daily cost of treatment was in reality between sixteen and seventeen sols.43 Yet however justified their complaints, reimbursement for the journees of sick soldiers proved a substantial and dependable source of income. The alternative to admitting the troops - turning the spare capacity over to the 40 A.M. Montpellier, GG (unclassified documents). 41 L 3970. 42 HD I E 29, F 22; A.M. Montpellier, BB Reg., (5/2/1734). 43 HD I E 26, E 29. For similar complaints, cf. C 566 (1755) and HD I E 10 (5/9/1767, 12/2/1772).
60
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
poor, for whom no form of reimbursement was possible — would have been financially disastrous. Much the same was true of beggars from Montpellier's depot de mendicite who swamped the hotel-Dieu in the early 1770s following an agreement made with the Intendant. 44 It was true that the cost of treating such individuals was inordinately high: they were normally unclothed on entrance, they absconded with the hospital's effects, and they died and had to be buried at the hospital's expense rather more frequently than the average inmate. Yet again, however, the alternative strategy of releasing the beds used by beggars for other inmates would have involved forgoing the reimbursement which the province made for the beggars. Despite their drawbacks, fee-paying inmates proved of sterling value to the hotel-Dieu and took at least part of the credit for the relatively healthy complexion of the institution's finances in the 1780s. 45 Although the substantial size of the miscellaneous items of income and expenditure bore witness to continued borrowing, the administrative board could contend that, utilised cautiously, the fondsperdu had been vital in allowing them to start a fresh building programme in the 1770s, as well as in amassing a much more considerable income from rentes constitutes than they had possessed in the 1740s. 46 There was, however, a price to be paid for the form of institutional survival which the hotel-Dieu had achieved. First of all reliance on income from extrinsic sources constituted a risk. If — as indeed happened — the policy of the fee-payers changed, then financial instability was unavoidable. In 1786, an infirmary was opened inside the depot de mendicite and the stream of beggars admitted into the hotel-Dieu ceased.47 Military regulations in 1788, which stipulated that the vast majority of sick and ailing soldiers was to be cared for in newly created regimental infirmaries rather than in civilian hospitals, caused a drop in the number of military admissions as sharp as it was unexpected.48 The hotel-Dieu's income from the fees paid for soldiers and beggars plummeted from 19,273 livres in 1785 to 12,961 livres in 1788 and then to 3,3 10 livres in 1789 and 2,755 livres in 1790. 49 Besides causing a certain fragility in the hotel-Dieu's finances, the 44 For the depot de mendicite, see below, page 153, HDIE 11 (9/11/1771), E 12 (14/7/1781), E 29. Cf. C 560. 45 Table 5. 46 A.N. F 15 226. A very considerable legacy received in 1775 also helped finance the building programme. L. Grasset-Morel, 'L' Hopital Saint-Eloi. L'Ecole Mage. Le Palais universitaire', A.S.L.M. (S.L.), 1896, 390. 47 C 587, C 588. 48 J. Des Cilleuls, 'Le Service de sante a 1'interieur sous l'Ancien Regime', Rev, hist, de I'Armee, 1955, 60. 49 HD I E 124, E 127, E 128, E 129.
Poor relief
61
admissions policy adopted by the administrative board in the eighteenth century also led to the stagnation of the levels of care which the hospital could offer the local community. The long-term increase in the hospital's capacity had been achieved largely through taking in a larger number of fee-paying inmates extrinsic to the institution's destination: the forty or fifty extra places gained from building programmes were consistently taken by soldiers, beggars and lunatics rather than by the local and migrant poor. The average daily population of the institution in the 1740s was 188; in the 1780s it was only 192. 50 This stagnation in the capacity of the hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi in the face of rising demand for resources was all the more serious, moreover, in that the city's other great poof-relief establishment, the Hopital General, was undergoing, in the late eighteenth century, a traumatic crisis. The royal letters patent, which had in 1678 established the Montpellier Hopital General, assigned the institution the tasks of 'faire cesser l'oysivete, le libertinage, la corruption et les autres vices qui accompagnent ordinairement la mendicite'. 51 This injunction combined a compassionate concern for the victims of poverty and distress with a preoccupation with morality and spiritual hygiene similar to that exemplified by the Misericorde. It was also attuned to the desire of the government of the day to lead a determined onslaught on begging and vagrancy through the confinement of social-problem groups. The Montpellier hopital, like the myriad similar institutions created throughout France in the same period, was thus to harbour both the 'impotent poor' or invalides — the aged, the infirm, the defenceless - and also the able-bodied pauper, the beggar, the work-shy and the vagrant. Both groups were to be subjected to intense religious indoctrination and, within their capacities, set to work. The new institution was thus to be not only a refuge for the unfortunate but also an active moral, religious and even judicial force.52 Individuals found begging or giving alms to beggars and vagrants could be hauled for punishment before the administrators of the hopital or before the courts. Besides its own tribunal, the hopital was to have its own stocks and dungeons and its own police force, the archers des pauvres or chasse-gueux.
The policing functions of the hopital were progressively attenuated over the course of the eighteenth century. The writ of the administrators rarely if ever ran beyond the walls of the city. Although the hospital board made 50 Appendix A. 51 HGI A 1. The Hopital General's copious archives are listed in the bibliography. They are the basis of the studies ofR. Meissonnier, Essai historique sur I'hopital general de Montpellier. Sa reglementation et
son organisation sous I'Ancien Regime, Montpellier, 1951; and C. Reboul, 'L'Hopital general de Montpellier. Les institutions et les hommes au XVIIIe siecle', unpublished memoire de maitrise, Montpellier, Lettres, 1973 - which do not, however, nearly exhaust the subject. 52 C{. C. Paultre, 1906; and E. Chill, 1962.
62
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
strenuous efforts for a time in the 1730s and then again in the 1760s to enforce the provisions of their letters patent, the increasing involvement of the central government in the repression of begging and vagrancy largely took the matter out of their hands. 53 Down to the Revolution, however, there remained a perceptible moral and religious tinge to the hopital's activities. The administrators availed themselves of their disciplinary powers within the institution itself against the thefts, insubordination, blasphemies and desertion of inmates. 54 They continued too to keep a close eye on former female inmates working in Montpellier who ran the risk of becoming prostitutes. 55 In the interests of preventing infanticides or unregistered illegitimate births, they also supervised the activities of the city's midwives. 56 Even towards the very end of the Ancien Regime, members of the hopital's board could congratulate themselves that 'cette maison a toujours ete regardee comme un azille pour les moeurs aussi bien qu'une ressource contre la misere'. 57 By 1740, however, the main role of the hopital had come to be the care of invalides, usually either persons over the age of seventy and those totally unable to look after themselves as a result of incapacity or disablement, or else untended children — orphans, foundlings, the illegitimate, the offspring of over-large families or of persons receiving treatment within the hotel-Dieu. Two-thirds of persons admitted to the hopital were childrenthe vast majority of them under ten years old — and a further 30 per cent were aged fifty or more. 58 The administrators were in addition responsible for a wide range of other charitable works, many of them in execution of the wishes of founders or benefactors. They supplied home relief to the destitute of the city, for example, and to pauvres honteux: in the 1740s they were distributing some 1,600 quintaux of bread each year at a cost of more than 20,000 livres to an estimated 1,400 families — seemingly in excess of 4,500 individuals out of a total urban population of approximately 33,000. 59 The hopital also gave thepassade- a bed for the night and a bread dole — to itinerant workers, travelling priests and sick paupers en route to their home parishes. Over 40,000 individuals availed themselves of this facility during the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century. 60 In addition, the hopital provided surgery for individuals suffering from gallstones and 53 55 56 58 59
See below, Chapter 7. 54 HG I B 585. HG I E 24 (18/4/1762, 20/1/1765), E 29 (17/8/1781, 1/2/1782), G 21. C 592; HG I E 38, G 21. 57 HG I E 29 (27/8/1780). C. Reboul, 1973, 51ff. Extant records of distributions within the Sixain Sainte-Anne between 1743 and 1753 suggest a coefficient for individuals per family of at least 3.4. The 1,400 families aided would therefore contain 4,760 individuals. HG I G 12. Cf. C 561, where the administrative board claims (in 1721) to be assisting between 1,200 and 1,500 families in the city comprising 6,000 individuals, figures which would justify an even larger coefficient. 60 HG I G 13.
Poor relief
63
children with ringworm and other skin ailments. 61 It was responsible for the health spa at nearby Balaruc-les-Bains, which opened for two spells of two months each year to treat soldiers and civilians suffering from skin disease, rheumatism and other complaints. 62 Those children who survived their early years under the tutelage of the hopital could be entitled to an apprenticeship or dowry, which the board was entrusted with administering. 63 Other children from the hopital might be farmed out as readinginstructors to the children of the well-to-do or might be bound over until adolescence as farm servants to foster parents in neighbouring villages. 64 The discharge of these multifarious duties weighed heavily upon an institution which, unlike the Misericorde, had huge buildings and grounds to maintain and extensive staffs and large overheads to support. In the 1720s moreover, the financial situation of the hopital had been seriously compromised by the effects of the system of John Law, in which it lost a considerable part of its income from rentes constitutes.65 The administrators were obliged to alienate their capital in order to pay for debts incurred and for ordinary running costs. The financial setback of the 1720s, the effects of which were still being felt well into the next decades, inhibited the ability of the hopital to cope with the additional demands which deteriorating social conditions placed upon it. The rise in food prices over the course of the century was especially grave since the hopital, like most hospitals, was a major consumer: over half its annual outgoings in the 1740s, for example, went on foodstuffs.66 High prices thus brought a significant reduction in the institution's purchasing power at the same time that they exacerbated the needs of the poor in the world outside. Pressure on places within the hopital was building up apace towards the middle of the century: numbers rose from between 400 and 500 in the 1720s to between 500 and 650 in the 1730s and 40s, to between 600 and 750 in the 1750s and early 60s. 67 The number of children which the hopital placed with wet-nurses outside Montpellier doubled in the period down to the 1750s too. 68 External commitments also became heavier: the amount of bread which the hopital was called on to distribute within the city rose dramatically in the 1740s and 50s. 69 Aware of the growing demands being made upon their charity, the hopital's administrators determined, in 1744, to build an enormous 61 62 63 64 65 67 69
H G I E 38, F 2. HG I G 1, G 2, G 3. HG I G 41, G 42, G 44, G 46, G 47, G 53, G 54, G 56, G 60. HG I E 314, E 342, E 365, G 24, G 58, G 61. C 561, C 573. 66 Table 6. Appendix A. 68 HG I C 4, E 388. HG I E 22 (23/5/1757, 12/3/1758), G 4 to G 11.
64
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
extension, including a chapel. 70 This major new departure was aimed to increase revenue as well as to swell capacity. Following a logic dear to the heart of many a charitable institution, the board was convinced that the sale of side-chapels and burial-places within the new chapel would attract the death-bed legacies of benefactors wishing to consecrate their names in posterity by a religious foundation of both utility and eclat. The scale of the building project would also justify the organisation of special collections and claims for extraordinary aid from the religious establishment of the diocese. The trust of the hopital's administrative board in the alms of the faithful proved to be disastrously misplaced. The timing and the scale of the enterprise were singularly inopportune: to adopt such an ambitious project and to continue its services at their normal levels at a time when the hopital's finances had still not fully recovered from their mangling in the 1720s was ill-advised, especially as the added demands upon the hopital showed little sign of drying up. The logic behind the enterprise proved faulty too. The sale of side-chapels and burial-places had'raised only 6,000 livres by the 1760s and a royal decree of 1776 which prohibited burials inside churches dealt the scheme a death blow. 71 Special collections organised by the bishop raised not insubstantial sums: one in 1750, for example, produced 22,000 livres.12 Even this was only a paltry contribution, however, to total building costs estimated to be in the region of half a million livres.73 The foolishly exaggerated optimism of the board in expecting private charity to finance their building programme emerges clearly from a study of the institution's accounts. 74 Admittedly, the Hopital General's income from rentes constitutes - normally, invested benefactions - and from active charity far outdistanced that of the hotel-Dieu and the Misericorde. Yet the 50,000 livres which the institution was deriving from these sources in the 1740s was less than half its gross annual expenditure, and represented only a tenth of the eventual costs of the new extension. By the 1780s, moreover, income from these sources had fallen. If charity was something of a broken reed, there was little hope, either, of the money for the new extension coming from the hopital's other main revenue items. Diocesan and municipal subsidies, and the hopital's share of 70 HG I E 18. Cf. L. Dulieu, 'La Chapelle de l'hopital general de Montpellier', Mons. Hip., 1961. 71 HG I E 25 (3/8/1768), E 28 (18/5/1777). Cf. J.A. Mourgue, Recherches sur le lieu lepluspropre a etablir un cimetierepublic aux environs de cette ville de Montpellier, Montpellier, 1777; and F. Lebrun, Les Hommes et la mort en Anjou aux XVlle et XVllle siecles. Essai de demograpbie et psychologie historiques,
Paris, 1971, 48Iff. 72 HG I E 21(2/11/1750). A further collection in 1772, as much for the hospital's overall solvency as for the building fund, produced over 30,000 livres. HG I E 25 (5/7/1772). 73 C 5957. 74 Table 6.
65
Poor relief
Table 6. Annual average accounts of the Hopital General of Montpellier in the 1740s and 1780s 1780s
1740s
Amount
Amount (in livres)
%
(in livres)
%
24 734
79.7
A. Income
1. Income from investments
[17 668] [ 7 066]
—rentes constitutes etc. [27 127]
—land and property
[ 2 539]
2. Diocesan and municipal subsidies 3. Municipal tolls 4. Charity 5. Fees (illegitimate children) 6. Work 7. Miscellaneous
29 666
22.7
11745 20674 23 687
15.8 18.1
12 740 10.2 30 433 24.3 27 508 21.9
4 620 3133 37 247
3.5 2.4 28.5
10187 10 735 9047
9.0
130 772
8.1 8.6 7.2
125 384
B. Expenditure
1. Food and provisions —bread —other 2. Drugs and medicines 3. Building and repairs 4. Salaries and administration 5. Particular services —children —dowries and apprenticeships
[31842] [33 849]
—other
65 691 401
2212
1.8
[ 4 580]
39.2 .4 1.4
2 869
2.3
24492
19.6
46463
37.1
[15 954] 14 020
[17 220] [19 527]
49015 455 1734
[ 8 538]
[ 9440]
6. Miscellaneous —rentes viageres etc.
52.8 .3 5 257 4.2
[20 153] [28 862]
26747
11.3
29.6
[32 261] [14 202]
124 328 Sources: 1740s=HG I E 102 to 111; 1780s=HG I E 142 to 151
125 028
66
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
municipal tolls were solid but inelastic sources of income. Fees (in the hopital's case, payments from the parents of children admitted) were too. Revenue from the manufacturing of woollen and cotton goods within the hopital may even have disguised overall losses. The difficulty of finding outlets for the often shoddy goods emerging from the institution's workshops was notorious. The board, however, was committed to such work for its ethical value: 'nous faisons travailler', they noted, meme dans le cas d'une perte reelle'. 75 Nor did the board hold out much hope of government aid. Given the lack of an expanding supply of fee-paying inmates such as had shored up the hotel-Dieu's finances, the inability of charity and of the hopital's regular sources of income to cover the costs of its ambitious building programme led the board to resort to further borrowing. Much of the miscellaneous item of income which comprised over a quarter of the hopital's income in the 1740s consisted of loans. As with the hotel-Dieu, the institution's administrators favoured the fonds perdu loan which, for all its convenience and initial attractiveness, was dangerously risky for an establishment whose finances were so shaky. Although the state of the accounts of the hopital preclude any definite conclusions about whether the institution suffered losses as a result of the reliance on the fonds perdu, this seems likely to have been the case.76 By the late 1740s, the seriousness of the hopital's financial problems was becoming apparent. It was, however, less troublesome for administrators to raise a monument to their own self-esteem by continuing the full range of the hopital's services and by going ahead with their extravagant building programme rather than to undertake the slow and painstaking task of shoring up the institution's financial base. Division and dispute on the board — over questions of preseance and between Protestants and Catholics — reduced its propensity for getting to grips with the problems and introducing the necessary palliatory measures.77 The proponents of administrative inertia presented the task of reducing the capacity of the hopital or its range of activities as cruel and heartless and, in the final analysis, counter-productive: Pouvait-on sans inhumanite [asked one administrator rhetorically] chasser de la maison des enfans en bas age, des vieillards dans la derniere caducite, des infortunes charges de playes, accables de douleurs, presque tous sans azille; qui auraient presente au public un spectacle si affreux qu'il aurait fait perdre a l'hopital tous les secours qu'il a lieu d'attendre de la charite des citoyens?78 75 HG I E 388. Cf. R. Meissonnier, 1951, 162. 76 See the opinion of Jean Colombier, the Royal Inspector of Hospitals and Prisons, A.N., F 15 226. 77 HG I E 22 (7/6/1756), E 388; C 567, C 568. 78 HG I E 26 (17/5/1770).
Poor relief
67
Such a decline in charity — one of the major resources and, in a sense, the very raison d'etre of the hopital - would, it was feared, precipitate a downward spiral in the institutions's fortunes: Une maison de charite ne saurait se conduire d'apres les principes d'un bon pere de famille; elle s'exposerait, en restreignant sa charite, a ne plus l'exercer, parce que les depenses accroissant chaque jour par la cherte progressive des objets necessaires et indispensables a la nourriture et a l'entretien des pauvres, les aumones venant a diminuer, il faudrait reduire le nombre des pauvres, de sorte que, de reduction a reduction, ils seraient reduits a rien; tandisqu'en exercant la charite le public augmente les dons aux pauvres qu'il voit secourus.79 For all the apparent good sense behind such remarks, an unwillingness to tailor its services as financial constraints required pointed the institution resolutely towards financial catastrophe. It was only very belatedly, in 1760, as bankruptcy loomed, that the hopital's board took the momentous decision to reduce their commitments. 80 The first victim of retrenchment, symbolically enough, was a sculpture representing the allegorical figures of Charity and Religion reclining with groups of small children, which had been planned for a niche above the entrance of the recently completed chapel on whose fund-raising potential so much hope had been sadly pinned. 81 By far the most considerable savings made in the new age of austerity which the board now ushered in was the reduction and then (in 1761) the complete suppression of bread distributions within the city. This measure was popular with the better-off fraction of Montpellier's population, for the distributions had been criticised for breeding sloth, and also on account of the inefficiency and corruption caused by allowing intermediaries to collect the bread dole from the gates of the hopital. 82 The passade was stopped in 1760 for all but itinerant priests. Free treatment for gallstones and ringworm was temporarily suspended. Funds deriving from apprenticeships and dowries were switched to the purchase of grain. Attempts were made to reduce the inmate population to between 400 and 500 by the introduction of stricter regulations relating to admission and length of stay within the institution. From about the same period, more effective controls over the internal workings of the hopital were introduced. First, the administrative board adopted a more businesslike approach to the exploitation of resources: a feudal lawyer was hired to track down seigneurial rights; more effective 79 A.N., F 15 226. 80 For all the following, see in particular the important deliberations of 13 August 1760 and 24 May 1761. H G I E 23. 81 HG I E 441. 82 HG 1 E 22 (23/5/1757, 12/3/1758), G 12.
68
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
procedures were introduced to ensure that legacies actually reached the coffers of the hopital; spare capacity within the buildings was given up, part of the new extension being leased out as a cotton factory, and part as the city's depot de mendicite. 83 Besides striving to maximise income, the board also enforced greater economy within the hopital: inmates unwilling to work were summarily expelled; staff reductions were made; fuel economies were introduced with new limitations on braziers and hot-water bottles; the number of inmates on special rations was cut, the daily meat portion reduced and rationing in wine introduced for the first time. 84 Nevertheless, the administrators of the hopital found it an impossibly painful task to reduce the number of inmates to the levels they realised were essential if the institution was to achieve solvency. The aim of reducing numbers from 800 to below 500 between 1760 and 1761 was not achieved. Although some progress was eventually made in this direction, a slackening of zeal in the face of the acute distress evident in the region in the mid 1760s sent inmate population soaring once again. 85 Symptomatic of the worsening state of the hopital's finances was the increasing difficulty which the administrators experienced in finding individuals willing to take on the financially onerous one-year job of treasurer. The perennial deficit in the hopital's accounts meant that the board now required of the new appointee a colossal interest-free loan with which to reimburse his predecessor and with which to purchase provisions when prices were still low and before the bulk of the hopital's income had come in. 86 As an inducement, the board had petitioned the government to grant noble status to any individual serving as treasurer for three years, or to award the treasurer fiscal privileges — but their efforts were in vain. 87 By the mid 1760s, the financial viability of the hopital was in serious jeopardy. The board was obliged to sell off more than half its capital and to increase its borrowing a fonds perdu in order to keep going and to provide sufficient r
'
•
88
guarantees for incoming treasurers. Finally in 1773, with bankruptcy imminent and with the administrative board's capacity for action riven by a fresh round of internal disputes, the government, 'tant pour le bien et la surete des creanciers que pour le soulagement des pauvres de ladite ville', 89 intervened over the heads of the 83 HG I B 14 (lawyer); HG I E 22 (10/7/1757, 15/8/1757) (legacies); HG I E 441; C 570 (lease of hospital property). 84 HG I E 23 (21/9/1760, 25/4/1761), E 24 (5/5/1765) (expulsions); and HG I E 25 (19/10/1766), E 27 (5/12/1773 and 25/6/1775) (for tighter entrance requirements); HG I E 25 (19/10/1766) (staff); HG I E 22 (2/4/1758) (fuel); and HG I E 25 (17/11/1765, 22/5/1768), E 27 (13/11/1774) and E 28 (8/'6/'1777) (food rations). 85 Appendix A. 86 C 567, C 568; HG I E 38. 87 C 568; HG I E 35. 88 HG I E 26 (17/5/1770). 89 Arrit du conseil detat, 20 September 1773, included in the Hopital General's register of deliberations, HG I E 27 (7/11/1773).
Poor relief
69
administrators. In a decree of September 1773 and then in a fresh set of letters patent issued in November 1774, 90 the government set the administrative board on a firmer footing, introducing the municipal officials, producing a better balance between temporary and permanent posts and insisting that any individual wishing to leave the board should first seek royal permission. In order to check against the sort of imprudent financial policies which had been the hopital's undoing, the government obliged the board to secure the approval of local magistrates before selling off any of their capital in the future. Finally, the revitalised board was to check any existing abuses within the hopital, draw up a new set of regulations and reduce the inmate population to 300. The salubrious effects of the government's intervention in the affairs of the hopital are clearly evident in the institution's accounts in the 1780s. 91 The considerable reduction in the amount spent on bread marked the effect of the cessation of bread doles within the city and of the passade. Building and repair costs had also fallen drastically since the 1740s. Outgoings in the form of payments on rentes and on loans a fonds perdu still comprised over a quarter of gross expenditure, but considerable progress was being made even in this sphere: at the height of the crisis in the 1770s, annual repayments on loans had topped the 60,000 livres mark; in 1780 they were still over 40,000 livres, but by 1789 they were down to under 13,000 livres.92 Charity had remained on a fairly steady keel and still far outdistanced the charitable income of any of the other poor-relief institutions in the city. The internal workshops were being better managed too, and the production of woollen bonnets and stockings and cotton cloths was fast becoming an extremely profitable enterprise. 93 Despite evident improvements after 1773, however, all was still far from well. Jean Colombier, the Royal Inspector of Hospitals and Prisons, who visited the hopital in 1785, was shocked to discover that the size of the inmate population had risen to levels far above those agreed in 1774. He proposed an immediate reduction in the intake of certain types of pauper and the imposition of much tighter budgetary control if the hopital was to avoid another bankruptcy. 94 The board, however, convinced that to stint on the ostentatious and gratuitously profuse distribution of aid was to risk the drying up of private charity, was able to hide behind the hopital's corporate, semi-private status to frustrate the reforming zeal of the government down to the outbreak of the Revolution. 95 In a period of rising prices, expanding population and overall deterio90 92 93 94
Ibid. For the new letters patent, ibid., 3 May 1775. HG I E 26 (5/7/1772), E 142, E 151. HG I E 345; R. Meissonnier, 1951, 161. A.N., F 15 226. 95 HG I E 389.
91 Table 6.
70
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
ration in popular living standards, then, the two major poor-relief institutions of Montpellier — and indeed of the whole surrounding region — were experiencing serious problems which signally reduced the extent of their service to the local community. After a considerable increase in its capacity in the first decades of the eighteenth century, the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi had been unable to increase its provision of care, and paupers had found themselves ousted from the hospital's beds by soldiers, lunatics and other fee-paying inmates. The city's Hopital General also had emerged much diminished from its trials and tribulations. In the 1740s the institution had distributed aid to 4,500 individuals in their homes; by the 1780s this bread dole had ceased. During the 1740s the hopital's inmate population had fluctuated between about 500 and 650 and was moving steadily towards the day when it numbered nearly 800; in the 1780s in contrast, the size of the population was always less than 500. On the very eve of the Revolution, moreover, both Montpellier hospitals faced suddenly increased difficulties — the hotel-Dieu as a result of its heavy dependence on income from fee-paying inmates, the hopital because of the administrative board's stubborn refusal to cut its coat according to its cloth. The straitened situation of both hospitals created a vacuum at the heart of the region's poor-relief provision which the Misericorde, for all its merits, was too slight to fill. The poor condition of the Montpellier hospitals in the last decades of the Ancien Regime reflected a situation which was far from untypical: most if not all hospitals of any substance were beset by grave financial problems. In many, the foundations of budgetary deficit had been laid by the financial debacle of the John Law system in the 1720s, which had affected the hospitals of Bas Languedoc particularly acutely since, for reasons which are not clear, the institutions here had less extensive property holdings and heavier investments in rentes than hospitals in many other areas.96 From the early eighteenth century, therefore, hospital administrators in the region had to face the dilemma which rent the boards of the two great Montpellier hospitals: namely, how best to scale down costs in a period when inflation was causing overheads to expand dangerously and reducing institutional purchasing power at the same time that it was swelling the ranks of those individuals who required assistance. Getting to grips with this dilemma called for a fund of managerial good sense unfortunately only too rare among the administrative boards of local 96 Losses under John Law: C 561 for the hospitals of Agde, Florensac, Gignac, Pezenas, Saint-Thibery; and, for the Lodeve hospital, J.A. Crouzet, Topographie medicate et statistique comparee de Lodeve,
Lodeve, 1912, 253. For the structure of the income of local hospitals, C. Bloch and A. Tuetey (eds.), op. cit., 564f.
Poor relief
71
charitable institutions. In a region well over 50 per cent illiterate, 97 the most basic administrative skills were sometimes in desperately short supply. In addition, patterns of kinship and patronage were so dense in some villages that the control of hospital boards or bureaux de charite might fall into the hands of local godfathers who used the distribution of poor-relief funds as a means of shoring up their local power. 98 The widespread extent of deficiencies in the administration of hospitals and bureaux de charite in minor localities away from the big urban centres came to light in enquiries into charitable resources which the government instituted in 1754, 1764, 1770, 1774 and 1788. 99 None of the most elementary regulations was being properly and universally observed. Many bodies had too few rotating officials or none at all. The principle of election of officials had almost everywhere been replaced by more or less camouflaged co-option. Even where election subsisted, it was on an extremely infrequent basis. Months and even years passed between the meeting of administrative boards, instead of the weekly hiatus usually envisaged. Poor book-keeping was the rule and some bureaux only audited their accounts on the infrequent visitations by their bishop. Neglect of formal regulations meant that in practice most charitable bodies were being run by a small charmed circle of the locally influential. These 'inner councils' normally included the cure — universally acknowledged, in Catholic villages at least, as the individual best suited to know in intimate detail the needs of poor families and most likely to possess the requisite discretion and integrity to distribute relief equitably. In some places, the cure more or less ran affairs single-handed. In some places, he was assisted by the consuls, by a tresorier or a couple of ladies from the local Confrerie de la Misericorde. In some places, especially in the larger bourgs, the bureau de charite had become conflated with the Misericorde, whose female officials controlled affairs, often with an exaggerated sense of secretiveness and self-importance. Perhaps the most typical case, in a region characterised by strong municipal traditions, however, was that of the cure or the Misericorde operating under the strict control of the local consuls or a tresorier or syndic des pauvres — himself often an ex-consul.
Although the charmed circle of charitable administrators might be zealous and conscientious in the performance of their duties, the general impression was of inefficiency and maladministration. There was a great 97 The literacy rate in the 'Herault' in 1786-90 was under 30 per cent. M. Fleury and P. Valmary, 'Les Progres de l'instruction elementaire de Louis XIV a Napoleon III d'apres 1'enquete de Louis Maggiolo (1877-1879)', Population, 1957, 81. 98 See especially G 1636 (for Poussan). 99 Appendix B for full details of sources, etc.
72
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
deal of neglect in ensuring that the payment of dues was kept up — most notoriously in the case of property, which often stood untended, unlet or with no rent being charged. The effects of such negligence could be irrevocably damaging. The bureau de charite of Corneilhan in the diocese of Beziers, for example, allowed its principal debtor to run up such large arrears that to prosecute him would have both bankrupted the bureau in legal fees and also reduced the individual concerned to a state of destitution in which the bureau would be obliged to accord him relief. 10° In a number of cases, too, inefficiency was spiced with peculation and corruption. 101 Often it was the case that charitable administration proved a sphere in which local power struggles could be fought out. Exact alliances varied: sometimes it was the seigneur versus the communal officials, sometimes the cure against one or other of these two, sometimes some other combination. 102 The effects on the well-being of the institutions in question were, however, invariably deleterious. The comments of the sub-delegate of Beziers on the hospitals in his region have a ring of verisimilitude which make them applicable to most small charitable bodies in the Montpellier region: reviewing the quality of their administration, he claimed that 'on ne peut pas dire qu'il y ait un seul hospice bien en regie', and went on to lament, 'le peu de secours que les pauvres peuvent retirer de ces biens et la difficulte de les faire regir d'une maniere conforme aux vues des donnateurs'. 103 The case of the Montpellier hospitals confirms, moreover, that this wretched state of affairs was not confined to the smaller establishments. In the larger centres, the problem sometimes boiled down to over- rather than under- administration. The numerous, doubtless well-intentioned dignitaries who composed the administrative board of the Hopital Saint-Charles at Sete, for example, evidently spent a great deal more of their time in checking other's pretensions to administrative dominance than in attending to the pressing needs of the institution. 104 A similar conflict — equally damaging to the establishment — brought the bishop and consuls of Lodeve to loggerheads in the 1770s over control of the local hospital board. 105 100 C 562. Cf. similar cases in Aspiran in the diocese of Beziers, C 567; and, in Marsillargues in the diocese of Nimes, E Sup Marsillargues GG 28. 101 Strong suggestions of outright dishonesty in the administration of institutions at Baillargues, Balaruc, Castries, Mauguio, Valflaunes in the diocese of Montpellier (C 563, C 5957); in Aspiran, Colombiers, Pailhes, Portirargues, Saint-Genies in the diocese of Beziers (C 567); and in Ceyras in the diocese of Lodeve (E. Appolis, 1951, 172). 102 For example: cases involving seigneurs, G 1636 (Poussan) and (for Marseillan), HS Hop Marseil 15, 17 and J. Fayet, Un village en BasLanguedoc. Marseillan, Montpellier, 1970, 20ff. For a dispute between cure and consuls in Marsillargues, E Sup Marsillargues GG 28. 103 C 567. Cf. C 29 (comments of Narbonne sub-delegate). 104 C 552. 105 E. Martin, Histoire de la ville de Lodeve depuis ses origines jusqu'a la Revolution, 2 vols., Montpellier,
1950, ii, 202.
Poor relief
73
The short supply of economic realism and managerial competence was all the more worrying in the case of the major institutions in that they bore the heaviest demands for assistance. It was they too which were worst affected by the inflationary rise in the cost of overheads. Their finances suffered accordingly. The accounts of the hospital at Lodeve, for example, showed a consistent deficit throughout the 1750s, and by 1763 expenditure was over-shooting income by nearly 3,000 livres. Despite urgent attempts to cut back on fixed costs, bankruptcy stalked the hospital down to the Revolution. 106 The same was true in nearby Clermont, where the decision of the bishop of Lodeve in 1752 to merge the revenues of the moribund Propagation de la Foi with those of the hospital gave the latter only temporary respite from its financial worries.107 A great many other large and medium-sized local hospitals - the two big Beziers hospitals, for example, as well as those in Sete, Saint-Pons, Marseillan, Meze and Frontignan — were also deep in financial difficulties on the eve of the Revolution. 108 No organ of public authority could hope to rescue the hospitals. Bishops on occasion made considerable donations and bequests; 109 the provincial Estates sometimes made generous grants for specific projects;110 entreaties could go out to the central government for letters patent to confirm and extend an institution's range of rights and privileges. None of these, however, provided any long-term solutions. Nor were communes of much avail. Most were heavily in debt themselves. Indeed, close association with an indebted municipality could be a liability, since consuls were not loth to extract loans from poor-relief institutions under their control on terms which were highly disadvantageous to the institution. 111 Forced back on their own resources, therefore, hospital administrators like those of Montpellier's institutions took any of a wide variety of palliatory measures. Some boards, for example, staved off financial ruin by reducing their commitments: by the introduction of food of a poorer quality, for example, by lowering the standards of hygiene, by deferring 106 C 561; HS Hop Lod 4, 22. 107 HS Hop Cler I A 2. 108 See in particular C 567, A. Soucaille, 'Notice sur l'hotel-Dieu Saint-Jacques ou hopital Mage de Beziers', 1883, and id., 'Notice sur l'hopital general Saint-Joseph de Beziers', M.S.A.B., 1884, 1885 (Beziers); C 560 (Sette); C 561 (Saint-Pons); HS Hop Marseil 37 (Marseillan); R. Arnaud, Ma ville a un passe. Histoire de Meze, Montpellier, 1966 (Meze); and C 5957 (Frontignan). For a similar situation in Pezenas, C 553 and, among minor institutions, L 2905 (Serignan); C 563 (Poussan); and G. Cros-Mayrevieille, L'Assistancepublique et priveeen Languedoc, Montpellier, 1914, 37 (Cazouls-les-Beziers). 109 Examples from the immediate pre-Revolutionary period cited by the hagiographic F. Saurel, Histoire religieuse du departement de I'Heraultpendant la Revolution, 4 vols., Montpellier, 1898, vol. i. 110 C 570, 1 X 26 (subvention to the Hopital Saint-Charles at Sette for the introduction offilles de la charite to run the hospital). 111 HS Hop Cler (unclassified documents); HS Hop Nissan (unclassified documents). For the indebtedness of communes see in particular M. Bordes, 1968.
74
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
building programmes and repairs or by reducing any extrinsic services. 112 A more stringent admissions policy also helped in this respect, as did the speeding-up of the turnover of inmates. 113 In order to spread limited resources more widely too, some hospital administrations, taking their cue from those so-called 'hopitaux' which had become bureaux de charite, began to devote a larger proportion of their income to home relief. This course of action — which made obvious economic sense - appears to have won favour with local charitable opinion. 114 Some hospital boards tried in addition to maximise their income by attracting more fee-paying inmates. Soldiers were a good bet here, as Montpellier's Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi had already discovered. The twelve or fourteen sols which the Ministry of War was prepared to pay for a day's treatment of a soldier in a civilian hospital appeared to leave some margin of profit, when prices were normal at least. By the end of the Ancien Regime, nearly a dozen hospitals in the region were taking in sick soldiers, and several admitted sailors as well. 115 Paying civilians were admitted into some hospitals too. Normally these were aged widows or widowers who paid the hospital a lump sum in return for bed and board until death. 116 In explaining the circumstances which obliged them to take such actions so foreign to the traditionally charitable vocation of hospitals, administrators made great play of a supposed dwindling in the flow of that almsgiving which was the life blood of all poor-relief institutions. Many complained in particular that the royal edict of 1749 on mainmort 117 — which had restricted the right of religious and charitable bodies to receive legacies - had significantly stemmed the flow of testamentary charities. The larger institutions had set about obtaining royal letters patent exempting them from the provisions of the edict — which was in any case somewhat relaxed in 1761. The process of obtaining letters patent was, however, long and drawn out — and therefore prohibitively expensive for most small institutions. 118 Not even letters patent, moreover, could counteract declining bequests. 112 C 553 (rice in the diet of the Beziers Hopital Saint-Joseph, 1762); C 567 (hygiene in the Beziers hospitals); Ball, (buildings and repairs in the hospitals at Clermont and Saint-Chinian); A. Soucaille, 1885 (cessation of ancient tradition of bread doles in Beziers). . . 113 C 5957 (Lunel); Arch. hosp. Saint-Pons E 1; HS Hop Cler IE 2; HS Hop Lod 22; and Ball. (Agde). 114 Details of hospitals offering home relief in the regional enquiries in Ball.; cf. above, note 9. For the unpopularity of poorly run hospitals, see esp., for Marsillargues, E Sup Marsillargues GG 27, GG 28; for Lansargues, C 5955; and for Poussan, G 1636. 115 Agde, Meze and Pezenas in the diocese of Agde, Ball., C 553; Beziers and Bedarieux in the diocese of Beziers, C 562, C 567; Lodeve and Clermont in the diocese of Lodeve, HS Hop Lod 29, HS Hop Cler I E 2, E 3, E 4; Sette in the diocese of Montpellier, Ball.; and Saint-Chinian in the diocese of Saint-Pons, C 561. 116 HS Hop Cler (unclassified documents); HS Hop Lod 34; and HS Hop Marseil 3. 117 C 567. Cf. C. Bloch, 1908, 3O5f. for the provisions of the edict of 1749. 118 For the problems of obtaining letters patent, cf. the case of Montpellier's Misericorde, recounted in C 512.
Poor relief
75
The philanthropy of the Enlightenment age of bienfaisance was not always, it would seem, well attuned to the needs of the poor-relief institutions. From his death-bed on his estates in Santo Domingo, for example, the sugar-planter Jean Singla bequeathed 400 livres to the poor of the hospital of his native Clermont — to be used for the purchase of twelve silver salvers for them to eat off!119 Another Clermontais, Jean Rouziere, on the Caribbean island of Grenada left no less than 10,000 livres for the establishment in his home town of an institution for the upbringing of twelve orphan girls. In 1782, the Maison des Orphelines de Clermont was finally opened. Much to the chagrin of the administrators of the town's hospital, who had fought hard to have this dubious legacy redirected into its own coffers in order to soak up some of its sizeable debts, only two orphan girls came forward to take up the twelve places in this manifestly over-endowed institution. 120 From such impressionistic evidence, it is difficult to assess how justified hospital administrators were in arraigning the deficiencies of charitable giving. There is, of course, a considerable fund of evidence of managerial incompetence on the part of administrators from the smallest to the largest institutions. There is the additional point that, in the unpropitious economic atmosphere of the eighteenth century, hospitals would have found the going rough, whatever the state of charitable giving. Nevertheless, the unimpressive and limited paternalism evinced by seigneurs, tithers and monastic clergy in the countryside strongly suggested that traditional Catholic charity was not all it had been. 121 An examination-of patterns of charitable giving in the regional capital will throw further light on this important issue. 119 HS Hop Cler I B 9, E 2. 120 HS Hop Cler III A 1, E 1; Ball. 121 If, of course, it ever had been! The 'Golden Age' of private charity may, like many such 'Golden Ages', be merely a myth born of dubious nostalgia.
The crisis of traditional charity
The medieval image of the pauper as Christ's representative, his earthly surrogate, the quasi-divine instrument of the charity — and thus the salvation - of the rich man, had long encouraged bountifulness towards the poor.* The Catholic doctrine of purgatory, with its emphasis on good works on earth piling up spiritual credit in the after life, contributed towards the continuing vitality of this image even as, from the late Middle Ages onwards, a counter-view developed in which the pauper became a source of moral, social and political danger. The Catholic Reformation in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries affirmed the virtues of almsgiving. The halo of holy poverty was still sufficiently intact in the eighteenth century for churchmen to utilise the instrumental view of the pauper inherited from the Middle Ages as a means of invoking the charity of their congregations. For Abbe Cambaceres, for example, one of Montpellier's foremost ecclesiastics in the last decades of the Ancien Regime and the uncle of Napoleon's archichancelier, the pauper remained, in God's providential plan, en quelque sorte le plus interessant de ses ouvrages et le secret de sa sagesse, qui a rendu le pauvre precieux et necessaire au riche; qui a voulu que le riche fut le protecteur du pauvre et le pauvre le sauveur des riches, qui les delivre du danger des richesses sur la terre en leur offrant les moyens de les convertir en charite qui leur servent a acheter le del. 2 If the mainspring of almsgiving was religious, its forms and contexts were limitless. 3 Besides the more formalised execution of religious foundations, almsgiving was an unthinking reflex among the orthodox Catholic laity and clergy. Parish priests were often held to be exemplars of charitableness. Many of the laity too were inveterate almsgivers. Well-off 1 M. Mollat, Les Pauvres et la societemedievale, Communication to the 13th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Moscow, 1970, for a good introduction to this topic. 2 Abbe" Cambaceres, Oeuvres completes, in Collection des orateurs sacres, edited by Abbe Migne", vol. lxv, Paris, 1854. 3 Cf. O. Hufton, 1974, esp. 133-7 and 194-216.
76
The crisis of traditional charity
11
ladies out for an afternoon stroll or returning from mass would have a few Hards in their purses to distribute to the needy beggar who crossed their path. Wealthy citizens gave to their domestics, the guilds and the plebeian clandestine workers' organisations (compagnonnages) gave to their more indigent brothers, prosperous Protestants gave to the needy within their ranks and so on. The anonymous 1768 chronicler estimated that over 100,000 livres changed hands in Montpellier in the form of face-to-face liberalities.4 This represents nothing more than an educated guess, of course, yet even if it were wildly inaccurate it is worth noting that such a sum far exceeded the annual charitable income of all the city's poor-relief institutions put together. 5 It helps to explain why Montpellier had acquired a reputation as 'le rendezvous des mandians' 6 and how the professional beggar here might earn a relatively lucrative living. Louis Peyre, for example, a failing octogenarian, but a past master in the arts of the outstretched hand, was able to send back to his native Lodeve each year more than two hundredweight of bread which he begged on the streets of Montpellier and which his family then proceeded to sell at a profit to wretched unemployed Lodevois weavers.7 It was becoming progressively more difficult, however, for entrepreneurs of begging such as Louis Peyre to flourish. From the time of the creation of a nation-wide network of hopitaux generaux in the mid seventeenth century, the French government had aimed to repress vagrancy by canalising the alms of the faithful away from the pocket of the street beggar and into the coffers of the main poor-relief institutions. Under the new scale of priorities to which many eighteenth-century churchmen subscribed, the unthinking handout to the impecunious waif was to be shunned because it deprived local poor-relief institutions of their due and was tantamount to subsidising sloth, vice and crime. 'II faut faire l'aumone . . . dans un esprit de compassion et de charite', the diocesan catechism urged, but also 'avec prudence et discernement'. 8 Bishop Colbert spelled the message out quite clearly in 1735 when he advocated the total cessation of manual almsgiving: 'Le zele que vous avez pour 1'indigence est bon [he told his flock]. Mais il faudrait en faire un meilleur usage . . . Apprenez, mes chers freres, a regler vos aumones.' 9 For Colbert, it was neither inhumane nor uncharitable to 4 Montpellier en 1768, 156. 5 The combined average annual income of the Hopital General, the Hotel-Dieu and the Misericorde from charity in the 1740s amounted to 48,371 livres and in the 1780s to 62,472 livres. 6 C 563. 7 HG I G 14. E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 96, and O. Hufton, 1974, 203, both retail this doubtless highly unrepresentative case. 8 Instruction generate en forme de catechisme, 5 vols., Riom, 1803, ii, 117. 9 H G I G 13. These instructions were renewed by Colbert's successor, Charancy, in 1758.
78
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
refuse aid to those of the poor who fell outside the canopy of established poor-relief institutions, since 'communement ils n'ont ni moeurs ni religion' and thus qualified for punishment rather than sympathy. The virtue of charity should properly be exercised by assisting established poor-relief institutions in one's home town: for the inhabitants of Montpellier, therefore, it should take the form of succouring the city's three main charitable institutions, the Hopital General, the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi and the Misericorde. Episcopal ordinances, ratified and enshrined in royal letters patent, had accorded Montpellier's poor-relief institutions a quasi-monopoly of indigenous charity. Obligatory thank-offerings for offices registered in the Cour des Aides, for example, went to the two hospitals which also received fines from cases which came before the Presidial and the Bureau de Police. Persons wishing to be exempted fasting regulations during Lent were instructed to make a penance into the coffers of either the Hopital General or the Misericorde. The hospitals, and a number of local religious bodies, were permitted to keep permanent collection boxes in the city's churches and chapels and to hold special collections outside church doors on fixed days of the liturgical year. Two occasions in particular stood out from the continual rounds of charitable offerings: the collection held each Maundy Thursday outside church doors and the house-to-house collection held by hospital administrators each Spring. Together, these were the closest Montpellier came to a communal levy in favour of the poor. The proceeds which the institutions derived from these collections in the eighteenth century constitute an interesting indicator of their ranking order in the affections of the city's inhabitants. 10 The clear primacy of the Hopital General in receipts from the Maundy Thursday collections and the overwhelming superiority which it, the Hotel-Dieu and the Misericorde had over other institutions may partly, it is true, have been a reflection of the more extensive collection rights which the bishop allowed them. The fact, however, that much the same hierarchy emerged from the income of each from their Spring collections11 - in which all solicited the alms of the faithful on equal terms - suggests a degree of stability in the respect which the inhabitants of the city manifested towards the institutions. Receipts from these two sources also mark the general trend of charitable 10 Graph 3. The Maundy Thursday collections were evidently one of the sights of Montpellier, and attracted the remarks of, inter al., the philosopher John Locke at the end of the seventeenth century, Locke's Travels in France, 1675—1679. As Related in hisJournals, Correspondence and Other Papers, edited
by J. Lough, London, 1953; and the genteel English traveller Mrs Cradock at a century's remove in 17 85, Journal de Madame Cradock. Voyage en France, 1783-1786,
edited by O. Delphi n, Paris, 1896,
139. Details on collection rights, HGIB 5 54, HDIE 31. For sermons preached prior to the Spring collection by the chaplain of the Hopital General, HG I C 4. 11 Graph 3.
The crisis of traditional charity
79
7000 1. Hbpital General: Quette 6000
5000
2. Hbtel-Dieu Saint-Eloi: Quette
4000
3000
3. Misericorde: Quette
2000
,.^/\
1000
4. Hbpital General: Jeudi Saint 5. Hbtel-Dieu Saint-Eloi: Jeudi Saint 6. Misericorde: Jeudi Saint 7. Bon Pasteur: Jeudi Saint 8. Pret Gratuit: Jeudi Saint
1700
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Graph 3 Receipts of Montpellier's charitable institutions from their Maundy Thursday collection (Bassins dujeudi Saint) and Spring collection (Quette Generate) in the eighteenth century Sources: H G I E 361-364; H D I E 31; Fonds Mis.; Fonds Bon Pasteur; Archives du Pret Gratuit
giving over the last half-century or so of the Ancien Regime. The hopital managed to maintain its pride of place down to the Revolution. The limited degree of correlation between years of high prices and years of high receipts suggest relatively little responsiveness to current needs on the part of Montpellier's charity-givers. Ominously, too, the long-term trend was of stability and stagnation. In a period of inflation, this signified a decline in real terms. 12 A far more reliable and nuanced picture of long-term charitable trends in Montpellier emerges from a study of the wills made by the city's 12 At current prices, the annual average of receipts of the Hopital General from the Spring collection in the 1740s, for example, would have purchased 849 setters of meteil; in the 1780s, it would have purchased only 697 setters — a decline of nearly 20 per cent.
80
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
Table 7. Composition of the average annual charitable income of the three major poor-relief institutions in Montpellier during the 1740s Hopital General Amount
Amount
(in
(in
livres)
1. 2. 3. 4.
Hotel-Dieu
ion 1 386 Maundy Thursday collection City collection in Spring 5521 12 114 Legacies Other 4 665
%
5.9 23.3 51.1 19.7
23 686
Amount (in
livres)
%
8.2 989 2 877 23.9 Q
Misericorde
1
Q/l
12 052
67.9
livres) 833
1703 6 052
4044
% 6. 6 13. 5
47. 9 32. 0
12 632
Sources: HG I E 102-111; HD I E 79-88; Fonds Mis.
inhabitants. Administrators cherished their right to receive legacies even more dearly than their collection privileges. Such bequests were always likely to represent the largest charitable donation which any well-off individual made, and the sums derived from them far outweighed what the institutions could expect from any other single source of charitable income. 13 Since the Middle Ages, the church had striven to make the will not simply an economic transaction for the disposal of an individual's earthly goods but also a religious document which allowed him a final opportunity to affirm his beliefs and to practise good works. 14 This view was largely accepted and internalised by the Catholic laity in the post-Tridentine period. The will came to represent simultaneously the most private and the most public of acts. It was private and personal, first, in that it was likely to be drawn up at a highly charged moment in an individual's life. A large proportion of wills were actually made on the death-bed. But even if it were only joining the army, setting out on long-distance travel or the prospect of childbirth which was the pretext, 15 the sequestered calm of the notary's office, with the presence of a couple of witnesses, brought home the solemnity of the procedure: life was held to be at risk, and testators were 13 Table 7. The figures for the 1780s are similar. For examples of individuals bringing forward their testamentary charities into their own lifetimes, HG I B 20; HG I E 168. 14 For the will as a source for religious and charitable practice, see the pioneering work of M. Vovelle, Piete baroque et dechristianisation en Provence au XVHle siecle. Les attitudes devant la mort dapres les clauses des testaments, Paris, 1973. For testamentary practice in Montpellier, cf. L. de Charrin, Les Testaments dans la region de Montpellier au Moyen Age, Montpellier, law thesis, 1958; and G. Penot, Des clauses restrictive, extensives et religieuses contenues dans les testaments aux XVIIe et XVHle siecles a Montpellier,
Montpellier, law thesis, 1952. 15 All are pretexts for making a will encountered among the wills discussed in this chapter.
The crisis of traditional charity
81
therefore mindful, in the devotional language of the day, of 'le moment terrible dont depend I'eternite'. 16 Many wills composed in Montpellier in the eighteenth century began with a phrase such as 'sachant que tout creature est sujet a la mort, et qu'il n'y a rien de si incertain que le moment d'icelle'. There followed, in the classic traditional will, a religious preamble of variable length. In one of the more elaborate prefaces found frequently in Montpellier wills, for example, the testator commended son ame a Dieu, le pere tout puissant, le suppliant par son divine Misericorde et par les merites infinies de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ son flls, de lui faire pardon de toutes ses fautes et peches et apres le depart de cette vie mortelle de recevoir son ame dans son Royaume celeste invoquant a ces fins l'intercession de la Glorieuse Vierge Marie et de tous les saints et saintes du Paradis.17 This preamble to the traditional will, which purported to express the feelings of the testator at the moment of death, was followed by a series of clauses in which the individual chose where he wished to be buried, stipulated a number of masses to be said for the repose of his soul, and made various religious and charitable bequests. These clauses were highly stereotyped in form; but their exact composition and the 'weighting' of prayers, masses and benefactions depended entirely on the personal decision of the testator. 18 Eminently private and personal in its contents and in the circumstances of its formulation, the will was also the most public of documents in that its provisions were intended to be consummated in an ostentatious ritual which accorded additional spiritual lustre to the death of the testator. The city-folk of Montpellier in the early eighteenth century were still 16 Cited in M. Vovelle, 1973, 75. For sources utilised in examining these wills, see the full list of notarial archives and the archives of Pre'sidial and Sene'chausse'e of Montpellier. The present study of wills is based on an exhaustive examination of wills made before Montpellier notaries by persons permanently resident in the city in the years 1740, 1741, 1785 and 1786. The two sets of two years were chosen so as to obtain representative (and manageable!) samples of charitable giving in the 1740s and 80s. I selected two years in the middle rather than at the end of the latter decade in order to avoid studying a period when the charities of city-folk were temporarily and artificially swollen by the pre-Revolutionary crisis. The sample obtained from the four years in question was of 891 wills: 499 from 1740 and 1741, 392 in 1785 and 1786. If the figures from the latter period are representative, about half the adult population of the city made wills (the number of deaths of adults in those years was 962, according to J. A. Mourgue, op. cit., Year IX, but not all of these would be residents of the city). There is an interesting discussion of the historical value of wills in the light of Vovelle's work in P. Chaunu, 'Un nouveau champ pour l'histoire serielle: le quantitatif au troisieme niveau', in Melanges en I'honneur de Femand Braudel, 2 vols., Paris, 1973. 17 Examples culled from II E 55 242. 18 Cf. M. Vovelle, Mourir autrefois. Attitudes collectives devant la mort aux XVlle et XVllle siecles, Paris,
1974. Notaries either memorised standard formulae or else — more likely, perhaps — carried small code-books around with them on their visits to the bedside. Nevertheless, the infinite number of verbal variants encountered in the Montpellier wills suggests that testators had a great deal of discretion to choose the exact wording they wanted and to veto phrases and indeed whole preambles if they saw fit. Cf. M. Vovelle, • 1973, 55f. on this point.
82
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
thoroughly steeped in the 'baroque piety' 19 characteristic of the postTridentine Catholic church in which the funeral was the showpiece of death, a Visual sermon', 20 resplendent with ornate theatricality. The 1768 chronicler noted of Montpellier funerals: Outre les confreries dont ceux qu'on ensevelit, les corps religieux, les pretres et le clerge de la paroisse y assiste, ensuite les enfants de l'hopital avec des chapes grises de laine et qui portent des torches armoriees devant et derriere le corps. Les parents suivent avec leur amis, precedes d'un maitre de ceremonies en robbe et baguette. Le corps doit etre porte a la paroisse soit que Ton y enterre ou non. L'autel est garny des cierges armories, les banes tendus de noir, ainsy que l'eglise ou se fait Tinhumation. Si le defunt est membre de quelque corps, ce corps assiste a son enterrement avant le deuil et quatre membres portent le drap d'honneur, armories aux quatre coins.21 Dying was clearly a complicated business in eighteenth-century Montpellier, and costly too, since social convention held that an heir who did not provide a funeral commensurate with the status of the deceased was shirking his duties. Little wonder that testators made such minutely detailed provisions. Some individuals specifically stated in their wills that their funerals were to be conducted sans aucune ceremonie, but this was less a show of niggardliness than a religious refinement, fairly common in Jansenist circles. Simplicity was, however, the exception in a city which took such evident pleasure in display. Even destitute inmates of the Hopital General were found scraping together their last sous so as to be able to afford a decent coffin with shroud and bearers, three priests to accompany the bier and recite prayers for the soul of the deceased, half a dozen children to follow the procession, the loan of funeral garments for the mourners and the other customary accoutrements.22 Similarly, it was, one may wager, less the cares of this world than hopes for the life to come which led one Montpellier resident to make a will full of the traditional religious clauses and phraseology only to dispose of earthly goods precisely itemised as 'une fourchette dont la queue est cassee, une cuillere et un chandelier'. 23 At the other end of the social scale, the burials of the very wealthy were colossally impressive civic spectaculars with casts of thousands. The funeral of the famous Jansenist (sic) Bishop Colbert in 1738, for example, with between four and five thousand official mourners proceeding solemnly around the bounds of the city, quite apart from the people at large who simply looked on, brought the city to a standstill. On such occasions the funeral became 19 For the use of the term 'baroque' as a cultural expression rather than merely referring to an artistic style, V.L. Tapie\ Le Baroque, 3rd edn, Paris, 1968, 34ff. 20 P. Chaunu, 'Mourir a Paris (XVIe - XVIIe - XVIIIe siecles)' Ann. E.S.C., 1976, 30. 21 Montpellier en 1768, 26. 22 Frequent examples in the private papers of deceased inmates of the Hopital General of Montpellier, HG I H 1 to H 5. 23 An example from 1773, cited by G. Penot, 1952, 26.
The crisis of traditional charity
83
not merely an assertion of individual prestige and piety, but a solid affirmation of collective religious sentiment. 24 The last half-century of the Ancien Regime was to witness the effective liquidation of the traditional will and, with it, the prevalence of the sort of ostentatiously public piety exemplified in Bishop Colbert's funeral. Where once a high proportion of testators had observed most or all of the features of the traditional will, on the eve of the Revolution only a handful were still doing so. Of all wills drawn up by residents of Montpellier in 1740 and 1741 before local notaries, 25 all but a tiny minority contained religious preambles, and two-thirds contained complex and florid formulations - yet by 1785 and 1786, under 1 per cent used the lengthier forms, and well over half omitted a religious preamble altogether. 26 By that time too, only one person in six was stating a wish to be buried in a specific location, as against nine out often who had done so in the earlier period. 27 Similarly, whereas 60 per cent of testators in the early period had made arrangements for masses to be said for the repose of their souls, only a quarter did so on the eve of the Revolution. 28 A perceptible fall over the period was also observable in the proportion of wills containing benefactions to ecclesiastical institutions; while the wills containing charitable bequests also slumped by half.29 The main importance of this secularisation of the traditional will from the point of view of the present study is this falling away in the practice of testamentary giving which formed, as we have seen, the main component of the charitable income of local poor-relief institutions. It is not insignificant to record, however, that this change formed part of a much broader transformation of collective religious sensibilities. The precise content of this transformation has been disputed. While the making of a will and the other forms of funereal piety are religious acts, the performance of an act 24 This point was doubtless not lost on the city's Protestant community. Colbert's funeral is described at length inC. D'Aigrefeuille, Histoirede la villede Montpellier\ 4vols., Montpellier, 1885, iii, 284. The calculations of numbers involved are my own. 25 See above, note 16. 26 The full breakdown of formulae according to the degree of expressiveness and to the length is contained in my thesis, 'Poverty, vagrancy and society in the Montpellier region, 1740—1815', Oxford D. Phil, thesis, 1978. It is in essence a Montpelli£rain adaptation of that to be found in M. Vovelle, 1973. In 1740 and 1741, 66.3 per cent had expressive formulae; in 1785 and 1786, 0.5 did so. 27 The exact figures were: 89.4 per cent in 1740 and 1741, 17.9 per cent in 1785 and 1786. Virtual unanimity was achieved in the earlier period by upper-class groups: 100 per cent for bourgeois and negotiants, 97.6 per cent for nobles and high officials, 93.1 per cent for the liberal professions, and so on. 28 The overall fall, from 61.7 per cent to 26.0 per cent masked a marked disparity between the figures for men (from 56.0 to 13.4 per cent) and those for women (from 66.4 to 35.1 per cent). 29 Religious benefactions, made without any stipulation as to prayers, burial rights etc., fell from 6.8 to 2.6 per cent between the two sample periods; charitable bequests from 44.9 to 24.2 per cent. Here, as with all other stipulations, the percentages from the upper-class groups were very considerably higher than those from plebeian backgrounds.
84
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
does not necessarily signify an underlying belief.30 It would of course be simplistic in the extreme to contend that, in a sphere of social life in which a variety of sanctions and constraints operated in the direction of conformity, the will can be taken as an infallible guide to the personal beliefs of any individual testator, particularly so in Montpellier which contained small but significant pockets of Protestants and Jansenists, both of whom tended to shun the baroque piety which was the norm. 31 Nevertheless, viewed collectively, wills do, if nothing else, register the relative strength of the pressures towards conformity and, by inference, the general acceptance of these pressures. Some historians have pointed out that the decline of externalised forms of religious practice might denote the evolution of a more internalised, more purely and authentically spiritual religiosity.32 This may well have been the case for some dmes d'elite\ yet it would be stretching the evidence beyond credibility to envisage a religious revival in late eighteenth-century Montpellier. The city was no longer the staunchly orthodox scourge of Protestant dissidence which it had been at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; it had become a city of more mundane concerns and carnal pleasures.33 The bulk of impressionistic evidence points towards a growing religious indifference on the part of local inhabitants which some historians might be tempted to dub 'dechristianisation'. The religious ceremonies characteristic of baroque piety were seemingly losing their power to fascinate and entrance. As theprocureur du rot regretfully noted in 1783 of one of the main religious manifestations of the liturgical calendar, for example: pendant la Fete-Dieu, on voit les rues que les processions parcourent remplies de monde, plus occupe de l'esprit de curiosite et de dissipation qui les attire que du devoir qu'on a a les remplir; on les voit nonchalamment sur des chaises, y former des cercles et donner lieu au moment ou la procession passe a des irreverences et indecences dont rougissent les moins devots.34 How were Montpellier's poor-relief institutions affected by this cultural shift which, whatever its exact meaning, certainly comprised a profound mutation in collective religious sensibilities? The desire of testators to 30 On this whole question of belief and practice, see the very pertinent remarks of G. Le Bras, Etudes de sociologie religieuse, 2 vols., Paris, 1956, passim. 31 For Jansenists, V. Durand, 1907;G. Cholvy, 1973; and X. Azema's chapter on the Ancien Regime in G. Cholvy (ed.), Histoire des dioceses de France. Le Diocese de Montpellier, Paris, 1976. For Protestants, cf. P. Corbiere, Histoire de I'Eglisereformkde Montpellier depuis son originejusqu'a nos jours, Montpellier, 1861. 32 The whole question of 'dechristianisation' is a much debated one. Besides the works of Vovelle cited above, see also the overview of J. Delumeau, 'Au sujet de la dechristianisation', R.H.M.C., 1975. 33 See above, Chapter 1. 34 Cited in D'Aigrefeuille, op. cit., iv, 728. Other indications of the growth of religious indifference are too numerous to be listed. For a sampler: Montpellier en 1768, 26ff.; E. Le Roy Ladurie, 1966, 890; G. Cholvy (ed.), 1976, I63ff.; and so on.
The crisis of traditional charity
85
choose their own burial-place — at the most basic level because interment in monastic or hospital surroundings was some sort of guarantee against the depredations of the grave-digging medical students who ran amok in public cemeteries, 35 and also a mark of personal or family associations with a specific institution — could benefit the city's hospitals: 1.8 per cent of testators in 1740 and 1741 chose a hospital chapel or cemetery, and the agreed fee was often supplemented by a sizeable additional donation. As the woeful history of the Hopital General's chapel indicated, however, the bottom was falling out of the burial-site market as the Revolution approached. 36 Partly this was due to a royal edict of 1776 which largely on hygienic grounds prohibited interments within churches and chapels; 37 partly, to a quite independent and perceptible decline in overall demand. Besides burial locations, the attenuation of baroque piety also adversely affected demand for the services of children from the Hopital General who were hired out for a fee to bear candles in funeral processions. 38 Losses of these sorts, however, paled into insignificance when set against the potential threat to the poor-relief institutions implicit in the decline of testamentary charitable provisions. This aspect of the decline in traditional religiosity deserves particular attention. Charitable bequests formed an integral part of the traditional Montpellier will. Statistically, nearly half the wills made in the city in 1740 and 1741 contained charitable provisions, and figures far higher than the mean - nearly 80 per cent for nobles and high officials, for example, over two-thirds for businessmen and 'bourgeois' 39 - were recorded by all the wealthiest social groups. Such benefactions far outnumbered simple bequests to religious bodies such as monasteries, parishes and confreries.40 35 For grave-digging, see below, page 125; for family associations with particular monasteries, see L. Grasset-Morel, 'Necropoles montpellieraines', A.S.L.M. (S.L.), 1907; 1 E 159 (links between the robin Germain family and the Trinitaires); and L. Grasset-Morel, Les Bonnier ou une famille de financiers au XVHle siecle, Paris, 1886, passim (links with the Recollets). 36 See above, page 64. 37 Ibid. For the failure fully to observe the royal edict, however, at local level, see C 504 and F. Saurel, 'Les Anciennes Chapelles et eglises des Penitents blancs de Montpellier' in Melanges de litterature et cthistoire religieuses publies a I'occasion du jubile de Mgr de Cabrieres, 3 volsv, Paris, 1899, i, 300f. 38 H G I E 349 to 356. Annual income from this source in the 1740s was on average 1,050 litres; in the 1750s, 1,133 litres; in the 1760s 1,058 livres; in the 1770s, 1,011 litres; and in the 1780s, 960 livres. The decline was in feet even sharper than these figures suggest since the board of the hospital was charging consistently higher rates towards the end of the Ancien Regime. 39 Social groups with figures above the mean: nobles and high officials (78.1 per cent); negociants (72.7); bourgeois (66.7); merchants and traders (62.1); members of the liberal professions (58.3); and artisans (45.9). Only the numerically large categories of urban wage-earners (30.4) and agricultural day-labourers (14.1) fell below the average. 40 There were 371 charitable bequests, as against 48 purely religious ones. Like Vovelle, I differ on this point in my interpretation from the classic study of W.K. Jordan, Philanthropy in England, 1480—1660'. A Study in the Changing Pattern ofEnglish SocialAspirations, London, 1959, whoadduces the trend from religious to charitable donations as evidence of the 'secularisation of the charitable impulse'.
86
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
Their inclusion in the religious preface to the economic corpus of the will denoted that they were seen as essentially religious rather than as secular in character. Charitable institutions, moreover, acted as 'spiritual brokers' for their benefactors. It was tacitly understood that a legacy to the Hopital General, for example, entitled the donor to the prayers of the poor thought particularly efficacious in the soul's passage through purgatory. A bequest of a certain size would also carry the right to free burial, processionary accompaniment and an agreed number of masses all at the hopital's expense.41 Religion not only provided much of the stimulus behind charitable bequests. The general pattern of charitable giving in 1740 and 1741 still largely conformed to the ideas on religious and charitable issues prevalent since the formation of hopitaux generaux in the seventeenth century. In particular, the bulk of charities was directed towards local institutions of poor relief rather than into the pockets of the poor. 42 Bequests to institutions far and away outnumbered bequests to the poor. Even individuals making bequests to the latter showed discrimination: most stipulated that the moneys were to pass through the hands of the local parish priest, the accredited overseer of the needy in any locality.43 Testamentary charities thus shunned the face-to-face contacts criticised by church and state. The two city hospitals were clearly the most popular beneficiaries: they figured in twice as many wills as all the other institutions put together, and received marginally less than two-thirds of all charitable bequests made in the wills of 1740 and 1741. Most popular of all — thus confirming its primacy in the Maundy Thursday and Spring collections — was the hopital, with over twice the number of bequests of either the hotel-Dieu or Misericorde. The share which these three institutions held of legacies and bequests far outstripped that of any other body or group. 44 Much of the overall pattern of charitable giving remained intact in wills made in the 1780s. The institutional bias of relief was as marked as before; the urban setting continued to provide the framework for the distribution of bequests, with only a tiny fraction of wills containing 'extra-mural* provisions; and charitable bequests still far outnumbered religious ones. 45 41 HGI E 19 (27/8/1741), E 22 (19/10/1755, 23/5/1756)and E 23 (17/12/1758). Cf. Montpellieren 1768, 26. 42 'Extra-mural' charities amounted to only 5.4 per cent of all those made in 1740 and 1741. 43 Only 13 of the 49 bequests to the poor of the parishes of Montpellier were to pass through the hands of the heirs. 44 The proportional share of 'infra-mural' charities in 1740 and 1741 was as follows: H6pital General, 43.3 per cent; H6tel-Dieu, 21.4 per cent; Misericorde, 21.9 per cent; others, 13.4 per cent. Table 8. 45 6.8 per cent of charitable bequests were 'extra-mural' in 1785 and 1786; there were 205 charitable bequests and only 10 purely religious ones.
The crisis of traditional charity
87
Yet despite these points of similarity, a crucial change in the scale of charitable giving had occurred: in 1785 and 1786 only 24.3 per cent of Montpellier wills contained charitable provisions, where 44.9 per cent had done so in 1740 and 1741. Although the fall in the incidence of giving was not so marked towards the very top of the social scale, it was sharp and almost brutal in the case of middling categories such as artisans, merchants, shopkeepers and members of the liberal professions.46 The sexual disparity was even more striking than sociological differences: the proportion of wills made by women which included charitable bequests fell from 42.7 per cent toll .6 per cent, while the corresponding figures for men were 47.6 and 19.5 per cent. The gravity of the overall decline in charitable giving was mitigated by two factors. First, there was an increase in the average number of bequests which each benefactor made. The charitably minded had made on average 1.8 bequests in 1740 and 1741, but in 1785 and 1786 made 2.1. Indeed by the 1780s many of the wealthier testators were averaging over three bequests, a figure which had very rarely been achieved in the 1740s.47 Secondly, the value of bequests increased over the same period. The 499 wills made in 1740 and 1741 had produced an estimated 62,084 livres, while only 392 wills in 1785 and 1786 raised 68,536 livres.48 The size of the average bequest had consequently risen from 160 to over 300 livres.
There was in the 1780s, therefore, a sort of spectacular bienfaisant philanthropy which helped to keep alive Montpellier's reputation for generosity, even in the midst of a decline in the incidence of giving and 46 Social groups with a good record in this sphere were nobles and high officials, 70.0 per cent (as against 78.1 per cent in the earlier period); bourgeois, 66.7 (66.7); and negotiants, 62.5 (72.7). At a much lower level, the same might be said of agricultural workers, 14.3 (14.1). Social groups with a poor record were the liberal professions, 35.0 (58.3); merchants and traders, 23.4 (62.1); artisans, 25.6 (45.9); and urban wage-earners, 20.8 (30.4). 47 By 'charitably minded' is meant those testators who made charitable bequests. The average number of bequests per testator, as against those 'charitably minded' was of course lower in 1785 and 1786 than in the earlier period. In 1740 and 1741, only charity-givers among the nobles and high officials (2.6) and negotiants (2.0) averaged two bequests or more per will. In 1785 and 1786, thisfigurewas surpassed by nobles and high officials (3.0), liberal professions (2.1), bourgeois (3.3), negotiants (3.6) and merchants and traders (2.6). 48 The estimation of the value of charitable bequests is not an easy task. It is facilitated by the fact that, with the exception of a handful of cases in which individuals left their clothes or linen to the poor, all bequests were in cash. What is impossible however, from the evidence presented by the wills, is to calculate the sums involved where individuals made poor-relief institutions their heirs. Where this happened in the sample covered here, I conferred on the inheritance the value of the average size bequest of the social group to which the testator belonged. This is a necessarily rough and ready procedure. Charitable administrators occasionally claimed that inheritances brought in less than they appeared to, since such wills normally entailed other donations and services. It seems reasonable to assume, however, first, that since most of the bequests were to charitable institutions they were intended to be beneficial in nature, and that, second, the sums involved were directly related to the social class of the testators.
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Poverty under the Ancien Regime
Table 8. Recipients ofcharitable bequests in Montpellier wills in 1740 and 1741, and in 1785 and 1786 1785-6
1740-1
Recipient 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Hopital General Hotel-Dieu St-Eloi Misericorde Poor of the parishes Pret Gratuit Other Montpellier institutions
Value (in
Value (in livres)
%
25521 9001 13 705 2 792 50 6945
21.4 21.9 8.0 0.3 5.1
43.3
livres)
%
23 019 10438 21077 5 998 1450 3 750
25.7
100.0 7. Outside Montpellier
18.8 35.1 11.0 2.6 6.8 100.0
4070
2 804
62 084
68 536
Presentation and sources: For the sources of the wills used, see List of sources in bibliography. The value of the wills is based on all bequests made by Montpellier residents to all institutions. For problems in calculation, see note 48. The percentage given is the proportional share of all 'intra-mural' charities, and charitable destinations outside Montpellier have been omitted from the calculations.
in the traditional ostentatious religiosity. The coexistence of these two contrasting trends helps to explain, for example, the doggedness which the members of the administrative board of the Hopital General had displayed in the 1760s, 70s and 80s in opposing the introduction of reforms and economies which threatened the traditional charitable basis of the institution. 49 Arguments such as theirs which invoked the continued existence of a spectacular philanthropy within the city ignored, however, the profound sea-change which had occurred in traditional charity. Fewer individuals were making bequests, and although those who did give gave more, their charities bought increasingly less. At contemporaneous prices, the 62,084 livres produced by the wills of 1740 and 1741 would have purchased some 9,551 setiers of meteil; the 68,536 livres produced by the wills of 1785 and 1786 would, in contrast, have purchased only 7,291 setiers — a decline of nearly a quarter. The arguments deployed by the administrators of the Hopital General were all the more fallacious in that by the 1780s the institution had lost its erstwhile pre-eminence in the affections of the charitably minded. In 1740 49 See above, page 67.
The crisis of traditional charity
89
and 1741, the hopital had received something approaching half the total charitable bequests made; in 1785 and 1786 it received only a quarter. 50 The hotel-Dieu also saw its share of bequests fall although not as sharply as that of the hopital. Other institutions benefited from this decline in the favour in which the city's hospitals were held. Minor institutions such as the Oeuvre des Prisonniers, the Chambre de Travail and the Pret Gratuit took a larger share of bequests in the 1780s than they had formerly.51 Distributions to the poor of the parishes, using the cures as charitable intermediaries, were also relatively more frequent in the later period. 52 The new darling of Montpellier's charitably minded, however, was undoubtedly the Misericorde. By the later period it received 35.1 per cent of all bequests — as against 21.9 per cent earlier — and was far and away the most popular of the city's poor-relief institutions. 53 The reversal in the charitable priorities of Montpellier's testators seems to have been closely linked to the varying fortunes of the different institutions. The financial woes and shrinking capacity of the hopital, for example, appear to have had a strong bearing on its relative fall from grace, while the expansion of the activities of the Misericorde helped account for its new-won favour. Montpellier's testators might have become more sparing with their liberalities by the eve of the Revolution; but the charitably minded amongst them voted more discriminatingly with their pockets according to the respective performances of the city's poor-relief institutions. The history of other religious and partly charitable institutions in Montpellier in the last decades of the Ancien Regime largely confirmed that a swing away from customary norms had taken place in the charitable priorities of the city's inhabitants. Interestingly, the decline in the fortunes of the hopital was mirrored by the decay of other creations of the religious revival of the seventeenth century which had similarly combined a concern for the problem of poverty with moral policing, religious orthodoxy and enforced confinement. The Bon Pasteur, for example, the reformatory for prostitutes and for women adjudged in need of moral correction, was increasingly seen as obsolete in its conception and operations. 54 A question 50 Table 8. 51 Ibid. 52 This tendency should be taken in conjunction with the success of the Misericorde to show the attractiveness of home-relief charities. 5 3 The success of the Misericorde is partly related to the better charitable 'performance' of women in the 1780s. The Misericorde was a confrerie composed of women, and many of its numerous — and wealthy — members made it a benefaction. The institution's popularity was even more pronounced if its succursals such as the Oeuvre des Prisonniers are included: its proportional share of 'infra-mural' charities then goes up to 37.6 per cent. 54 The Bon Pasteur had received three legacies in 1740 and 1741, bringing it 2,200 livres; in 1785 and 1786 it received no bequests, C. Jones, 1978. The Refuge too, which also specialised in cases of moral correction, similarly received no bequests in 1785 and 1786, whereas it had been the object of three bequests in 1740 and 1741.
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Poverty under the Ancien Regime
mark hung too, towards the end of the Ancien Regime, over the futures of the Propagande and the Providence, institutions which had originated in the period of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and in which children of a Protestant family received a Catholic education in an atmosphere which smacked of both the boarding-school and the prison. 55 Favour now tended to be bestowed upon bodies which had a less single-mindedly religious bias, and which endeavoured to succour the poor in their homes rather than within special institutions. The Pret Gratuit was a case in point. 56 This charitable pawnshop had lain relatively dormant for most of the early part of the eighteenth century but, with the decline in the fortunes of the hopital and under the benevolent patronage of successive bishops of Montpellier, it finally achieved a place in the sun in the 1760s. The Pret Gratuit had averaged less than 150 loans a year in the four decades prior to 1763. Charitable income from this time expanded rapidly: by the late 1760s, it was averaging over 200 loans a year, by the 1770s about 1,000 a year and, in the crisis years preceding the Revolution, over 2,000 loans, representing a turnover of 40,000 livres}1 The pristine religious edge to the institution - it had been founded in 1684 by a group of devots anxious to keep the poor out of the hands of rapacious, and doubtless Protestant, usurers — was slowly erased. Although it continued to be a confrerie under the general supervision of the bishop, it made loans regardless of religion to virtually anyone who had a fixed address, who was not obviously dishonest, and who had something — if only a cupboardful of linen - to use as a gage. By 1789, its clientele was widening to include not only the general run of 'travailleurs, artisans, honteux, pour lesquels la plus petite depense est considerable', but even 'marchants et capitalistes', attracted by the free credit which the institution could offer.58 The Protestant church which, like the Pret Gratuit, was in a state of relative dormancy for most of the eighteenth century, also staged a revival which coincided with the steadily failing powers of the city's hospitals. The slow thaw in Catholic—Protestant relations from the second quarter of the century eventually bore fruit in the formation in Montpellier in the 1760s of a bureau de charite composed of Protestant elders who distributed alms to the poorer members of their congregation. 59 Protestant notables 55 For the Propagande and Providence, see A.M. Montpellier, GG (unclassified documents); Fonds Propagation de la Foi (unclassified). Cf. Montpellier en 1768, 18. 56 The archives of the Pret Gratuit, which I have consulted in the present-day offices of the oeuvre, have given rise to a very thorough, though unstatistical study: L. Mandon, Histoire du Pret-gratuit de Montpellier, Montpellier, 1892. 57 Archives du Pret Gratuit, registers of transactions. 58 Ibid. 59 P. Corbiere, 1861, 448, 483; E. Hughes (ed.), Les Synodes du desert. Actes et regiments des synodes nationaux etprovinciaux tenus au desert de la France de Van 1715 a I'an 1793, 3 vols., Paris, 1885, ii,
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91
including several enormously wealthy businessmen — became notorious for the profusion with which they showered aid on their co-religionists and on many needy Catholics to boot. Us ne souffrent point que ceux de leur croyance ayent recours aux charites des catholiques,' commented the anonymous 1768 chronicler admiringly. 'Leurs pauvres, leurs malades ont tous les secours qu'ils peuvent desirer. ' 60 In 1785, the elders opened a small hospital with six beds to care for those Protestants needing medical treatment which they could not afford in their homes. The hospital's patron was Mme Necker, the wife of the former Controleur-general and a renowned philanthropist in her own right, who had been inveigled into helping to establish it on a sound footing while she was convalescing in the region. Its foundation mustered massive donations and benefactions from local Protestant notables who maintained, nevertheless, their wonted distributions of home relief to the poor. Protestant philanthropists were also to be found in the ranks of the dozen or more masonic lodges which sprang up in Montpellier in the last decades of the Ancien Regime and which offered new opportunities for benevolence. 61 The ideology of masonry placed great store by Enlightenment bienfaisance. The main aims of the members of Montpellier's Loge de la Parfaite Union, for example, were to include 'de pratiquer la bienfaisance, comme etant le devoir le plus sacre d'un mac.on, et de secourir les malheureux autant que sa fortune le lui permettra.' 62 What this meant in practice depended on the social composition of each lodge. Evidently there was little scope in a body such as the LogeSaint Jean du Secret, whose members were drawn almost entirely from the gilded ghetto of Montpellier's moneyed elite, for the practice of mutual almsgiving! 63 Masonry could at this level, however, promote a heightened sense of members' social responsibilities. The millionaire financier Bonnier de la Mosson, for example, who had been the first to introduce masonry into the city in the late 1730s, was a zealous philanthropist. When the austere Jansenist Bishop Colbert threatened him with excommunication for living 389, 425 n. The unclassified archives of the Consistory of Montpellier, Rue Maguelone, Montpellier, are of considerable value in the history of the reconstitution of the Protestant church and in the foundation of the Protestant bureau de charite" and hospital. 60 Montpellier en 1768, 24. 61 For the history of freemasonry in Montpellier, A. Le Bihan, Loges et cbapitres de la Grande Loge et du Grand Orient de France (2e moitiedu XVllle siecle), Paris, 1967; G. Laurans, 'Contribution a l'6tude sociologique des confreries de penitents en Bas Languedoc', unpublished these de troisieme cycle, Montpellier, Sociology, 1973; A. Germain, 'Une loge mac,onnique d'etudiants a Montpellier', A.S.L.M. (S.L.), 1880. There are important contributions to the subject also in G. ChaussinandNogaret, Les Financiers de Languedoc au XVllle siecle, Paris, 1970; J. P.G. Delpuech, Montpellier a la veille de la Revolution, Montpellier, 1954; J. Proust, L'Encyclopedisme dans le Bas Languedoc au XVllle
siecle, 1968, no place of publication. 62 A. Germain, 1880, 8. 63 G. Chaussinand-Nogaret, 1970, 295.
92
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
openly with his opera-singer mistress, he struck out valiantly, if a little self-righteously, in his own defence, asking rhetorically: 'Qui a secouru plus assidument les pauvres? Qui a aide plus puissamment les eglises et les hdpitaux?' 64 The meaning of bienfaisance was rather different at the other end of the social spectrum. Among the building-workers, carpenters, tailors and bakers who made up the Loge Saint Jean 'la Bonne Intelligence', for example, 65 or in the Loge de la Parfaite Union, which contained a great many students, masonic philanthropy was expressed in mutual aid. The Parfaite Union, for example, appointed a hospitaller aumonier whose task it was to make collections among members and to distribute the alms among needy brothers, and also a visiteur despauvres, preferably a medical man, to provide the lodge's sick with 'tous les services que la fraternite peut inspirer'. 66 These intra-corporative charities must have contributed to the profusion and resilience of masonic lodges which achieved considerable popularity in the region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Mutual aid was one of the increasingly important functions which lay confraternities {confreries) also performed. The confrerie comprised a form of association long sanctioned by the church. 67 All the parish churches of Montpellier could boast a confrerie du saint sacrement. Many monasteries had a tiers ordre or confrerie attached to them. In addition there were three important confreries despenitents: the Penitents Blancs, with 1,200 members, the Penitents Bleus, 800 strong, and the seemingly equally numerous Confrerie de la Vraye Croix. The membership of the penitents reached well down the social scale. Annual subscriptions were very low - often only a couple of livres, a sum well within the compass of the shopkeepers, shop assistants, artisans and journeymen who composed the bulk of the membership. The penitents were open to women too, both in their own right and as the wives and widows of members. If the confreries were religious in origin and structure, and if the basic principle behind their activities was 'la spiritualite mutuelle', 68 they owed their popularity not least to the fact that the services which were reciprocally rendered within their ranks had a strong temporal bent. The 64 Cited in L. Grasset-Morel, 1886, 99. 65 J.P.G. Delpuech, 1954. 66 A. Germain, 1880, 9ff. 61 For confreries, see the general article of G. Le Bras, 'Esquisse d'une histoire des confreries' in his Etudes de sociologie religieuse, 2 vols., Paris, 1956. For Montpellier, cf. G. Laurans, 1973; J. Delalain, Les Penitents blancs et les penitents bleus de la ville de Montpellier. Leurs origines. Leur histoire. Leurs regies,
Montpellier, 1874; and Montpellier en 1768, 17f. 68 G. Le Bras, 1956, 426. Cf. the contention of M. Agulhon that, at least in Basse Provence and arguably elsewhere, the confreries were becoming increasingly secularised in the latter decades of the Ancien Regime. M. Agulhon, Penitents et francs-magons de I'ancienne Provence, Paris, 1968. But ct.
G. Laurans, 1973, 12 Iff.
The crisis of traditional charity
93
free burial services which the penitents, for example, provided for their members represented, in a city which valued prestigious and costly funerals, a considerable benefit. The same was true of the charities which, as in the masonic lodges, were accorded less fortunate members. The dominance of the official posts within the confreries by the cream of local society - nobles, financiers, robins —was vitally important. The huge fortunes of these men ensured the continuing prosperity of the institutions and also swelled the flood of alms channelled towards poorer members. Such was the scale of the resources on which the Penitents Blancs could draw, for example, that in 1723 the confrerie had even come to an agreement with the Hopital General whereby the latter undertook not to assist any pauper who was one of its members. To have a hospital aiding a needy confrere was evidently held to be a slur on the mutual generosity of members: 'il ne convenait pas pour 1'honneur de la confrerie de tolerer de pareils procedes, puisque notre confrerie n'est fondee que sur la charite, qu'ainsi de temps immemorial on n'apas vu ni oui dire qu'aucun de nos confreres ait ete a charge ni assiste par aucun hopital ou maison de charite'. 69 There was doubtless an element of bravura in this claim to be able to support all the confreries poorer members. The penitents rarely allocated more than one-fifth of their annual expenditure to charity and normally gave priority to the purchase of extravagant ceremonial finery — silver staves for their officers, damask drapes for their chapels and the like. Nevertheless, the boom in recruitment which the confreries experienced in the worsening social conditions of the latter decades of the Ancien Regime does suggest a growing awareness of the material benefits of membership. Moreover, one had only to see the different confreries at each other's throats over some question of precedence at funerals, with processional crosses being wielded like scimitars and hearses in danger of spilling their loads, to realise the strength of group solidarity within each confrerie - a solidarity cemented by the mutual aid services which they provided. The enthusiasm which the expanding activities of the Pret Gratuit, the newly reconstituted Protestant church, the masonic lodges and the recharged confreries aroused in the inhabitants of Montpellier contrasted strongly with the cloud of gloom and despondency which hung over the doors of the city's hospitals. The general pattern of charitable giving in the city was evidently far patchier on the eve of the Revolution than had been the case half a century earlier, when it had followed very closely the classic lines of post-Tridentine charitable orthodoxy. The bienfaisance of the city's social elite was not a chimera: but it was less consistent, more flexible and more discriminating than traditional Catholic practice. In his combative 69 G. Laurans, 1973, 79.
94
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
article on Tondation' in the Encyclopedie, Turgot had maintained that Tutilite actuelle reconnue est toujours ce qui determine la generosite des bienfaiteurs publics'. 70 Seen in the context of late eighteenth-century Montpellier, this comment was not simply a call for more rational giving but a pretty accurate description of current practice. When the principle of enlightened selectiveness in giving which Turgot preached was applied to institutions which retained a strong confessional bias and which had been poorly managed, moreover, it would be above all the hospitals which suffered most. The consequent diversion of discriminating charities away from the hospitals into what seemed more worthy channels only exacerbated the plight of the hospitals, which increasingly wore an air of debility. The lack of confidence which the city's social elite showed these institutions found a distant echo, moreover, in the attitude of the poor themselves whose preference for the form of social insurance offered by the more mutualist organisations was manifest.71 70 Encyclopedic, vii, 1757, 75. 71 Other organisations which might be mentioned in this connection which were seemingly gathering strength on the eve of the Revolution were skeletal provident societies for artisans, A .N., F 15 3619; and the compagnonnages, proto-syndical clandestine organisations: E. Coornaert, Les Compagnonnages en France du Moyen Age a nos jours, Paris, 1966, 54 and A.M. Montpellier FF and FF Reg., passim.
Popular attitudes towards poor relief (i) Charity
In order to obtain a fully rounded picture of the treatment of poverty in the last half-century of the Ancien Regime, it is necessary to consider the attitudes of the poor themselves to establishments and individuals who proffered them aid. Although first-hand evidence is extremely scanty — the poor leave only too few direct statements on any subject — this line of investigation is worth pursuing through inference and induction and from second-hand evidence and opinion. Only with the dimension afforded by the view 'from below' added to the ideas and dilemmas of institutional administrators and charitable donors can the traditional forms of poor relief be fully assessed. Only then, furthermore, can the efforts of, first, royal bureaucrats and then in the 1790s, of the Revolutionary assemblies, to transform the whole dispensation of relief, be properly understood. The poor's attitudes towards poor relief overlapped on one hand with their feelings about charity, and on the other with their ideas on healing and medicine. The present chapter will concentrate upon the first of these fields. It is vital to grasp at the outset that the poor felt their self-respect to be compromised by the acceptance of relief. To accept charity was to admit failure to achieve the economic independence which was the ultimate aim of the popular classes.x If anonymous outsiders to the community did not risk shame by begging their living, by receiving handouts or by entering a hospital, the same was not true of the resident poor. In proud and independent Languedoc at least, where paure was a term of slander and where every pauper felt himself a pauvre honteux, it was a point d'honneur of the indigent classes not to be seen to be unable to cope unaided. Openly receiving alms, like begging in public from one's acquaintances, 1 For the aspiration to economic independence among the labouring classes, see especially O. Hufton, 'Women and the family economy in eighteenth-century France', Fr. Hist. St., 1975. Cf. A. Soboul, Les Sans-culottesparisiens en I'an II. Mouvementpopulaire et gouvernement revolutionnaire, 2 juin 1793—9
Thermidorll, Paris, 1958; and J.P. Gutton, 1971, 23ff.
95
96
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
entailed a loss of face and perhaps the besmirching of the family name. 2 Similarly, to seek refuge in a hospital was to enter into propinquity with individuals whom, for various reasons, the resident poor regarded as socially inferior. Hospitals might, it is true, act as casualty wards for the needy local poor stricken with illness or disability. The majority of hospital inmates, however, were outsiders to the community. Many small-town and country hospitals, for example, devoted part of their funds to assisting passants. The deeply ingrained custom of giving the passade — a bed for the night, a bowl of soup and a few sous for the next day's journey — probably owed something to the region's position on pilgrim routes towards the shrine at Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. 3 By the eighteenth century, however, the passade was aimed less at the passing pilgrim than at the itinerant worker and, in particular, the ailing pauper (pauvre passant malade) on his way to or from medical treatment in the big hotels-Dieu of the coastal cities. Several local hospitals had indeed become, by the eve of the Revolution, full-time 'hdpitaux de transport' for such cases.4 Another category of entrant was the temporary or seasonal migrant. Hospital admissions figures always rose sharply in the summer with the influx into the Bas Languedoc plain of the traditional hordes of mountaindwellers down for the hay, grain and wine harvests. The hospital at Marseillan in the diocese of Agde, for example, its consuls explained, was 'infiniment utile surtout aux manoeuvriers que la culture de la vigne attire en grand nombre sur le territoire et qui y sont exposes a y contracter des maladies'. 5 If this migrant group doubtless counted many respectable artisans and worthy peasants among it, it also included the very flotsam and jetsam of regional society — tramps, beggars, vagrants and the like. No selfrespecting resident pauper would wish to associate with such individuals. The social status of many of those resident poor who entered hospitals also lay beyond the frontiers of condescension and contempt. Hospitals were the dumping grounds, for example, for foundlings and illegitimate and orphaned children. These unwanted infants — whose number grew markedly over the course of the eighteenth century, and whose very existence was testimony to the changed face of poverty in the aftermath of the great mortality crises6 - were normally shunted off as swiftly as 2 Y. Castan, 1974, 281, 287 and 288. For the shame attaching to the receipt of alms, C 563, C 5957 andG 1516. 3 G. Laurans, 1973, 14. Significantly, Saint Jacques was the patron saint of a large number of local hospitals, including those at Bessan, Beziers (Hopital Mage), Capestang, Florensac, Pezenas and Pomerols. 4 C 5956. Cf. Ball. 5 L 2888. For similar remarks pertaining to other hospitals, cf. C 5955 (Lansargues in the diocese of Montpellier), L 2900 (Loupian in the diocese of Agde) and L 2987 (Villeneuve-les-Beziers in the diocese of Beziers). 6 O. Hufton, 1974.
Popular attitudes to chanty
97
possible to the diocesan hopital general. 7 The aura of vice and neglect which clung to their frail frames was felt to infect any institution with which they came into contact. The aged, infirm or disabled pauper who applied to end his or her days in an hopital general was thus placing himself on this miserable level. The derogation involved was all the greater, moreover, in that the quality of medical care in any hospital — even in a hospital as medically well-staffed as Montpellier's Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi - was certainly no better than, and might well be considerably worse than, that which could be provided within any reasonably comfortable home. 8 Had it been otherwise, the wealthy would have wished to be treated in hospitals rather than — as was invariably the case — in the midst of their families. For a poor man or woman to enter a hospital was thus tantamount to their admitting that they could not afford to look after themselves, that their family or friends were not wealthy or sympathetic enough to do so, or that they did not have a family or a home to go to: it was to assume the identity of a social marginal. This might not be exceptionally wounding to the self-respect of the stranger to the community; but it was certainly felt as an affront to the pride of the resident poor, who associated hospital inmates with social castaways, unprotected by wealth or savings and bereft of the supportive network of kinship. La vanite qui se masque quelquefois sous le haillon [reported the Montpellier savant Amoreux of the attitude of the city's poor towards their hotel-Dieu] repugne a cette extremite . . . C'est pour cela que l'hotel-Dieu n'est la plupart du temps rempli que d'etrangers, de soldats et de domestiques. . . . La resource des hopitaux semble mieux convenir a des etrangers qu'a des ci toy ens.9 Voluntarily to enter a hospital was thus to divest oneself of a portion of one's self-respect. This was indeed recognised, in a self-consciously inverted way, by the fille de la charite who dedicated her life to the service of hospital inmates, by the middle-class depot who contracted to spend the last years of his life in the presence of the hospital poor and by the wealthy testator who stipulated that he was to be buried in a hospital chapel or cemetery. For each of these individuals, entry to hospital represented a spiritual investment which augmented their personal sanctity and improved their chances of salvation. For the pauper, however, admission was the occasion of humiliation rather than humility. Was the pride of the poor becoming more ticklish as the eighteenth 7 Local hospitals receiving such children on a regular basis were the hopitaux ge"neraux of Beziers and Montpellier, the diocesan hospitals of Lodeve and Saint-Pons and, in the diocese of Agde, the hospital of Pezenas. 8 L. Dulieu, 'L'Evolution hospitaliere a travers les siecles d'apres l'histoire des hopitaux de Montpellier', Atti del Primo Congresso di Storia Ospitaliera, I960, 475. 9 Amoreux, manuscript cited, 1779, 40.
98
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
century wore on? The unselective handouts made outside monastery gates by parish priests in execution of foundations or by seigneurs and tithers exercising their customary social duties had always raised few qualms, and this might still be so. Much the same applied too in the case of the ancient village festivals, common in the Montpellier region, at Christmas and on Ascension Day, when the consuls or elected officials called caritadiers distributed alms within the community. 10 The lack of discrimination on such occasions and the tradition underpinning them made them resemble certain communal rights - like the jealously guarded vaine pdture, for example11 — on which the village poor relied. For some time prior to the Revolution, however, a preoccupation with discerning the 'deserving' from the 'undeserving' poor, nurtured by the seventeenth-century principle of renfermement and blossoming in the atmosphere of rationally minded Enlightenment bienfaisance, had led many charitable institutions to insist on paupers presenting themselves and justifying their state of need. In such circumstances, charity was less a collective right than a personal privilege, bestowed upon a pauper at the discretion of local notables and consequently involving a shaming disclosure of need which risked slanderous or patronising gossip. Les gens du pai's [reported the consuls of Cournonsec in the diocese of Montpellier] aimeraient mieux mourir de faim que de comparaitre devant le parlement d'une assemblee de gens de connaissance, d'y savoir leurs necessites des autres et plus encore leurs noms ecrits dans un registre quelquefois pour trente sols d'un jupon comme on y trouve dans le nom de certaines families qui en rougiroient extremement.12 Certain bureaux de charite went some way to accommodate the ticklish pride of the poor by confining the operations of the bureau de charite to an 'inner council' sworn to secrecy about the recipients of relief and often deliberately omitting to inscribe their name in the registers of account. Other bureaux responsive to the feelings of the recipients of their charity, came to be managed by the supposedly more discreet female confraternities like the Misericordes, or else by the local parish priest, who was in an excellent position to know the state of need of his parishioners and who could be relied on to supply relief under the cover of his pastoral duties. 13 Elsewhere, intermediaries were allowed to collect the relief for needy parties. The desire for a confidentiality which respected family honour and personal pride also helps to explain the large clientele who used the 10 Numerous references in the regional enquiries listed in Appendix B. 11 E. Appolis, 1938. 12 C 563. 13 Cf. above, page 71. This perceived need for secrecy probably encouraged maladministration and corruption in many localities.
Popular attitudes to charity
99
anonymous aid of charity pawnshops such as Montpellier's Pret Gratuit, as well as the popularity of the penitents whose hoods served as a veil for the self-respect of the needy confrere. Admission to a hospital, in contrast, was rarely a private or confidential operation. Indeed the rite of passage which accompanied admission into the more substantial hospitals was a considerable trial which the pride of the needy individual had to brook and which emphasised his fall in estate. 14 Those wishing to enter Montpellier's Hopital General, for example, had first to appear before the full administrative board of the institution, headed by the bishop and containing many of the wealthiest and most prestigious city notables, and plead before it their worthiness to be admitted. The physical process of admission might be a further ordeal. The entrant's goods and effects would be confiscated, his clothes taken to be washed and deloused. After an examination by a student surgeon to check that his illness or state of infirmity was genuine and that he was not suffering from any of the diseases debarred from the hospital in question, he would be washed down and perhaps his head shaven. He would then receive some sort of uniform from the nursing sister and, after being confessed by the hospital chaplain, he would be conducted to his bed. Hospitals were unique among poor-relief institutions in removing individuals from their home environment and subjecting them to a regime which, as exemplified by the rite of passage on entry, was probably more impersonal than and far different from the normal range of the poor's experience. This was undoubtedly a major reason for the hospitals' unpopularity. In addition the sanitary situation of a great many hospitals left much to be desired, even in a Languedoc well habituated to stench and squaior. The Hopital Mage at Beziers, for example, which government officials were later to label as the most insanitary hospital in the whole of France, was particularly bad in this respect. Situated on the outskirts of town, it overlooked the town sewer and refuse heap, a major cemetery, an oil-press and the municipal abattoir. 15 The site of many other hospitals in the region was scarcely better. Many — like that at Beziers — were situated on the edge of town, where they had to endure the propinquity of waste-tips, dung-heaps and the like. 16 Others faced on to cemeteries, whose stench in the summer was proverbially foul. 17 The hospitals at Saint-Pons and 14 These rites of passage would be less formalised and less thoroughly regulated in small hospitals. The picture here draws on numerous scattered sources, but above all on the registers of deliberations of Montpellier's Hopital General, H G I E 17 to 3 1 . For comparative purposes, see also E. Goffman, Asylums. Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, Harmondsworth, 1968. 15 L 2887. 16 2 X 1 (Agde); H G I G 1 (Balaruc); HS H6p Cler (unclassified documents) (Clermont). 17 M. Tudesq, 'Precis de la topographieme'dicaledela villeet de l'hdpital de Cette',Journaldemedecine, 1788, 224.
100
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
Saint-Chinian both adjoined rivers, which gave rise to intense humidity in many of the rooms and which periodically flooded part of the buildings. 18 Even the two great Montpellier hospitals, which prided themselves on their salubrity, were far from perfect: the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi was confined to cramped and unhealthy quarters in the heart of the city, while the Hopital General was located on a small stream, the Verdanson, whose brackish and polluted waters, locals maintained, made it admirably suited to its popular name of 'Merdanson'. 19 The material environment within hospitals was frequently defective too. With the exception of the new section of the Montpellier hopital where the incurables were housed, no hospital building in the region was purposebuilt. The Montpellier hotel-Dieu, for example, expanded over the course of the eighteenth century by buying and adapting the private dwellingplaces which adjoined it. Most hospitals of substance had to tamper and make do with the conglomeration of ancient and irregularly sized rooms inherited from earlier ages: rooms scattered at random and with no overall sense of planning, which often had more the aspect of chapels than hospital wards. Many small country hospitals were nothing more than ill-assorted cottages, comprising a couple of rooms, one of which might even double up as the lodgings of the hospital porter or the village schoolmistress. Upkeep was often neglected - probably increasingly so, with the worsening financial state of many hospitals. Certainly a great many local hospitals were in a state of considerable disrepair on the eve of the Revolution. All the windows of the hospital at Saint-Pons, for example, were broken, its window-frames were rotting, and its rooms were cold and cheerless. The foundations of the hospital at Saint-Chinian were crumbling, and gaping holes had appeared in the ceilings and walls following recent flooding.20 Furthermore, the wooden bed-frames — or straw — which all hospitals contained (with the sole exception of Montpellier's hotel-Dieu, whose administrators were both enlightened and wealthy enough to afford iron bedsteads), were breeding-places for lice and bacteria and became virtually uninhabitable in the hot summer months. 21 The inadequacy of the material surroundings was all the more serious in that ventilation and aeration were frequently deficient and might be worsened by inmates failing to avail themselves of the latrines. Urinating and excreting in beds or in the corners of rooms were little-checked abuses. 22 They contributed to the character18 Arch. hosp. Saint-Pons, E 2 (30/3/1773); C 561. 19 A.N., F 15 226; Amoreux, manuscript cited, 1787, 17; A.M. Montpellier, BB Reg., (10/2/1747 and passim). 20 Arch. hosp. Saint-Pons, E 2 (30/3/1773); C 561. Cf. HS Hop Nissan (unclassified documents); and, for Pizenas, A.N., F 15 226. 21 HD I E 6 (18/4/1739); 2 X 23; A.M. Montpellier, BB Reg., (15/3/1785). 22 HG I E 27 (17/12/1775). Cf., for the military hospital in Montpellier, C 555.
Popular attitudes to charity
101
istically and obnoxiously pungent stench which hospitals exuded and which made all but the initiated retch. 23 The consequences of this lack of hygiene were aggravated by the periodic overcrowding which afflicted most hospitals. Hospitals tended to become refuges for the needy at times of high prices and food shortages. 24 In addition, the seasonal patterns of morbidity and morality and the local calendar of employment meant that the institutions were likely to be under-used in the winter and chronically over-used in the summer months. 25 Hospital administrators were well habituated to the problem of seasonal overcrowding, which they dealt with in a variety of ways: putting two or more inmates in a bed, for example, introducing extra rows of beds or mattresses, or strewing the floor with straw for all-comers. Even in Montpellier, the hotel-Dieu showed no inclination to restrict the number of inmates to parity with the number of its beds, and for all the long-standing commitment of the administrative board to single beds, the practice of doubling up was still current within the hospital on the very eve of the Revolution. 26 Disease could only be endemic within these badly located and poorly housed hospitals in the Montpellier region at the mercy of the elements and periodically subject to chronic and insanitary overcrowding, which doctors could do little to combat. Some Enlightenment writers saw in the revulsion of the poor towards hospital confinement an example of crass popular ignorance and blind prejudice, for the crude statistical evidence seemed to show that the death-rate inside hospitals was surprisingly low — usually less than 10 per cent. 27 On sait que le peuple ne calcule pas [J. A. Mourgue commented bitterly on the local revulsion for Montpellier's Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi]. II ne voit pas le nombre infini d'infortunes qui recouvrent la sante et presque la vie dans cette maison si bien administree; il ne considere que le spectacle frappant des victimes que la mort y enleve.28 Despite appearances, however, there was some substance behind popular suspicion. There was, first of all, an arbitrary and erratic element to hospital 23 A .N., F 15 748; Roucher, Memoire sur lafievre catarrhale nerveuse et maligne qui a regnedans I'Hopital civil et mi lit am de Montpellier pendant les six premiers mois de I'an VIII, Montpellier, Year VIII, 116f.
For comparison with the Hdpital Saint-AndrS of Bordeaux, see P. Loupes, 'L'Hdpital Saint-Andre" de Bordeaux au XVIIIe siecle, Revue historique de Bordeaux, 1972, 90f. 24 J. Meuvret, 'Demographic crisis in France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century' in D.V. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley, Population in History. Essays in Historical Demography, London, 1965,
519f. 25 See above, page 36, and graph 2. 26 Ball. (Agde, Pezenas); C 561 (Saint-Pons, Gignac); L 2902 (Cazouls-les-Beziers); M. Tudesq, op.cit., 224 (Sette). Cf. 2 X 99 (Villevayrac); A.N., F 15 226 (Montpellier). 27 Table 9. 28 J.A. Mourgue, op. cit., Year IX, 13.
102
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
Table 9. Death-rates in hospitals in the Montpellier region in the final decades of the Ancien Regime Hospital
Dates
Montpellier Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi
1741-2
9.4 (civilians)1
H D I F 2, F 3; A.M. Montpellier, GG (deaths registers)
1761
9.6 (civilians)
P. Fournier, op. cit.
7.9 (civilians and soldiers)
HD I E 29
1763-72
Source
Death-rate
1785-6
10.9 (civilians)1
1761
2.4 (soldiers)
P. Fournier, op. cit.
Beziers Hopital Mage
1778
6.91
C29
Cazouls-les-Beziers
1778
11.91
C29
Pezenas
1761 1778
9.4 14.01
C 567 C29
Marseillan
1772 1773
6.0 14.0
HS Hop Marseil 45 HS Hop Marseil 45
Saint-Pons
1778
7.3 1
C29
Saint-Chinian
1778
4.8 1
C 29
H D I F 11; AM. Montpellier, GG (deaths registers)
Presentation: Figures marked with a * are calculated by the number of deaths divided by the number of entrants, including those present in the hospital on the first day of the year in question. The latter figure is unknown for the other cases.
deaths which promoted a belief that hospitals killed rather than cured. Such were the normal deficiencies in hygiene and the lack of hard knowledge concerning infection, for example, that it was still possible to enter the best-run hospital with one ailment and to contract - and even die from another disease during one's stay. In Montpellier's hospitals, for example, tinea and scabies were periodically endemic; there were gangrene epidemics in the h6tel-Dieu from the 1760s onwards; 'hospital fever* — typhus — and dysentery were occasionally brought in by sick soldiers and prisoners; and smallpox epidemics periodically decimated the infant population of the
Popular attitudes to charity
103
Hopital General. 29 Reductions in levels of care as a result of economies brought about by financial stringency may also have reaped a grim harvest of deaths. The decision of the administrators of Montpellier's Hopital General in the 1760s to suppress alternative forms of heating - everything from braziers to foot-warmers and hot-water bottles — seems to have increased the incidence of chest disease and hypothermia among the elderly inmates. The hospital doctor reported that a sizeable proportion of deaths in the incurables section — the best cared-for part of the entire institution — had been caused by pneumonia and that the majority of those he had examined '[etaient] morts subitement et comme congeles'.30 Not only were disease and death within the hospitals capriciously arbitrary: their incidence varied in relation to other factors too. The death-rate of individuals born within Montpellier was higher, for example, than that of individuals born outside the city - a statistic which demonstrated the local repugnance for the institution. 31 Death varied according to age as well as place of birth, if, as is likely, conclusions from the neighbouring hotel-Dieu in Nimes are typical. 32 Whereas only about 5 per cent of entrants to this hospital between the ages of fifteen and thirty died there, approximately 30 per cent of septuagenarians admitted did so. The same was true, at the other end of the age-scale, for children who were admitted to the hospitals. The uneven incidence of mortality suggests that the revulsion which certain categories of the poor felt for the hospitals was, partly at least, based on a pretty-well-founded calculation of life-chances: for them, the hospital could well be a 'gateway to death'. 33 The fate of destitute and defenceless children who were committed to the care of the hopitaux - orphans, foundlings, illegitimate children and the offspring of numerous families — is worth dwelling on in some detail. It constituted an unequivocal — not to say brutal — indictment of the social role of hospitals under the Enlightenment. It confirmed the common people in their distrust of hospitals as the receptacles of unexpected death and unwanted disease and as the home of the social outcast shorn of dignity. The fact that the numbers of children who found their way into the hospitals were growing — partly as a result of rising illegitimacy, partly because of an apparently growing predilection for child abandonment - made the hordes 29 HD I E 9 (21/6/1766), E 11 (18/12/1770), E 13 (9/9/1786), F 37; HG I E 25 (13/9/1767); C. Reboul, 1973, lOOff. 30 H G I E 2 7 (31/12/1775). 31 In 1741 and 1742, 8.6 per cent of entrants from Montpellier died in the h6tel-Dieu, and 6.9 per cent of entrants from outside the city. HD I F 2, F 3. 32 Archives eUpartmentales du Gardy unclassified archives of the h6tel-Dieu of Nimes, for years 1740-4, 1757-61 and 1777-84. 33 E.M. Sigsworth, 'Gateways to death? Medicine, hospitals and mortality, 1700-1850', in Science and Society, 1600-1900, edited by P. Mathias, Cambridge, 1972.
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Poverty under the Ancien Regime
of unwanted children an expanding and uncomfortably prevalent physical presence within overcrowded hospital premises. The children usually spent the early years of their infancy with hired wet-nurses. 34 Montpellier's Hopital General — like that of Nimes — recruited its wet-nurses in the impoverished villages of the Cevennes. Prior to being sent there, the children and babies spent a little time inside the hopital while arrangements were made concerning them. In the case of foundlings, investigations were made into their parents, while in that of illegitimate and unwanted children the hopital's administrators haggled with fathers over the size of the contribution they were to make to the upkeep of the child. There had long been complaints about the quality of the service which the hopital provided in these first weeks of infant care, when the foundling, for example, besides the trauma of losing its mother had also often to rebuild its strength following hours or even days on a dung-heap or monastery's steps prior to discovery. After 1776, the administrators endeavoured to improve conditions: a woman was employed full-time to nurse them and doctors were consulted over the most appropriate diet. In the end it was agreed to provide cow's milk at first, followed by a concoction of goat's milk, water and barley or rice. 35 Nevertheless, conditions continued to be cramped, dirty and even smellier than in the rest of the institution. Indeed, the new insistence on the use of animals' milk may even have worsened conditions since it was notorious that this frequently curdled and made the child ill. 36 In 1780 it was discovered that the woman in charge of the service was dosing the babies with opium to keep them quiet and was illicitly farming them out to her friends in the city. A new spate of reforms attempted to improve hospital conditions for this category of children. The administrators nevertheless ruefully admitted that the majority of infants who entered into care died prior to their being sent to the Cevennes.37 The next stage in the child's treatment under the auspices of the hopital was likely to be just as fraught with dangers. The bulk of the wet-nurses employed by the Montpellier hopital lived in the vicinity of the village of Ponteils in the diocese of Uzes. The administrators had been obliged to look 34 The sub-series G of the archives of the Montpellier Hopital General contains a great deal of information on the treatment of these children. The registers of deliberations {sub-series E) are also a vital source. 35 HG I E 27 (29/9/1776), E 28 (13/10/1776). 36 According to experiments performed in Beziers, three-quarters of children fed on animals' milk perished before their first birthday. A.N., F 15 433. For the digestive complaints suffered by young children even today in Mediterranean summers, cf. J.N. Biraben and L. Henry, 'La Mortality des jeunes enfants dans les pays me'diterraneens', Population, 1957. 37 New regulations: for children of indigent family, HG I E 28 (9/4/1780); and for messageres, wet-nurses and parish priests of villages with wet-nurses, HG I E 29 (3/3/1782). For the high mortality of children prior to their being sent out to wet-nurses, C 561.
Popular attitudes to charity
105
so far inland because wet-nurses closer at hand tended to work for private individuals, from whom they received three or four times the four litres or so a month which the hopital could afford to pay its wet-nurses. In addition, only the poverty-stricken women of these forsaken Cevenol villages were willing to risk the possibility of infection with venereal disease which was not infrequently carried by foundlings and illegitimate children. 38 Distance bred a host of problems for the infants involved. The journey of sixty-odd miles which the baby-farmers, or messageres, whom the hopital charged with distributing the children among wet-nurses, performed with their fragile charges was often exhausting. The messagere normally brought down from the Cevennes a wet-nurse for the return trip. However, this woman might become over-tired by the journey and her milk suffer as a result. 39 Travelling conditions for the children were hardly ideal either: they were placed, four at a time, into a basket-like contraption stuffed with straw and feather cushions and hitched onto the back of a mule. 40 The traumatic effects of the journey were also exacerbated by the corrupt practices which many messageres engaged in: in 1776, for example, the Montpellier messagere was found to be doubling up charges from the hopital with infants from the town. The added risks of mfection and cramped conditions doubtless took their toll. 41 It is hardly surprising that the children's first months in the Cevennes were the most deadly: over 40 per cent of those who died in the care of Cevenol wet-nurses did so within the first three months after transfer, and over 70 per cent within the first year. 42 The quality of the treatment which the infants could expect at the hands of their wet-nurses varied enormously. Some women became so attached to their charges that they petitioned the hopital's administrators for permission to adopt them permanently. 43 However, neglect was assuredly one of the major reefs on which their young lives might founder. In 1741, a visit by the hopital's secretary revealed to a shocked administrative board that the children were for the most part in an abject state of nakedness, with only rags and shreds remaining from their initial layette, and with wet-nurses unable to afford extra clothes for them. This revelation led to an improvement in the amount and quality of the clothing and linen which each child was permitted. 44 Nevertheless, all was far from well, as the occasional horror story filtering down from the Cevennes suggested. One child had his fingers chewed off by a pig; others acquired horrible 38 40 42 43 44
HG I G 21. 39 HG I E 28 (28/5/1782). HG I E 29 (3/3/1782). 41 HG I E 27 (28/4/1776). For full references, see below, note 51. Frequent examples in the registers of deliberations. H G I E 19(5/11/1741).
106
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
deformities which may well have been attributable to maltreatment and malnourishment; wet-nurses left their children unattended to gather in the chestnut harvest; mothers agreeing to take in infants did so with no milk in their breasts and fed them on unwholesome substitutes. 45 Even after death there was no peace or dignity: dogs dug up the bodies of infants from where they lay buried in shallow graves in the rocky Cevenol terrain. 46 The administrators felt that the best remedy against neglect was the wage which wet-nurses drew from the hopital as long as the child remained alive. Their wager was, however, ill-founded in two respects. First, there appears to have been a fair degree of substitution: if the child died, the wet-nurse would put her own child in its place and continue to draw money for it. However well-intentioned and well-primed they were against such abuses, cures were quite unable to keep every outlying farmstead in their parishes under constant surveillance. The name-tag with the crest of the hopital, which was attached to every child's neck was, moreover, easily enough lost'. Indeed, there was even a famous case in the late 1730s in which a wet-nurse had killed her charge and, with the aid of certificates forged for her by a local huissier continued to claim her wages from the hopital. 47 Besides these abuses, there was also the problem that the incentive to care for the children which the wages constituted diminished over the last decades of the century as they failed to keep pace with inflation. From the early 1770s onwards, threats periodically percolated down to Montpellier of collective strikes by Cevenol wet-nurses if wage-scales were not revised.48 Even though concessions were made, the hopital was in no financial position to be generous. On the eve of the Revolution, reports of parish priests made it clear that the low wages which wet-nurses received were a direct cause of neglect and maltreatment. The financial problems of the hopital, however, effectively precluded a determined break from baby-farming and from the Cevenol orientation of the service.49 The neglect and maltreatment which the hopital's children could expect from their wet-nurses combined with the normally high levels of infant mortality in the region meant that far fewer children than those sent up to the Cevennes in infancy eventually returned to the hopital on their fifth birthday. An enquiry made by the hopital's administrators in 1779 revealed that out of 610 children who had been sent to wet-nurses in the Cevennes in 45 46 47 48 49
HG I E 26 (2/5/1773), E 30 (15/1/1786), G 21. Cf. J.A. Mourgue, op.cit., Year IX, 27, n. 2. H G I E 28 (18/10/1778). C 565; HG I E 17 (24/3/1737), G 21. Cf. HG I E 27 (15/9/1776). For example, HG I E 26 Obi 1112). HG IG 21. After 1758, on the prompting of the government, the hdpital hired out children to local farmers from seven years old until adolescence. The scheme was never fully successful, however, and only about 150 children were bound over in the period down to 1789- C 550; C 581; HG I E 22 (23/7/1758), G 58, G 61.
Popular attitudes to chanty
107
the period between 1767 and 1777', some 433 — 70.9 per cent — had died prior to the date of their return. 50 Further samples taken from the hopital's own records confirm this grisly picture: the death-rate of children who were farmed out in the years 1740 and 1741 was 55.3 per cent; that of children sent up to the Cevennes in 1785 and 1786, 66.0 per cent. These figures might in addition be swollen considerably if exact figures for the high infant mortality within the hopital prior to transfer to the Cevennes were known. 51 All in all, the whole system — which one observer claimed was even more murderous than the infamous baby-farming system used by the Parisian hospitals — reeked of an unthinking massacre of the innocents. 52 Life for those who survived their trials of infancy was far from rosy. At five years old, they returned to the endemic and epidemic diseases, the promiscuity and insalubrity of hospital routine. As they got older, attempts were made to fit them out for successful reintegration into society. Their childhood experiences marked many for life, however.53 Children from the hopital in Montpellier had a very poor reputation: Saint-Priest, the Intendant of Languedoc, characterised the girls as 'mal-elevees, faineantes, ignorantes', while another contemporary castigated the boys as 'indociles, mediants, faineans, gourmands et mauvais'. They were likely to be sickly too. 54 In Beziers, 'pale comme un enfant de Thopital' had become a local proverb, while in Montpellier, the child from the hopital presented 'un visage pale et abattu, une contenance morne et debile, des mouvements executes avec lenteur et denues de cette petulance aimable qui caracterise cet age et qui le vivifie'.55 The sickly and precociously aging constitutions of hospital children were just part of the immense human cost caused by the decline in the capabilities and performance of hospitals in the Montpellier region. Even as, towards the end of the century, a more acute awareness of the specific needs of childhood was coming to be felt,56 and as hospital administrators were exhibiting a more heart-felt concern for 'ces tendres victimes de la pauvrete et du libertinage', 57 the financial crisis of hospitals, the atrophying of traditional charity and the rise in the numbers of unwanted 50 H G I G 21. 51 HGI G 28, G 29, G 34 (1740 and 1741); HGI G 33, G 36 (1785 and 1786). Deaths recorded in A.M. Montpellier GG (death registers of Hopital General) suggest that the death-rate might be raised to 60.7 and 69.8 per cent respectively. There seems, however, a strong possibility of under-registration. 52 J.A. Mourgue, op.at., Year IX, 48, n. 1. 53 For training etc. see above, page 63. 54 C 568. Cf. the comments of employers in HG I E 27 (11/9/1774), (13/11/1774). 55 1 X 64; G 1351. Cf. comments in HG I E 29 (17/6/1781) and, on the children of the Narbonne Hopital General, M. Laget, 'Abandons d'enfants et troubles populaires a Narbonne (XVIIe — XIXe siecles)', C.F.H.L.M.R., 1973, 16. 56 P. Aries, Centuries of Childhood, English translation, London, 1962, 387ff. 57 H G I E 28 (3/5/1772).
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children savagely reduced the effective means of improving their treatment. There were other factors besides the physical misery and the close propinquity of death, disease and social outcasts which made admission to a hospital difficult to stomach. Once a pauper had passed within the portals of a major hospital, he was expected to conform to an atmosphere of enforced piety and regimented humility. Partly perhaps because of the frequent presence of children and adolescents within them, the hospitals had much of the religious boarding-school about them. From the religious revival of the seventeenth century onwards, the hopitaux generaux in particular but also by a sort of osmosis hospitals generally had been obliged to accentuate their role as the refuges of holy poverty, if only so as to attract into their coffers the charity on which they relied for their continued existence. Operating regeneratively upon the unpromising human debris of misery, disease and want, the hospitals were to make good Christians of the poor. It was not coincidental that most hospitals of any substance, as well as many very minor ones, had chapels of their own. Hospitals presented a religious face to the outside world — often literally, as can be seen in the case of the chapel of Montpellier's Hopital General, which dominated the view of the institution from the town. Many of the individual rooms within hospitals had their own altars as well. 58 The religious aspect of hospitals continued to be central throughout the eighteenth century. Religious personnel — bishops, parish priests and nursing sisters - played key parts in their functioning. Montpellier's Hopital General was not alone, moreover, in having a number of priests on the permanent salaried staff. Besides keeping death registers, these chaplains led the poor in their prayers, helped draw up wills, buried the dead, administered the sacraments, catechised any children within the hospitals, confessed new entrants and said masses for founders and benefactors.59 Important as an end in itself within the hospitals, religion was also a means to an end. Priests and nursing sisters were duty-bound to motivate the poor and the sick with a respect for institutional authority and, where appropriate, with a willingness to work. The regulations of Montpellier's Hopital General stipulated, for example, that the chaplains 'useront de l'autorite du ministere pour inspirer aux pauvres l'humilite, l'amour du travail, en un mot, les moeurs convenables aux pauvres', while the nursing sisters 'doivent donner l'exemple de travail, de la soumission aux ordres du bureau en veillant exactement a ce que ses reglements soient executes . . . 58 L. Dulieu, 1961.; HS Hop Lod 32 (Lodeve); HS Hop Marseil 17 (Marseillan); L 2890, L 2901 (Cazouls-les-B£ziers); 8 X 10 (Th£zan); and A. Delouvrier, Histoire de Saint-Chinian-de-la-Corne, Montpellier, 1896. 59 HG I E 38 (hospital regulations).
Popular attitudes to charity
109
Elles doivent s'appliquer avec le plus grand soin a detruire dans les filles la paresse, la vanite, la gourmandise et l'indocilite.' 60 The twin bases of the institutional values which the hospital staff were enjoined to inculcate into inmates were a uniformity and an isolation whose harsh precepts were largely outside the normal experience of paupers who entered hospital gates. 61 In theory at least, life within a hospital was grounded in regimented equality. Just as places on administrative boards were not to bear precedence based on rank in the outside world, so too the spirit of hierarchy should not be allowed to obtrude among inmates: 'Tout ce qui vit dans ces aziles de la pauvrete [claimed the administrators of Montpellier's Hopital General] doit pour ainsi dire en prendre le ton. *62 All inmates were thus, for example, to share the same tempo of life, rising early to embark on a day almost wholly devoted to work, and punctuated fitfully by mealtimes and by regulation exercises of piety. Uniformity was to seep down into the minutiae of the hopital's daily existence. Convinced that eating on small and separate tables encouraged favouritism, for example, the administrators were severe in their insistence that meals should be eaten in common off long trestle tables and benches in the main refectory. Only the incurables — as in the hotel-Dieu, the bedridden — were exempted this rule and only they, and those inmates who had earned extra rations as a result of assiduity in their work, were allowed anything above the standard ration. 63 All were served from huge communal cauldrons and ate off identical pewter plates. 64 Regulations obliged inmates to wear hospital uniforms too: those in Montpellier's hotel-Dieu were issued with big white linen nightgowns, while those in the hopital received on admission 'la livree bleue de l'hopital', normally made from cheap linen cloth. 65 All inmates slept on the same kinds of beds too: in the hopital, for example, everyone was theoretically entitled to a bolster, two linen sheets, a quilt and one woollen blanket on top of their straw-filled paillasses.66 It was thought vital that hospitals, soaked in prayer and observing where possible the salubrious rhythms of a work routine, should retain a high degree of isolation from the outside world. Only a quasi-monastic isolation, it was held, could allow the austere internal regime to work regeneratively upon the inmates. Cutting the impoverished or ailing pauper off from his past was indeed a premise of the rite of passage which he had to endure on entry. Once within the institution, the poor's contacts with normal life 60 ibid. 61 The main sources for the internal life of a hospital are its regulations and — even more important — its registers of deliberations. 62 H G I E 26(5111'1772). 63 HG I E 446; HG I E 29 (7/7/1782); and A.N., F 15 226. 64 HG I E 446. 65 HG I B 585. 66 HG I E 446.
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Poverty under the And en Regime
were kept to a minimum. Only those lucky inmates with official exeats were allowed out, and all visitors were subjected to close vetting. 67 A strict code of discipline aimed to enforce uniformity and isolation within hospitals and to allow the regimented life of the inmate community to proceed smoothly. Nothing was permitted which called into question the high moral and spiritual tone which the administrators set. In Montpellier's Hopital General, holidays and mealtimes were watched over closely by the staff to ensure that no profane subject of conversation or style of talking — boasting or swearing, for example — took place. Although the sisters were forbidden to strike inmates, they could impose a host of minor punishments to keep them in line — reducing rations, imprisonment for a few hours, exemplary and humiliating acts of public penitence and the like. In more serious cases — stubborn and wilful insubordination, indiscipline, theft or engaging in black-market activities with hospital rations — the matter would be referred to the administrative board, who could mete out heavier penalties, including corporal punishment and banishment. 68 In practice, uniformity and isolation existed more in the minds of zealous administrators and in hospital rule-books than in the daily routine of hospital life. However great the effort expended, it proved impossible, for example, to organise isolation in institutions which lived in close symbiosis with the towns in which they were situated. The constant stream of porters and gatekeepers dismissed for inefficiency and corruption, the frequent changes, reformulations and repromulgations of regulations relating to entries and exits, and the ever-recurrent problem of the smuggling in and out of goods all bore witness to the failure of the wish to seal off hospitals hermetically from the outside world. 69 The spirit of regimentation and uniformity, too, was less an attainment than a theoretical objective. In Montpellier's Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi, for example, far from remaining pinned to their beds as regulations specified, inmates wandered around the buildings almost at will, indulged in gambling, hid from the doctor so as to avoid early discharge, or else discharged themselves before the doctor had given his approval. 70 In the Hopital General, work never achieved the status of prime promoter of the spirit of regimentation which administrators aimed for, and the hopes of transforming inmates into something approaching an efficient workforce proved chimerical. 71 In a number of important matters, the hospital staff colluded in 67 HD I E 9 (18/1/1766); HG I E 21 (4/10/1750, 23/4/1752). 68 HG I E 585. Incentives as well as deterrents were administered, especially in matters related to work. Cf. HG I E 21 (21/10/1753), E 29 (7/7/1782). 69 See in particular HG I E 24 (25111'1762, 20/9/1763), E 25 (19/10/1766), E 27 (19/1/1775), E 28 (16/9/1779); HD I E 11 (regulations concerning porters) E 6 (8/9/1742). For smuggling, HG I E 25 (19/10/1766), E 27 (19/3/1775), E 30 (23/11/1783). 70 See in particular HD I E 5 (21/5/1732), E 6 (14/1/1747), E 17. 71 See in particular HG I E 26 (11/7/1773, 18/7/1773), E 342, E 388. Cf. R. Meissonnier, 1951, 16 Iff.
Popular attitudes to charity
111
infringements of the required uniformity. The solidarity of the poor — inmates and employees — frequently frustrated the reforming intentions of administrators. Every hospital employed as menials individuals who were little more elevated in the social scale than the inmates. Indeed, the hopitaux made major economies in staff salaries by using inmates in all branches of the internal service. In the case of small-town hospitals, it was an accepted means of according relief, to take onto the payroll and expect domestic service from individuals who otherwise would be a burden on the local bureau de charite or diocesan hopital. 72 Even if employees took their duties seriously, inmates were unlikely to brook any pretension to authority or discipline from individuals from the same social background as themselves: the harsh treatment which the poor of Montpellier meted out to the wretched chasse-gueux who attempted to arrest beggars and vagrants in the city was proof enough of this. 73 If only to make their own lives easier, the menial servants of the hospitals tended to dilute administrative regulations so as to make them palatable to the poor, with whom they had to have daily dealings. The nursing sisters too were likely to have an accommodating attitude towards inmates over many essentials. Their religious, sometimes Jansenist, 74 slant of mind was fully receptive to the idea that the poor needed close supervision and the constant exercise of disciplinary measures, if only because they were tainted by original sin and intrinsically vicious. Yet the sisters tended to be sceptical of the ideal of unbending regimentation so dear to the hearts of administrators. The latter were distanced from the daily realities of hospital life and largely unaware of its variety, diversity and difficulties. Closer to the poor, the sisters also had a greater concern for their moral susceptibilities. While they were far from soft, they were willing to try to understand and sympathise with the feelings of inmates. For the sisters, it seemed crucial - both from the point of view of internal discipline and as a consequence of their religious and practical outlook - to 'menager l'amour-propre des pauvres'. 75 The sisters' pragmatic strategy of winning the consent of the poor to their authority by calculated compromise was mixed with a more general concern to deal sympathetically with individuals who were conscious of having abased themselves by entering a hospital. This came out in a variety of different ways. The sisters of Montpellier's hopital were firm advocates, for example, of allowing distinctions in dress for inmates who were
72 Arch. hosp. Saint-Pons, E 1 (2/11/1773). For the Montpellier hospitals, C 568; A.N., F 15 226. 73 HG I G 13. 74 For the hospital of Lodeve, E. Appolis, Lejansenisme dans le diocese de Lodeve au XVIIIe siecle, Albi, 1952, 174f.; and for the Montpellier hospitals, V. Durand, 1907, 119f. 75 Citation from J.A. Mourgue, op.cit., IX, 13.
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Poverty under the Ancien Regime
co-operative and showed a willingness to share the burden of domestic and household chores. It was only after 1760 that the view of the administrators, who regarded such distinctions as 'contraires a l'esprit d'humilite qui doit etre inseparable de la pauvrete', finally prevailed and that all entrants were required to agree to wear hospital uniform. 76 In regard to food as well, there was a similar mixture of discord and non-compliance with regulations. The bonuses which inmates managed to acquire in the workshops of Montpellier's Hopital General were spent on tobacco, garlic, dried fish and other popular luxuHes which constantly militated against the principle of uniformity. 77 Entry to the incurables section of the hopital, where the regime was less harsh, was also used as a favour and reward. Although the administrators fixed the maximum number of incurables to thirty, Jean Colombier, Royal Inspector of Hospitals and Prisons, discovered on his visit in 1785 that the staff had permitted four times this number to enjoy the privilege of entry, with the result that many so-called 'incurables' in fact suffered only from curable ailments or mild affections such as asthma and hernias. 78 There were further examples of staff collusion with and protectiveness towards inmates in the field of medical care. Some indication of popular attitudes towards the medical profession and the art of healing will help to explain the nature of the conflict here, and to highlight a further aspect of life within charitable institutions which attracted the hostility of potential entrants. 76 HG I E 22 (25/7/1756). Cf. HG I E 23 (5/12/1762) and HG I E 26 (24/7/1775). 77 HG I E 21 (15/11/1750), E 27 (20/8/1775). For popular luxuries, cf. the theft of personal effects within the hopital, HG I B 585. 78 A.N., F 15 226. Cf. HG I E 29 (24/9/1780).
Popular attitudes towards poor relief (ii) Medicine
The common people of Languedoc had little time or sympathy for the medical profession. As was the case elsewhere in pre-contemporary France,* they preferred, as far as was possible, the virtues of self-reliance. Their first idea when ill was to build up their intake of nourishing foodstuffs. To profit from the fortifying properties of red wine, for example, 2 or of broths and bouillons, often appeared the surest form of medication. 'A bouillon,' ironised the choleric English novelist Tobias Smollett, whose travels as an invalid took him to Montpellier, 'is a universal remedy among the good people of France, insomuch that they have no idea of any person's dying after having swallowed un bon bouillon.'2' The poor were willing to tolerate even ailments and disabilities of an extreme type without having recourse to anything more than an improved diet. Pierre Fournier, doctor in Montpellier's hotel-Dieu from 1755 to 1766, held that the majority of adult males in the surrounding countryside suffered from hernias which they bore with stoicism. 4 It was only when their employment — and thereby their livelihood — was threatened, opined the Montpellier savant Amoreux, who recorded the medical mores of the inhabitants of the region with great acumen, that they became disposed to consult the medical profession: Le peuple se passe volontiers de medecins et redoute le fer des chirurgiens. . . Dans le cours ordinaire des maladies, le peuple n'ecoute point [le medecin], il est dur a lui-meme. De legeres affections, quelques incommodites habituelles, les maladies 1 For popular mentalites concerning healing and disease elsewhere in France, cf. F. Lebrun, 1971, esp. 391-415; and J.P. Goubert, Malades et medecins en Bretagne, 1770-1790, Paris, 1974, esp. 228-54. 2 E.G. Leonard, Mon Village sous Louis XV, dapres les memoires dunpaysan, Paris, 1941. 109. Cf. the Languedocian proverb recorded in C. Seignolle, I960, 203: 'Un cop de vin val mai qu6 cinq frans de me"decin\ 3 T. Smollett, Travels through Prance and Italy, edited by T. Seccombe, London, 1919, 107. Cf. Y. Castan, 1974, 279. 4 P. Fournier, 'Memoire sur la situation, l'air et les eaux de la ville de Montpellier', in Recueil dobservations de medecine des hopitaux militaires, i, Paris, 1766, 16.
113
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Poverty under the And en Regime
qui n'otent pas les forces, font peu de sensation chez lui. II ne cede qu'a une fievre continue ou a un abattement total. Le fievreux oublie le lendemain de son acces qu'il est encore a la veille de voir recommencer la scene de sa souffrance.5 This apparent neglect of self-interest was based on a fundamental fatalism concerning serious illnesses and a lack of faith in the capacity of doctors to heal them. Si Ton va consulter un medecin, c'est assez d'avoir son avis par ecrit: on ne le suivra pas. II n'importe. On croit avoir satisfait au devoir qu'impose le sang pour le soulagement de ses proches, on n'a eu egard qu'au respect public. Un pere meurt sans avoir obtenu les secours necessaires, il etait avance en age, dit-on; le fils est enleve a la fleur de sept ans, il etait atteint d'une maladie incurable, les medecins n'ont pas connu son mal; l'epouse perit dans les douleurs de l'enfantement ou par les suites de couche, elle etait epuisee de travail, les gens de l'art ne l'auraient pas If at length a doctor was called, it was frequently, Amoreux observed, only when the individual was beyond cure. Even then, such was the concern of friends, relatives and neighbcurs to alleviate suffering and to console the sick person, that they prevented doctors from using remedies which were unpleasant to take. The streak of popular fatalism towards illness ran deepest in times of epidemic. Doctors sent out by the government to villages afflicted by heavy illness or epidemics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were forever emphasising the need to combat the apathy concerning their fate which seized whole villages at such times. 7 Indeed the learned doctor Bouillet of Beziers, a luminary of the local Academy and a corresponding member of the Paris Academie de Medecine developed a theory that the great bubonic plague of 1720 which had stricken Marseilles had not been contagious but was rather a sort of moral distemper, characterised by Toysivete, l'inaction, 1'ennui, lacraintedelamort, l'intemperance, l'usage des mauvais aliments et Tabus des remedes', and aggravated by physical privations consequent on the disruption of trade. 8 If his diagnosis was woefully inadequate, his description of the malaise which gripped disease-ridden populations and made them careless for their own welfare was sound enough. It was easy to satirise this malaise: one doctor, visiting a 5 P.J. Amoreux, Topographie historique physique et medicale de la cote maritime du diocese de Montpellier', manuscript, 1787, B.M. Montpellier, 47. 6 Ibid. 7 Numerous examples from the early nineteenth century are collected together in 89 M 1. For the eighteenth century, see the archives of the Intendance of Languedoc, Series C, passim. 8 J. Bouillet, 'Sur la nature et les causes de la peste' in Les Elements de la medecine pratique tires des ecrits dHippocrate et de quelques autres medecins, 2 vols., Beziers, 1744, ii, 50. For the conceptual schemas of eighteenth-century medicine concerning contagion, cf. J. Ehrard, 'Opinions medicales en France au XVIIIe siecle. La Peste et l'idee de contagion', Ann. E.S.C., 1957, esp. 52f.
Popular attitudes to medicine
115
village afflicted by a deadly fievre maligne discovered a woman, convinced she was on the point of death at the hands of the disease, who was in fact suffering from nothing more than a dislocated collar-bone!9 Her case exemplified the widespread popular fatalism towards disease and the machinations of the medical profession. Even if his ailment were serious enough to threaten his livelihood, it was by no means certain that the ailing peasant or artisan would seek a cure from doctors. Prayer was not disdained in a Catholic society which — especially through the cult of saints - placed a high premium on divine intervention in human affairs and whose clergy were inclined to view disease or misfortune as an opportunity to expiate for one's sins. Whatever the form of treatment, one local doctor lamented, 'le peuple veut toujours des miracles'. 10 The popularity of mineral water springs owed more to their allegedly miraculous powers than to the seal of approval of the medical establishment. n The local population also swore by a fund of popular remedies, of which women were invariably the fearsome advocates.12 For more exotic treatment, healers and sorcerers - still common in parts of Langeudoc in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - might be consulted. 13 The stock of indigenous remedies, like prayer, relied heavily on the suggestibility — perhaps the naivete and superstition — of the local population. Certainly, the wise woman or native healer who recommended concoctions of herbs for syphilis or who urged that smallpox should be sweated out, was hardly likely to achieve very much for her clients.14 There might, however, be empirical components in this form of popular herb-based medicine which could, in certain circumstances, produce a measure of success. Furthermore the unswerving faith which the sick often had in local healers provided a propitious setting for the workings of the 'placebo' effect - the 9 89 M 1 (village of Neffies in the district of Beziers). Cf. C. Caizergues and S. Roge"ry, Rapport fait a I'Ecole de Medecine le 23 ventose an VIII sur la nature, la marche et le traitement de lafievreobservee dans les hopitaux de cette commune pendant les six premiers mois de I'an VIII, Montpellier, Year VIII, 6; and B. A. Peytal, Essai sur la topographie medicate de Meze (departement de I'Herault), Montpellier, Year X, 44. 10 J. Draparnaud, in Recueil des bulletinspubliespar la Societelibre des sciences et belles-lettres de Montpellier, 6
vols., Montpellier, Year XI, i, 86. For the enduring belief in the miraculous in healing, cf. the great classic of historical psychology of M. Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges. Etude sur le caractere surnaturel attribuea la puissance royale particulierement en France et en Angleterre, 2nd edn, Paris, 1961, esp. 429.
11 12 13 14
Cf. also R.P. Chalumeau, X'Assistance aux malades pauvres au XVIIe siecle', XVIIe siecle, 1971, 76; and J. Delumeau, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire, Paris, 1971, passim. For Balaruc, Les Chroniques de Languedoc, Montpellier, 1875, 29ff.; for P6rols, Amoreux, mauscript cited, 1787, 9; for Notre-Dame-Grau-d'Agde, C. Seignolle, I960, 223. Amoreux, 'M6moire sur la topographie me"dicale de Montpellier et de son territoire', manuscript, 1779, B.M. Montpellier, 28. D. Fabre and J. Lacroix, 1973, esp. Chapter 10; R. Nelli, Le Languedoc et le comte de Foix. Le Roussillon, Paris, 1968, esp. 219ff., 279ff. M. Tudesq, op. cit., 1788, 206; Amoreux, manuscript cited, 1779, 41. Cf. Amoreux, manuscript cited, 1787, 46. Establishment medicine also, it should be noted, had a pitiful success rate against both these afflictions.
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Poverty under the Ancien Regime
cure caused by strong auto-suggestion concerning the efficacy of some in fact pharmacologically neutral substance.15 In striking contrast to doctors, who were only too quick to pass off popular beliefs as blind prejudice or ignorance, healers were keen to invoke the therapeutic powers of the imagination of their clients upon their ailments. In particular, they played up to the conviction of the common people - even more baroque in medicine than in religion! — that treatment of an external and ritualistic kind had the edge over internal treatment. 16 Even as the medical revolution of the nineteenth century evolved, doctors in this region would find themselves competing with, and often ousted in popular esteem by, local healers whose florid and extravagant application of external medicaments — plasters, poultices, ointments, linaments and the like - found greater popularity than their own potions and medicines and their earnest recommendations on a healthy diet. Midwives were an important part of the constellation of healers, wise women and sorcerers who formed the alternative medicine on which a large proportion of the indigent population relied.17 Indeed, with the exception of the very wealthiest families, who employed a surgeon, and the least-provided-for areas in which a system of female self-help prevailed, the whole population looked to local midwives for the delivery of their children. Their state of formal medical knowledge was largely nonexistent. If church and state had long professed an interest in them, this sprang less from a concern for their technical competence than from a desire to ensure that they could be relied upon as good upstanding Catholics to record and report the births of Protestants, unmarried mothers and prostitutes. 18 It was only in the 1780s that the authorities, apparently moved with compassion for the new-born child, but also with a frankly populationist ulterior motive, gave thought to the technical education of midwives. The prompting of the government and then of the Estates led to the establishment in a number of dioceses of short training courses for midwives. 19 The results were disappointing, however, as an enquiry into medical personnel in 1786 revealed.20 Less than half the communities of the dioceses of Agde, Montpellier and Saint-Pons were equipped with midwives whom the cure held were worthy of the name, while the sub-delegate of Lodeve claimed that they were only to be found in his 15 K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, London, 1971, 248. 16 Amoreux, manuscript cited, 1779, 43; J. Bouillet, op. cit., i, 166; B.A. Peytal, op. cit., 36f. 17 For local midwifery, see esp. C 525. Cf. M. Laget, 'La Naissance aux siecles classiques. Pratique des accouchements et attitudes collectives en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles', Ann. E.S.C., 1977'. 18 H G I E 38, G 2 1 . 19 E. Fraisse, postface to his edition of the Requite des enfants a naitre contre les sages-femmes, Montpellier, 1873, 49ff. 20 C 525.
Popular attitudes to medicine
117
diocese in the towns of Clermont and Lodeve. Moreover, only about one-sixth of midwives in the area appear to have attended training courses or received a diploma of competence from their local guild of surgeons. The midwife of Bas Languedoc thus remained a middle-aged or aged woman, frequently widowed, using her skills very often as a means of making ends meet and, as the sub-delegate of Narbonne put it in 1786, exercising 'cet art precieux avec autant de temerite que d'ignorance'. 21 An anonymous pastiche, issued in brochure form during the meeting of the Estates in 1782, and claiming on behalf of the satirically named author, Foetus, syndic du corps, to reveal the barbarous level of midwifery in the province, was probably closer to reality than the black humour of the piece suggested. It enjoined the Estates to 'defendre d'abord aux sages femmes, sous peine de mort, de ne plus nous extropier, mutiler, dechirer, etouffer, mettre en pieces; d'ordonner qu'a l'avenir on nous recevra avec toute l'honnetete et la decence que la politesse franchise exige', and went on to paint a grim picture of the province's midwives, 'ces sempiternelles Matrones, grossieres, laides a faire evanouir; ineptes, incapables de nous donner aucun secours; gauches \
» 22
a toute outrance . Besides the trust which the common people displayed in indigenous, informal medicine, they also manifested a touching belief in the efficacy of panaceas. The outlandish titles of the patent medicines sent out by the government to country areas probably in fact endeared them to the local population as much as they made the medical establishment shudder. 23 The faith in panaceas made the common people easy prey for quacks and mountebanks. These were always to be found holding forth on the virtues of their elixirs wherever they could gather a crowd without arousing the vigilant surveillance of the local medical faculty or guilds of surgeons and apothecaries. Some medical charlatans, by playing adeptly on popular hopes and fears produced startling — not to say catastrophic - results. Raymond de la Tapie, for example, who travelled around Haut Languedoc in the 1770s and early 80s with what he claimed was a faultless infant prophylactic against hernias in later life was estimated by the Intendant of Languedoc in fact to have castrated 500 children in the diocese of Saint-Papoul alone!24 Fairground entertainment was used by some of these travelling quacks to boost their sales. Sieur Charigny, for example, whose much vaunted elixir was in fact nothing more than coloured vegetable water, went everywhere accom21 At least 45 per cent of the midwives of the dioceses of Agde and Montpellier were widows. Cf. M. Laget, 1977, 984. 22 E. Fraisse (ed.), op. tit., 46, 41. 23 See below, page 137. 24 C 4723; and 'Rapport sur les inconveniens de l'op^ration de castration pratiquee pour obtenir la cure radicale des Hernies', in Histoire de la Sotiete Royale de Medetine, vol. i, Paris, 1776, 189.
118
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
panied by a troupe of tightrope walkers. 25 Alexandre Cosne, son of a Parisian building-worker, who toured southern France in the early 1760s before ending up in the Montpellier Hopital General, was another consummate example of the showman-cum-healer. Le Grand Connus, as he frequently styled himself, improvised a variety of forms of entertainments for festivals, fairs and markets. In Bordeaux he appeared once with a firework display and once with a troupe of dancers, musicians, mummers and tightrope walkers, specialising in a pantomime anglaise which ended with a virtuoso display of bird-calls. In Albi, Gaillac and Narbonne he appeared with a troupe of tumblers. Elsewhere he displayed an ingeniously sculptured clock over two metres high and with moving parts, or turned up with a huge pool in which a mermaid appeared and answered the audience's questions. Besides these guises, Cosne also arrived in Montpellier styled as // Cosmopolitan a magical healer whose elixir was claimed to cure eye troubles, skin disease, stomach ailments, halitosis and syphilis as well as being particularly effective for dyeing hair! 26 When or if the ailing pauper turned for treatment to the established medical professions rather than to the local healer or itinerant quack, he would be much more likely to address himself to a surgeon than to a doctor. Most villages of any substance could boast at least one surgeon. 27 In Montpellier, where a College of Surgery had been established in 1741 and where surgeons found respected academic jobs, some wealthy surgeons 25 C 142. 26 Private papers of Alexandre Cosne, HG I H 1. For other local charlatans see, for example, C 144, C 525. Cf. J.P. Goubert, 'L'Art de guerir. Medecine savante et medecine populaire dans la France de 1790', Ann. E.S.C., 1977; and T. Gelfand, 'Medical professionals and charlatans. The Comite de salubrite enquete of 1790-1791', Histoire socialeI Social History, 1978. 27 Evidence available on the geographical distribution of surgeons is severely deficient. A seemingly incomplete enquiry in 1737 (C 2776) gives the following figures: Communities with surgeons Diocese Agde Beziers Lodeve Montpellier Saint-Pons
No of communities 20 106
53 101
43 323
Number 18 51 15 37 12
133
%
90.0 48.1 28.3 36.7 27.9 41.2
Once again, the mountain dioceses are least well provided for. The largest concentrations of surgeons were to be found in the cities of Montpellier and Beziers: 38 and 13 respectively, according to the Etat de medecine, chirurgie et pharmacie en Europe pour I'an 1776, Paris, 1776. Seemingly most
villages with over about 400 or 500 inhabitants — slightly more in the mountain areas — would expect to have a surgeon. Those with a thousand inhabitants might have two or three. For the post-Revolutionary situation, see below, page 236ff.
Popular attitudes to medicine
119
aspired to parity in esteem with doctors. 28 The village surgeon, however, was a very different proposition in these southern climes where it was sometimes said that an ability to wield a razor entitled a man to claim he was a surgeon. 29 The sub-delegate of Nimes reported of the surgeons of Bas Languedoc: 'Les maitres chirurgiens en titre . . . ont toujours exerce la barberie et la frisure et c'est leur seule ressource pour pouvoir gagner leur vie, car s'ils etaient reduits aux seuls fonctions de la chirurgie, ils ne pourraient pas subsister. ' 30 The medical establishment of the big towns had nothing but contempt for these rustic practitioners. Amoreux claimed disdainfully that most of them knew neither how to read or write. They certainly ranked closer to the village artisan than to the urban notable. 31 Certainly too their knowledge was highly exiguous, often boiling down to little more than an apparently random alternation of bleedings and purges. Doctors in contrast were at the very apex of the medical hierarchy. They ranked among the more respected liberal professions — particularly in an area dominated by a university with such an illustrious medical faculty as Montpellier. Their training was expensive, and a budding practitioner would normally aim to recoup his parents' expenditure on his education and to establish himself by building up a wide clientele of wealthy patients. 32 The latter could only be found in any number in towns. Hence the profession tended to be located in Bas Languedoc at least, in a relatively small number of towns in the area along the coastal plain, where the population was both dense and socially differentiated. 33 Not only were doctors geographically out of the reach of much of the population of the Montpellier region, they were often economically 28 F. Grand, 'L'Organisation de l'enseignement de la chirurgie au XVIIIe siecle, d'apres des documents montpellierains et des lettres de maitrise', Mons. Hip., 1963; L. Dulieu, La Chirurgie a Montpellier. Les Temps Modernes, Montpellier, 1975. 29 Cahier of the clergy of Dax in 1789, cited in A. Babeau, Le Village sous I'Ancien Regime, Paris, 1882, 332. 30 C 2797, cited in J. Alibert, 'Une communaute rurale du Bas Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle. 'Marcilhargues' [= Marsillargues]. Etude sociale. 1682—1792', unpublished memoire de maitrise, Montpellier, Lettres, 1969, 96. 31 Amoreux, manuscript cited, 1787, 44. Cf. J. Alibert, 1969, 96; A. Molinier, Uneparoisse du Bas Languedoc. Serignan, 1650-1792, Montpellier, 1968, 170; and L. Dermigny in P. Wolff (ed.), 1967, 390. 32 P. Delaunay, La Vie medicate aux XVle, XVlle et XVIIIe siecles, Paris, 1935, 30, 12Iff. 33 Evidence for the geographical distribution of doctors is conspicuously lacking. Montpellier and Beziers — with 34 and 7 doctors respectively — once again dominate (Etat de la Medecine, 1116). The fact that sizeable bourgs with well over 2,000 inhabitants such as Meze and Marsillargues, and large villages with about 1,000 inhabitants like Nissan, Saint-Pargoire and Serignan were obliged to subsidise a doctor out of communal funds for residing within them suggests that doctors were not much in evidence in rural districts. R. Arnaud, 1966, 236ff. (Meze); E. Sup Marsillargues BB 19 (Marsillargues); HS Hop Nissan (unclassified documents); H. Bellugou, La Revolution dans le canton de Saint-Pargoire (Herault), 1789-1800, Montpellier, 1931, 45; A. Molinier, 1968, 170. Cf. F. Lebrun, 1971, 219ff.; and J.P. Goubert, 'The extent of medical practice in France around 1780', J. Soc. Hist., 1911. For the post-Revolutionary situation, see below, page 236ff.
120
Poverty under the And en Regime
inaccessible too. Doctors were traditionally represented as a particularly rapacious breed. The English novelist Smollett waxed indignant in Montpellier, for example, about the celebrated Fizes, 'this great lanthorn of medicine', who 'notwithstanding his great age and wealth . . . will still scramble up two pairs of stairs for a fee of six livres'.34 Although some doctors might give free consultations, this appears to have been the exception. In general it would appear that a doctor's consultation cost at least three livres — a day and a half s labour for a skilled man at the end of the Ancien Regime 35 — and might cost a great deal more. Country areas were particularly badly affected. Peasants in the village of Perols, for example, a mere five miles from Montpellier, had to pay a doctor a fee of 12 livres for adventuring out of the city, plus 7 livres A sols tor the carriage which brought him and a gratuity of 12 sols to the coach-driver. 36 Little wonder, in such circumstances, that the poor deferred the decision to call in a doctor until it was often too late, and that his visit was less an augury of cure than a last rite. The limited capacities of a great many doctors comprised a further cause of the popular distrust of the profession. It is in many ways more appropriate to see the run-of-the-mill doctor of this period as the heir of the medicine of the age of Moliere rather than as the precursor of the scientific medicine of the nineteenth century. If the luminaries of Montpellier's Faculty of Medicine, urbane all-rounders of science, contributors to the Encyclopedie, active participants in the 'Republic of Letters', catch the historian's eye, 37 the average rural or small-town practioner was still immersed in the medical conceptions of the Ancients. It was still possible for misguided and even frankly crackpot medical theories to be welcomed and accepted: theories which in substance had little more scientific status than folklore remedies - with the proviso that they were even less empirically grounded than the latter and thus even less likely to have a chance of success.38 Although, it is true, the teaching at Montpellier's Medical Faculty became much more practically orientated over the course of the eighteenth century, it still remained possible for a student to go through his entire medical training without visiting the bedside of a sick person. 39 The courses were far from arduous, and the emphasis still upon 34 T. Smollett, op. tit., 94. Cf. E. Appolis, 'Le Livre de raison du professeur Jean-Henri Haguenot', Mow. Hip., 1967, 23. 35 See above, page 33. 36 C 5955. Cf. E.G. Leonard, 1941, 10937 J. Proust, 1968. Cf. too the numerous writings of the medical historian L. Dulieu, some of which are included in the bibliography. 38 Cf. L. Elaut, 'Un epigone du vitalisme montpellierain: Dominique Raymond', Mom. Hip., 1960. 39 P. Huard, 'L'Enseignement m^dico-chirurgical' in R. Taton (ed.), Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVllle siecle, Paris, 1964, 176.
Popular attitudes to medicine
121
'the elucidation of the classic texts, more or less elegantly Latinized', and presented with aplomb. 40 It was learning of a sort which was easily parodied: even the great nosologist Boissier de Sauvages had presented a dissertation on whether love could be cured medicinally, and the Faculty had to keep a constant watch lest overly facetious dissertations which observed the formal rules of the genre should be accepted. 41 Beyond parody, lay indifference and even contempt for all that did not confer prestige and wealth: it was common practice, for example, for medical graduates to spend a number of early years in a country practice on the grounds that the mistakes of inexperience mattered less there than among a doctor's future, wealthy, urban patrons. 42 The understandable anxiety which the common people of Languedoc felt about committing themselves to treatment by the medical profession — an anxiety which expressed itself in a marked preference for alternative channels of treatment - constituted a further mental block for the pauper faced with entry into a hospital. The majority of hospitals were small, multi-purpose institutions, more attuned to the exigencies of poverty than of disease. As Amoreux put it: 'Un hopital est l'azille de l'indigence et une ressource qui reste au peuple qui a eprouve des malheurs.' 43 By the last decades of the Ancien Regime, most hospitals in Bas Languedoc had a surgeon on stipend and a fair number had a doctor on call as well. The meagreness of the honorarium which they accorded their medical personnel, however, and the usually tiny fraction of their expenditure which went on drugs and medicines underlined the subordinate role they accorded strictly medical care. 44 The varied clientele of most hospitals — which might receive alongside the individual suffering from an identifiable and curable ailment, the aged and infirm, the disabled, the unwanted child, the pilgrim, the itinerant worker, the temporary or seasonal migrant — arguably made the need for organised medication less pronounced. Furthermore, most local hospitals followed the lead of Montpellier's Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi 45 in refusing admission to those suffering from many complaints, including scabies, scrofula, ringworm, syphilis or pregnancy (sic), which threatened the physical or moral integrity of the hospital community. The most 'medical' institutions in the region were not poor-relief 40 A. Germain, 'L'Ecole de medecine de Montpellier. Ses Origines, sa constitution, son enseignement', M.S.A.M., 1880, 104. 41 L. Dulieu, 'Francois Boissier de Sauvages (1706-1767)', R.H. Sci., 1969, 303; A. Germain, 1880, 69f. 42 'Eloge de M. Bouillet', in Histoire de la Societe Royale de Medecine, vol. i, Paris, 1776, 44. 43 Amoreux, manuscript cited, 1787, 47. 44 Table 10. 45 Ball.; A.N., F 15 226.
122
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
Table 10. Expenditure on medicines and medical services in hospitals in the Montpellier region at the end of the Ancien Regime
Hospital A. Large hospitals Agde
Sette Pezenas Lodeve Clermont Saint-Pons B. Small hospitals Bessan Florensac Marseillan Meze Montagnac Pomerols Saint-Thibery Frontignan Lunel Saint-Chinian La Salvetat Olargues
Expenditure on medicines (in livres) Total expenditure — % (in livres) Amount 11760 9 824 10 216 11564 4 289 5 118
1012
1696 1030 965 1364 490 270 1201 3 486 3 114 2 330 1278
Medical staff, with salaries (in livres) Doctors
Surgeons
250 (?) 224 300 120 (?)
2.1 — 2.2 2.6 2.8 —
M150)
H150)
M20)
H22) M96)
45
4.5
150 120 60 250 72 26 150 160 300 200 200
8.8 11.7 6.2 18.3
— M?) — — H?) — M?)
14.7 9.6 12.5
4.6 9.6
8.9
15.7
off icier desante-(lW)
H?)
M36)
M?)
M30)
l-(24) l-(100)
1—(gratis)
M?) — M?)
2-<18)
H?) M?)
H30)
l-(gratis) 1-Cgratis) chirurgien-apothicaire-( ?)
M40)
—
H30) H48)
Source: Ball.
establishments at all; they were the local military hospitals and health spas, whose impact upon the poor was minimal. The Hopital Saint-Louis in Montpellier was the only military hospital in the region and admitted not paupers but soldiers, for whom it offered specialist treatment of venereal disease.46 The poor were not to be found in great numbers either at the main mineral water spa within the region, at Balaruc-les-Bains, some twelve miles from Montpellier. 47 The allegedly health-giving properties of Balaruc waters had been extolled by Montpellier's doctors since the sixteenth century, when the Swiss medical student Thomas Platter had been distracted by the water's spectacular diarrhoeic effect on the 'ladies of elegance' who had travelled from Montpellier to take them, and who were 46 C 559. Cf. L. Dulieu, 'L'Hopital royal et militaire de Montpellier', Mom. Hip., 1966. 47 For Balaruc, which was administered by the board of Montpellier's Hopital General, see esp. HGII G 1, G 2. See also HGIG 1, G 3; C 525, C 553, G 1408; and J.J. Expilly, Dictionnairegeographique, historique etpolitique des Gaules et de la France, 6 vols., Paris, 1762—70, i, 436f.
Popular attitudes to medicine
Yli
reduced to presenting 'the curious spectacle o f . . . every one firing off in full view and even vying with each other'. 48 Since the 1720s, Montpellier's Hopital General had sent one of its nursing sisters to Balaruc each spring and autumn to cater for the poor and the numerous soldiers who flocked there for treatment. She failed to counteract the influence of the spa's manager who, it was confidently claimed, Yinquiette moins de la sante des malades que du soin de recueillir leur argent'. 49 As the waters acquired a great vogue in the course of the eighteenth century, the poor were increasingly ousted by better-off individuals who forged certificates of indigence to gain admittance and who, once they had received their daily food ration from the sister, set off gaily for the cabarets of the neighbouring village where other well-off 'patients', including a sprinkling of Montpellier's prostitutes, lodged. Although the waters were supposed to be beneficial for skin ailments, nervous diseases and rheumatism, the spa soon won notoriety for the dancing, gambling and promiscuity rife there. 50 In spite of the patently unmedical complexion of a great many hospitals, and in spite of the evident failure of the medical profession to make much of an impact on local hospital hygiene and sanitary standards, hospitals and doctors were indissolubly linked in the popular imagination. Indeed, as the hospitals' wage-rolls make clear, closer links were being forged between the two over the course of the eighteenth century, despite the fitfully effective opposition of nursing sisters, and some hospital administrators, who — like the poor themselves - distrusted the motives behind establishment medicine's growing interest in hospital inmates. Professional rivalry counted for something in the hostility which often characterised relations between doctors and nurses. The sisters were medical practitioners in their own right. Thefilles de la charite, for example, not only possessed surgical skills - they were particularly adept at blood-lettings — but also acted as apothecary in the hospitals they served. Even in the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi in Montpellier — the most medical of local hospitals - they referred only the most complicated preparations to the prestigious guild of apothecaries in the city. 51 In small hospitals, where doctors and surgeons were consultants rather than regular visitors, the sisters performed all the daily medical duties except shaving the men and engaging in various operations of a kind which their modesty did not permit. 52 Even in the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi, the sisters were able to win a 48 Journal of a Younger Brother. The Life of Thomas Platter as a Medical Student in Montpellier at the Close of the Sixteenth Century, edited by S. Jennett, English translation, London, 1963, 51. 49 De Genssane, op. cit., i, 254. 50 G. Cholvy, 1973, 310, Cf. A.M. Montpellier (unclassified). 51 L. Dulieu, La Pharmaciea Montpellier deses origines a nos jours, Montpellier, 1973, 101. Contracts in A.N., S 6160, S 6161, S 6169, S 6171, S 6173. 52 HS Hop Be"z (unclassified documents).
124
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
wide degree of autonomy in the distribution of remedies and in treatment. Doctors and surgeons were supposed to visit the sick twice daily. 53 They were always accompanied on their rounds by the sisters who made sure to take along the hospital chaplain to act as a restraining influence on medical curiosity. The sisters were entrusted with the execution of the often vague prescriptions which doctors and surgeons gave. If the latter did not make their visit, then the sisters acted entirely on their own initiative. They were thus the final arbiters of how much of any drug or foodstuff an inmate should have as well as deciding, in some cases, which course of treatment he should follow. Their sway was particularly strong in the female wards to which, for moral reasons, other para-medical personnel such as medical students and apprentice surgeons were barred entry. Even in the men's wards, however, the sisters closely supervised the menial medical tasks performed by the apprentice surgeons who were supposed to act as the ancillaries of the salaried surgeons and doctors. Professional jealousy between the medical profession and the nursing sisters was only one ingredient in a larger dispute between the two in which their differing conceptions of the function of the hospital were in conflict. The sisters viewed the hospital as a place of care and consolation; Montpellier's academic doctors, as one of teaching, research and, increasingly, of cure. The foundations of the three pillars of the 'medical revolution' of the nineteenth century - physical examination, autopsy, medical statistics - were already being laid by some medical practitioners in the Montpellier region in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 54 The hospital seemed to offer an ideal setting for physical examination and for the teaching of the principles of medicine through observation and experimentation; it was also an excellent provisioning-centre for corpses for dissection and a potential storehouse of medical statistics. Thus, whereas the sisters tended to view the hospital inmate as Christ's elect, whose material and especially spiritual well-being was to be lovingly tended, the doctors preferred to reify him, and to conceive of him as the carrier of a set of symptoms, the locus of a disease or as a simple statistic, the essential raw material of medical teaching and research. Popular opinion in Montpellier had long been scandalised by the reckless spirit of dissection which had made the name of the city's medical practitioners, albeit only at the cost of transgressing many religious scruples.55 The celebrated Vieussens had perfected his ideas on the nervous 53 The printed regulations of the hospitals are instructive on the medical role of the sisters. See, for example, H D I E 9 (1/8/1761), E 12 (26/4/1783) and A.N., F 15 226. 54 E.H. Ackerknecht, Medicine at the Paris Hospital, 1794-1848, Baltimore, 1967, 15; P. Huard, Sciences, medecine, pharmacie de la Revolution a I'Empire, Paris, 1970, 137. 55 Cf. F. Lebrun, 1971, 106.
Popular attitudes to medicine
125
system by dissecting, as hospital doctor during the 1670s, 500 of the inmates of Montpellier's hotel-Dieu. 56 By the mid eighteenth century, the Medical Faculty could only count on the corpses of executed criminals and on six corpses which the hotel-Dieu was bound by royal edict to provide for its annual course in anatomy. 57 To alleviate this shortage, medical students and doctors and surgeons running private courses had long since engaged in grave-digging on a scale which would not have disgraced Burke and Hare. The spirit of revulsion among nursing sisters and the population at large which this trespass on holy ground occasioned, was exacerbated by the lack of concern which medical practitioners displayed towards human remains once they had finished with them: bones and limbs were found dumped in some quantity outside the city walls where the city's dogs had a field day gnawing at them; bones, blood and gore floating down the river Verdanson even found its way into the washing station of the Hopital General, much to the horror of the inmates. 58 The administrators of Montpellier's hotel-Dieu were willing to make some concessions to the apparently unquenchable medical demand for corpses. Hospital administrators outside the city too — at Sette and Saint-Pons, for example — were also moved to allow dissections on the corpses of inmates. 59 Yet in all cases, great care was taken to place checks on the manner in which these corpses were delivered up to the surgeon's knife, so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the poor or shock the delicacy of the nursing sisters. The regulations of Montpellier's hotel-Dieu, for example, stipulated that the corpses were not to be used in any way which might occasion scandal. Their number was kept small. They were handed over — at night! — only to authorised doctors and surgeons. The corpses were always those of strangers to the city. It was specified that no resident of the city, no woman - for obvious reasons - and, 'pour menager les troupes du Roi', no soldier, was to be used for this purpose. Finally, the administrators themselves supervised the transfer of corpses in person.60 The desire of the nursing sisters to 'menager l'amour-propre des pauvres' brought them into potential conflict with the medical profession over the issue of diet as well as of autopsies. Besides regarding minor dietary concessions as a legitimate means of rewarding a deserving or co-operative inmate, the sisters also had an essentially restorative view of hospital food which — though popular with the poor themselves — was subject to increasing criticism from doctors. Most orders of nursing sisters had originated in the seventeenth century, when feeding the starving poor must 56 L. Dulieu, 1953, 106. 57 C 524. 58 HDI C 3, E 5 (13/12/1728, 28/11/1738); HGI E 24 (19/2/1764); A.M. Montpellier, BB Reg., (9/4/1739). 59 C 559; Arch. hosp. Saint-Pons E 2 (20/4/1781). 60 HD I E 11 (4/4/1772).
126
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
have been a crucial ingredient of care in the frequent subsistence crises of the period. Such an attitude was arguably less attuned to conditions in Bas Languedoc in the eighteenth century, when mortality crises tended to be more closely linked to epidemics rather than food shortages. It was nevertheless indisputable that many of the individuals who entered hospitals were desperately undernourished. 61 The nursing sisters largely concurred with the view which the English novelist Smollett attributed to the common people of France that a good bouillon was a universal remedy: the purpose of hospital food was to assuage hunger and to build up the strength of a pauper. In general, the food which the hospitalised poor of the region could expect was plentiful enough to feed an able-bodied person and was normally of better quality than they might hope to enjoy in the outside world. 62 Bread, with a high wheat content, meat - often in the form of bouillons — and wine were the staples. These were accompanied, if Montpellier's Hopital General is typical in this respect, by dried cod, sardines and anchovies, fresh vegetables, lentils, chick peas and chestnuts. 63 Although the financial crisis of many hospitals in the latter decades of the Ancien Regime led to a deterioration in the quality and the range of the diet, which was a little short of some vitamins in any case,64 hospital food remained solid fare. Over the last decades of the Ancien Regime, the medical establishment was coming to view diet in the form of a ration rather than a means of sustenance, and to regard the controlled intake of food and drink as a fundamental part of overall therapeutic strategy. 65 There were rumblings of discontent among doctors from the 1750s at the plethora of foodstuffs with which the nursing sisters bombarded hospital inmates. In 1758, the Royal Inspector of Languedoc's military hospitals reported that inmates in Montpellier's hotel-Dieu were being too well fed for their own good. 66 In the 1760s, doctors from the hospitals of both Montpellier and Nimes published scientific work in which they claimed that a substantial number of deaths in both institutions had been caused by over-eating or by abuses of dietary regime which the medical staff had been unable to prevent. 67 Intermittent attacks of gangrene in Montpellier's hotel-Dieu from the mid 61 P. Fournier, op. cit., passim. Cf. J. Razoux, Tables nosologiques et meteorologiques tres-etendues dressees a I'hotel-Dieu de Ntmes depuis le lev juin 1757 jusques au lev Janvier 1762, Basle, 1767, passim. 62 H G I E 26(5/7/1772). 63 H G I E 405. 64 For the deficiencies of hospital diet, J. Vedel, 'La Consommation alimentaire dans le Haut Languedoc aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles', Ann. E.S.C., 1975; M.J. Villemon, 'A partir des sources hospitalieres. L'alimentation du pauvre de l'hopital general de Caen au debut du XVIIIe siecle', Annales de Normandie, 1971. 65 Cf. R. Mandrou, 'Un probleme de dietetique a l'hotel-Dieu de Paris a la veille de la Revolution',
C.N.S.S., 1971. 66 HD I E 25. 67 P. Fournier, J. Razoux, works cited.
Popular attitudes to medicine
121
1760s brought the issue before the administrators. The latter followed doctors' recommendations for more thorough isolation measures and for greater hygienic precautions. Doctors also reported that over-eating was causing inflammation of gangrened wounds and they noted that it was desirable that 'la complaisance de la part des soeurs de la charite pour les malades ne les portat a donner trop d'alimens aux blesses et plus que le medecin n'en permettat relativement a leur etat', before concluding that 'on ne peut dissimuler qu'en general les malades mangent trop . . . L'etablissement d'un regime proportionne a l'etat de chaque blesse et de chaque malade parait etre la partie a laquelle il faut le plus s'attacher.'68 The administrators were only partly successful in their efforts to reattribute concern for diet from the nursing sisters to the medical staff. A further acrimonious quarrel blew up in 1785 when Jean Colombier, Royal Inspector of Hospitals and Prisons, insisted again on the subordination of the sisters to the medical staff in everything which concerned medication and diet. The Superior of the congregation of nursing sisters resigned over the upshot of this dispute and over the greater sway which doctors henceforward could claim in the running of the internal life of the hospital. 69 Montpellier's h6tel-Dieu was only one of more than forty hospitals in the region, however: and the medical staff were far from winning such privileges in any other institution. Although on this issue the administrators of Montpellier's hotel-Dieu supported the doctors against the nursing sisters, they were far from natural allies. The hospital board indeed supported the nursing sisters, the fiercest critics of the medical profession, over the Faculty of Medicine's desire to import into the hospital practically orientated teaching and research methods geared around the close and detailed examination of inmates. The eighteenth century was littered with the remains of plans hatched by the Faculty to obtain clinical teaching wards inside the hotel-Dieu. 70 The hospital board also resisted demands that its medical staff should be appointed from the Faculty's professoriate.71 In addition, they encouraged the nursing sisters to keep a very close watch over the activities of the medical students who were permitted after 1746 to enter the hotel-Dieu on payment of a small fee to accompany the medical staff on their rounds. In 1760, a new set of regulations insisted that these students — whose 'esprit de dissipation et d'independance' even their professors deplored72 — were only to enter the hospital when actually accompanied by a doctor. They 68 HD I E 11 (23/6/1770, 25/6/1770). 69 A.N., F 15 226; HD I E 13 (27/10/1787, 5/11/1787). 70 There were attempts in 1715, 1760, 1768, 1774. L. Dulieu, 1953, 104f., I43f.; HD I E 8, E 9, E 10, E 11, E 12, passim. 71 Ibid. 72 Cited in A. Germain, 1880, 106.
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were to comport themselves 'avec le plus grand silence et la plus grande modestie', and were neither to interrupt the doctor nor tire inmates with repeated questioning and examinations. 73 In the successful rearguard action which they fought against the pretensions of academic medicine, the hospital board showed itself in full agreement with the nursing sisters that the hospital was a charitable institution before it was a medical one, and that the first priority must always be to the welfare of the inmates rather than the cause of medical science. Quelle sera la consternation de ce pauvre malade [the board contended in 1775 as it baulked another attempt of the Faculty to introduce clinical teaching within the hospital] devant cette foule d'etudiants, et d'entendre le medecin leur expliquer le genre de sa maladie et le danger ou il se trouve, le peu de ressource pour sa guerison, cette connaissance souvent anticipee et jamais menagee, ne le jettera-t-elle point dans le desespoir, ne fera-t-elle point une nouvelle maladie encore plus facheuse que celle dont il est atteint? 74 Such was the force of their objections that clinical medicine had to make its way uncertainly outside the established hospital framework in the city. Practically minded doctors and surgeons vied keenly for appointments to posts in the military garrison, the prisons and the new Protestant hospital, where they could gain direct access to the sick without the filtering and obstructive influence of hospital administrators and nursing sisters. 75 The desire of hospital administrators to shield their charges from the unwelcome incursions of the medical profession bespoke a paternalism which some historians of medicine have interpreted as sheer obscurantism. Yet if its roots clearly lay in traditional beliefs and practices, the emphasis on the welfare of the inmate was above all a practical strategy designed to accommodate the fear and revulsion which the common people often felt for establishment medicine and its practitioners. It also seems to have owed something to the waves of sensibilite and bienfaisance which influenced social elites towards the end of the Ancien Regime. 76 The administrators of the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi were hardly uncouth or unlettered backwoodsmen: although — significantly — they did not count a practising doctor among them, 77 they included many of the leading lights of the city's urbane and cultivated intellectual circles. Nor were these men in bad company in seeking to resist the claims of the academic doctors to primacy within 73 HD I E 8 (19/7/1760); L. Dulieu, 1953, 145. 74 C 525. 75 L. Dulieu, 'Les Me"decins de la Citadelle de Montpellier', Mons. Hip., 1962; Archives du Consistoire de Montpellier (unclassified). 76 See Introduction. Cf. C. Bloch, 1908, 154, 434. 77 Three qualified doctors who had become conseillers in the Cour des Aides (Chicoyneau, Barthes and Haguenot) did, however, sit on the board as representatives of their corps. L. Dulieu, 1953, 78. No surgeons sat on the board.
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hospitals: even writers on social problems who predicted a great future for the profession held that the home was the most appropriate place for the administering of medical care. The fact, that even with as medically orientated an institution as the Montpellier hotel-Dieu improvements of an apparently medical kind owed little to the influence of doctors, highlighted the subaltern position within which the medical profession was confined inside hospital walls. The establishment of an operating theatre in the 1760s, for example, was less a concession to the doctors than an attempt to save inmates from being terrified by the cries of their fellows under the scalpel, and having their persons trampled upon and their furniture ruined by the hordes of medical students and idle sightseers who crowded the normal rooms to witness operations. 78 Similarly, segregation within the hospital tended to follow the dictates of humanity rather than of therapy. The endeavours to partition off the insane from other inmates did not spring from a desire to submit the insane to medically different treatment. 79 As with the beggars from the depot de mendicite, whose numbers the administrative board tried to limit, the aim was to prevent a rather vaguely conceived moral contagion.80 The scientific principles of physical contagion were very imperfectly understood, and, as in other hospitals, the so-called fievreux shared rooms and even beds with blesses. Similarly the customary prohibition on the admittance of individuals with syphilis owed less to fears that the disease might spread than to a desire to protect the poor from - literally! - rubbing shoulders with those suffering from this shaming, and physically repulsive ailment. 81 Only the traditional habit of separating convalescents from the sick, and some latter-day attempts to isolate gangrene victims owed much to medical advice, and both policies were very erratically observed. Typically, when the administrative board finally set about introducing some measure of segregation, they turned their attention not to dividing inmates up according to their state of disease, but rather to providing a separate room in which the well-off could be treated - a stratagem which, it was hoped, would bring new reserves of charity to the institutions. 82 The poor hygienic conditions which hospital inmates endured towards the end of the Ancien Regime were not merely, therefore, a natural and unconditioned state of affairs any more than they were solely the product of 78 HD I E 9 (27/11/1762, 5/11/1763, 9/2/1765). Cf. the discussion on rebuilding in the 1730s, where medical considerations are never mentioned. A.M. Montpellier, BB Reg., (5/2/1734); and H D I E 6(8/5/1745). 79 For the insane, see my article, 1980. 80 See above, page 60. Cf. T. Adams, 'Moeurs et hygienepublique au XVIIIe siecle. Quelques aspects des depots de mendicite', Ann. demog. hist., 1975, 94. 81 This emerges very strongly in everything relating to venereal disease in the registers of the Hopital General. For the attitude of the fitles de la charite, the registers of the Hotel-Dieu and A. N., S 6171. 82 HD I E 11 (29/2/1772, 4/4/1772), E 12 (1/10/1785).
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the financial problems of the hospitals. Partly at least they were also the consequence of a subterranean power struggle within the hospitals, in which the bienfaisant champions of better hygiene, the doctors, were at loggerheads with nursing sisters who placed greater values on coddling, both spiritually and materially, than on cure. Yet although two conceptions of the social function of the hospital — one traditional and consolatory, the other scientific and therapeutic — were in contradiction here, the struggle was not a straightforward clash between traditional charity and Enlightenment bienfaisance'. the sisters could count among their strongest supporters hospital administrators from among the region's enlightened elite. The issue was certainly a complicated one. Opinions were inevitably divided over the future role of institutions whose problems were legion. It would have required a fascinating exercise in cost-benefit analysis — beyond the capabilities of contemporaries and, given the nature of available evidence, of the historian — to determine whether hospital inmates suffered or gained from the traditional orientation of the hospital. Certainly — and the point needs to be stressed - the medical profession's access to inmates in what was still a pre-anaesthetic and pre-antiseptic age in which the scientific approach had not fully matured was far from being an unqualified blessing! The doctors doubtless deserved much of the distrust which the poor traditionally accorded them. Nevertheless, the poor hygiene in which the nursing sisters were prone to acquiesce and which the * doctors ineffectually attacked only worsened the abysmal record of the hospitals and there was no more poignant footnote to that reputation than the tragic fate of the unwanted children entrusted to hospital care. Ironically, the hospital seems to have lost both ways. Local institutions maintained — and may even have extended — their reputations as death- and disease-traps. Yet the limited incursions within them which the medical profession was able to make over the course of the eighteenth century amplified their unpopularity with the poor who had little time for or confidence in the doctors. As the Revolution approached, therefore, the mistrust of the poor joined with the reticence of charitable donors to worsen the problems of beleaguered hospital institutions whose very raison d'etre seemed to be in question.
7 Government, poor relief and the repression of begging
As we have seen, the diminishing capicity of charity and its works to cope with the burgeoning problem of poverty was far from a purely local phenomenon. From about the middle of the eighteenth century, the question of how best to organise the relief of poverty on the ruins of existing forms of charity had become a matter of public remark and open polemic. The case of the Montpellier region suggests that, far from being confined to the Utopian lucubrations of a handful of out-of-touch Parisian intellectuals, this crisis was rooted in the everyday experience of those individuals who came into contact with the institutions. 1 The dilemmas of hospital administrators, the selective dispositions of charitable donors and the muted pathos of popular attitudes all, in their different ways, underpinned the debate and ran in counterpoint to the arguments ofphilosophes and social thinkers. The arguments of the latter were thus not merely a product of their rational preferences, but also a telling and informed reflection of the actual performance of charity and its works. The primacy which the hospitals enjoyed at the centre of poor-relief provision was a major bone of contention. The hopital general — the paradigmatic poor-relief institution since the middle of the seventeenth century — was coming to be seen as outdated. It no longer seemed to make economic sense to pour scanty charitable resources into these cumbersome and top-heavy institutions. The experiences of hospital administrators in the Montpellier region highlighted the extent to which high costs, in an age of inflation and population expansion, had made the care and supervision of hospital inmates progressively uneconomic. The testators of Montpellier, for their part, would also bear out that inefficient management by religiously inspired and hidebound administrative boards had aggravated the problems which hospitals had to face. Although there was a case, some writers conceded, for retaining small, 1 Cf. above, Introduction.
131
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well-managed hospitals — machines a guerir,2 on the lines of the hospitals which Mme Necker had helped to institute in Montpellier and in Paris the new conventional wisdom favoured the administration of relief to the poor in their homes rather than within special institutions. The demise of the hospital was thus accompanied by the rehabilitation of the bureau de charite as the preferred mode of relief. Here too, the national debate struck a resonant chord in the Montpellier region: the inhabitants of the city of Montpellier were by the end of the Ancien Regime displaying an increasingly pronounced preference for the Misericorde and for 'mutualist' institutions which did not confine the poor; while many hospital boards in the region came to dilute their traditional emphasis on hospital care with a measure of home relief. Aid which was channelled through bureaux de charite, it was further argued, was more compassionate than institutionalisation. 3 Although the social and intellectual elites were only partly aware of the criticisms of hospitals 'from below', they did appreciate that the psychological estrangement and physical dangers which entrants to often impersonal and disease-ridden hospitals had to endure constituted drawbacks which did not apply if the poor remained in the bosom of their friends and family. The most persuasive of arguments in favour of bureaux de charite were, however, social and economic rather than humanitarian. Home relief allowed the head of a household to continue to work and to support his family without either he or they having to resort to the — anti-social and economically unproductive — professions of beggar, vagrant or petty criminal. Furthermore, bureaux de charite seemed the key to an efficient, rational and inexpensive system of relief. They did not require the heavy investment in staff, buildings and other overheads which hospitals did: the goodwill of the local worthies and their wives sufficed. Consequently, they seemed the perfect means of combating the gross inequalities in the geographical provision of relief which successive government enquiries had revealed and which troubled Physiocratic social thinkers. There seemed no logical reason why bureaux de charite should not be infinitely extensible, so as to bring relief into disinherited rural areas where aid had always been desperately lacking. Although most social thinkers agreed that the maintenance of private charity on its existing footing was essential if poor relief was to be expanded, past and current form - in France as a whole as in the Montpellier region - indicated that the charitable impulse would need more than a little bolstering. The religious and foundation-orientated structure of existing 2 The phrase is of the hospital reformer Jacques Tenon. Cited in M. Jeorger, 'La Structure hospitaliere de la France sous l'Ancien Rigime', Ann. E.S.C., 1977, 1034. 3 Cf. M. Foucault, 1961, 501ff.
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institutions made them profoundly inimical to radical change or innovation. In the last decades of the Ancien Regime, for example, voices began to be raised in Montpellier for the introduction of lying-in facilities for mothers from poor homes; for better treatment of unwanted and illegitimate children and for the insane; for medical care for venereal disease; and for the relief programmes which would supply rural employment. 4 The government, which largely supported these proposals, proved quite unable to persuade existing institutions to widen their traditional destinations to accommodate these new social needs. Even had the existing institutions wished to help, moreover, their hands were tied by their financial problems. This situation was fairly typical. In the absence of a strong charitable impulse, and with poor-relief institutions increasingly ill-attuned to the social problems of the age, most reformers and social thinkers looked to the central government to introduce modernisation and systematisation into the variegated and disjointed forms of traditional poor relief. The last decades of the Ancien Regime witnessed the beginnings of more far-reaching involvement in poor relief by the central government. Government attitudes towards the poor in the past had always been dictated less by compassion than by a concern for public order. From the late Middle Ages, the central government had endeavoured to legislate out of existence the criminal element within the world of poverty. Its target was the individual variously described as a pauvre mendiant, mendiant valide or vagabond, that is, in social rather than juridical parlance, the sturdy beggar, usually homeless or rootless, who showed an inbred aversion to hard work and a propensity to petty crime. 5 The desire to repress the activities of this type of individual had been one of the main ideas behind the introduction of the hopitaux generaux in the mid seventeenth century which had dominated the government's social policy ever since. The gradual realisation that the hopitaux could not be counted upon to perform the policing role within society originally assigned them made a powerful contribution to the change in governmental policy from the middle of the eighteenth century. Down to that time the government consistently used the hospitals as the framework within which it conducted its sporadic campaigns against begging and vagrancy. All the legislation — in 1700, 1701, 1706, 1709, 1712, 1719, 1720, 1724, 1749 and 1 7 5 0 4 For the treatment of children, C 568; and cf. the cahiers of the Clergy and the Third Estate of the Sen6chaussee of Montpellier, cited in Archives parlementaires, IV, 44—5 and 49—59; for the insane, Ball.; for VD treatment and lying-in hospitals, Amoreux, manuscript cited, 1779, 39f. and B.N., Fondsfrangais, 7513; the demand for work, if necessary through the provision of ateliers de charite, is strongly reflected in the department's replies to the enquiry of the Comite de Mendicite in 1790, L 2972. 5 J. Depauw, 'Pauvres, pauvres mendiants, mendiants valides ou vagabonds? Les hesitations de la legislation royale', R.H.M.C., 1956.
1974. Cf\ A. Vexliard, Introduction a la sociologiedu vagabondage, Paris,
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evinced a touching faith in the very limited capacities of the chasse-gueux of hospital administrators, supported only latterly by the reformed rural police force, the marechaussee. The dependence on the hospitals was particularly striking in the law of 1724 whose provisions lasted, in theory at least, down to the 1760s. 6 By this law, hospitals were obliged to admit not only the 'impotent poor' (invalides) who constituted their normal constituency. In addition, all able-bodied beggars and vagrants were to be confined within their walls. The severe strain that this law, which harked back to the grand renfermement of the previous century, placed on hospitals, many of which were still suffering the effects of the John Law system, more or less guaranteed its failure, and from 1731 it was not fully implemented. When in 1749 and 1750 the government reimplemented its provisions, it found hospital boards united in their apprehension lest hospitals 'n'estant establis que pour les vrais pauvres ne deviennent la retraitte des faineans'.7 The lack of co-operation from hospital administrators and the clear incapacity of the hospitals to observe the provisions of the law of 1724 finally brought home to the government that the hospitals could not be relied on as an agency of social control. The government did not altogether renounce the reform of hospitals. Government subventions to ailing establishments and grants of royal letters patent were made conditional on the acceptance of a package of reform measures. A hospital inspectorate was established in 1780 and the touring bureaucrat Jean Colombier had a degree of success in chivvying hidebound and corporatively minded hospital boards into introducing the principles of economy and sound management into their affairs.8 Yet from the 1750s hospitals were no longer seen as the centrepiece of governmental social policy. The new economic orthodoxy which was coming to prevail in Physiocratically influenced government circles tended to deprecate the past record of hospital care. The normal workings of the market seemed more likely to encourage productive labour than institutions whose workschemes had never achieved much success and which had become too loaded down with debts to support the poor in the numbers thought necessary. A 6 For the implementation of the law of 1724, see esp. J. P. Gutton, L'Etat et la mendicite dans la premiere moitiedu XVHlesiecle(Auvergne, Beaujolais, Forez, Lyonnais), Lyons, 1973. ForthelawinLanguedoc, C 573 (a carton which is unfortunately very extensively worm-eaten!); and for neighbouring Provence, F.P. Blanc, 'La Repression de la mendicite et l'hopital de la Charite de Marseille aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles', Arts et Livres de Provence, 1970. 7 C 573 — a phrase used by Bernage, the Intendant of Languedoc, in 1727. For the application of the 1724 law in 1749 and 1750, C 566. The law was also applied on two other occasions, as a means of press-ganging vagabonds into joining the army during the War of Austrian Succession in 1743 (A. Corvisier, L'Armee frangaise de la fin du XVIIe siecle au ministere de Choiseul: le soldat, 2 vols., Paris,
1964, i, 120ff, 255) and during the Seven Years' War in 1758 (ibid., 188, 255; and C 697). 8 For the important activities of Jean Colombier, see in particular A. N., F 15 226 to 229; P.L.M.J. Gallot-Lavallee, Un Hygieniste au XVIIIe siecle: Jean Colombier, Paris, 1913; L. Lallemand, La Revolution et les pauvres, Paris, 1898, 13ff.; andJ.P. Gutton, 1971, 461, 487.
Government, poor relief and repression of begging
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poor-relief programme which was orientated around the home of the pauper - and which consequently allowed him to remain on the labour-market seemed to offer greater chances of success than the institutionalisation of a valuable fraction of the labouring classes. Obviously, there would always remain a need for continued vigilance against the fringe of the world of poverty which preferred to steal or beg for its living, but repression should be integrated into the current forms of poor relief. The repressive apparatus of government need not be substantial if, as Lomenie de Brienne, the Archbishop of Toulouse and the chief mouthpiece of the Estates of Languedoc on social issues put it, the government took care to 'offrir des ressources a la pauvrete avant de faire un crime de la mendicite'. 9 The main means by which the government aimed to deprive the poor of any legitimate grounds for begging was work. Poor relief was increasingly seen as a function of the general employment situation. The provision of work was above all the most economical form of relief, because it allowed the poor to be self-reliant at the same time that it expanded the overall wealth of society at large. The religious impregnation to social policy since the seventeenth century, when the hopitaux had been expected to save the souls of the poor as well as to make them work, disappeared: material well-being was now the be-all and end-all of governmental policy. State support to industry and agriculture was an illustration of the perceived convergence between the increase of wealth and the supply of productive employment. The 1762 decree which lifted guild interference in the spread of industry into the countryside, for example, was viewed as an important blow against poverty and backwardness.10 At about the same time, the government flirted with the idea of making bureaux de charite compulsory, and according them responsibility for the provision of work to the needy. n The rationale behind the ateliers de charite which the government promoted was similar. 12 The road-work schemes which most ateliers comprised would not only improve the quality of the local network of public communications and assist in the better integration of the market but would also bring invaluable work into the countryside in the 'dead season' of the agricultural year. The government's constructive efforts against the problem of poverty extended to the provision of services - most notably in the sphere of medicine and hygiene — which existing poor-relief institutions could not 9 A.N., F 15 138. 10 O. Hufton, 1974, 41; E. Tarle, L'lndustrie rurale en France a lafinde I'Ancien Regime, Paris, 1910; H. See, 'Remarques sur le caractere de I'industrie rurale en France et les causes de son extension au XVIIIe siecle', Rev. hist., 1923. 11 In 1764 and 1765. See below, page 138. 12 O. Hufton, 1974, 182ff.;J.L. Harouel, Les Ateliers de charite dans la province deHaute-Guyenne, Paris, 1969.
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accommodate. 13 Social and practical medicine not only seemed laudable on humanitarian and philanthropic grounds, it also made economic good sense to sharpen the population's aptitude for productive labour by promoting its health without placing an extra burden on existing institutions. Government departments began to pour forth a veritable torrent of pamphlets on subjects as diverse as how to treat rabies, where best to situate cemeteries, how to care for the insane and when to give artificial respiration. There were also treatises on, for example, the nutritiousness of popular diet, the skills of midwives and the damaging effects of natural disasters. In addition, nation-wide campaigns were initiated to inoculate children against smallpox and to improve the provision of medical care in rural areas. The balance-sheet of this variegated social programme was possibly less positive in Languedoc than in many other areas. The regional economy prospered over the course of the eighteenth century quite independently of government assistance; but as we have seen this was not enough to prevent large-scale pauperisation, especially when, in the final decades of the Ancien Regime, the economic situation worsened. The ateliers de charite did not make the sometimes substantial contribution to the local economy which they made in other places. Languedoc was a pays d'etat, and roadworks came under the authority of the Estates, which used open contracting in road-work schemes. Saint-Priest, the Intendant of Languedoc, also held that the province's status as a pays d'etat was to blame for the failure of bureaux de charite to spread and to widen their responsibilities as the government wanted. The twenty-three bishops who dominated the Estates would not countenance outside interference in a sphere in which they adjudged themselves sovereign.14 Although there was a slight increase in the number of bureaux de charite from the 1770s, it did not bear comparison with the scale of innovation elsewhere.15 On the eve of the Revolution, half of the communities in the Montpellier region were still without any charitable funds or any organisation for distributing home relief.16 There was a similar chasm between intention and achievement in the government's initiatives in the field of social medicine. Even if the pamphlets on practical medicine got past the desks of sub-delegates, they evidently made little impression on grassroots medical practice in the 13 P. Huard, 'L'Emergence de la medecine sociale au XVIIIe siecle', Concours medical, 1958. For the range of government measures, see esp. S.T. McCloy, Government Assistance in Eighteenth-Century France, Durham, N . Carolina, 1946. For Languedoc, see the archives of the Intendance, Series C, passim. 14 C 567. Cf. above, page 24. 15 Cf. P. Loupes. 'L'Assistance paroissiale aux pauvres malades dans le diocese de Bordeaux au XVIIIe siecle', Ann. du Midi, 1972; E. Sol, 'Les Bureaux de charite en Quercy a la fin de l'Ancien Regime', Ann. du Midi, 1948; G. Freche, 1974, 422. 16 See above, page 48.
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region. 17 Though several diocesan assemblies adopted schemes for the improvement in midwife training, for example, the region's midwifery was much as barbarous on the eve of the Revolution as it had been before. The government's efforts in the mid 1780s to inoculate every child within the hopitaux and to encourage the spread of the practice among all social groups similarly made little headway. Even had it done so, it is doubtful whether it would have had the desired effects since inoculation against smallpox was still at this time far from foolproof and may in certain circumstances have increased rather than diminished the incidence of the disease.18 The scheme whereby the government, so as to combat inequalities in the geographical provision of medical aid, sent out boxes of medicine (boites d'Helvetius) to outlying areas, was also of questionable value. The government favoured patent medicines which could be handled easily by the lay person — usually the local cure — who was entrusted with administering them. 19 Consequently, the boxes were full of patent medicines of a highly dubious kind: so-called 'poudres febrifuges', 'poudres purgatives universelles' and 'poudres hydragogues purgatives', for example, to say nothing of the even more ambitiously named 'poudre incisive, fondante et tonique pour la coqueluche le catarrhe, 1'asthme-humoral, le rhume invetere, les glaives, le pituite, le relachement de l'estomac et les entrailles'. The medical value of such drugs, which were not far removed from the panaceas of itinerant mountebanks, was slight, though the baroque fantasy of their titles may have had something of a consoling effect on the credulous! Another ingredient of the boites d'Helvetius, however, was, quinquina, and this may have had some effect in staving off the malaria which afflicted the littoral villages to which the Intendant directed them. The seventy-two boxes which the Intendant received each year for the whole province were scarcely enough, however, to compensate for the deficiencies in established medical services in many areas. This was especially so in Bas Languedoc, where the Intendant's tendency to concentrate the boxes along the coast meant that the mountain areas, where medical facilities were at their rarest, were inevitably neglected.20 The practical achievement of the government's endeavours to compensate for the diminishing capacities of existing poor-relief institutions and to widen the range of relief measures was very slight. The aim of extirpating the social roots of begging was all the further from attainment, moreover, in that the government's ambitious plans to restructure its approach to 17 See above, Chapter 6. 18 C 525, C 4834, 8 F 99 and HG I G 74. Cf. the pessimistic conclusions of some historians of medicine concerning the effectiveness of inoculation: T. McKeown, The Modern Rise of Population, London, 1976, 107f. 19 C 529, C 530, C 531, C 5954, B.N., fonds franfais, 6801. 20 Map 5.
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Map 5 Distribution of boxes of medicine within the future department of the Herault, 1787-9 Source: C 560
poverty and vagrancy had also ended in fiasco. In 1773, Controleur-general de l'Averdy had established a government committee, the Bureau de Mendicite, whose brief was to provide an up-to-date replacement for the law of 1724 on begging and vagrancy, the ineffectiveness of which had recently been confirmed by the experiences of 1749 and 1750 and by a recent, unpunished outbreak of rural criminality and brigandage in the Paris region. 21 After collating much detailed evidence on the structure of poor relief, and after soliciting the views of the Intendants, the Bureau in 1764 proposed a triptych of measures: a harsh new law on vagrancy - which was in fact promulgated on 3 August 1764; a further law on begging; and a third on the creation of parishional bureaux d'aumones which were to provide home relief for the needy, and perhaps work for the able-bodied, by levying an obligatory tax on the local community, somewhat on the lines of the English poor-rate. The hopes of recasting the whole structure of poor relief foundered on the resolute opposition of the Parlement of Paris to the second and third of the proposed measures. After a good deal of skirmishing between the two sides, the government finally gave way, and salvaged what it could from the wreckage of its reform programme. Rather than risk 21 Crucial for an understanding of government social policy in the 1760s and 70s is the collection of documents (laws, plans for laws, resumes of past policy etc.) in B.N., Fondsfr., 8129 This is the major source used for this period by C. Bloch, C. Paultre, O. Hufton. . . On the impact of rural crime in triggering off the institution of the Bureau de Mendicite, cf. C. Bloch, 1908, pp.xxxvf., 158ff.
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a head-on collision with the Parlement over a new law, it used an administrative ordinance to extend the law of 1764 on vagrancy to beggars; and it also contented itself with merely exhorting provincial authorities to promote the extension of bureaux d'aumones or bureaux de charite without any element of compulsion. The consequences of this strategy were to last down to the end of the Ancien Regime and seriously undermined the significance of the whole range of poor-relief measures which the government introduced in the following decades. The government henceforth accepted the effective veto which the Parlement had placed on the radical reform of France's poor laws that the incapacity of existing institutions and the burgeoning problem of poverty appeared to necessitate. Nothing was to come of proposals mooted in 1770, 1774 and 1777 for the restructuring of the national network of poor-relief institutions. 22 The efforts of the Estates of Languedoc in the 1770s to do this at the regional level were frustrated not least because of lack of government co-operation. 23 In the 1760s the government had rejected the idea of thorough-going hospital reform. It had furthermore drawn back from the idea of making home-relief institutions effective by introducing a compulsory element within them. The centrepiece of government social policy in the last decades of the Ancien Regime was not to be home relief, which it intellectually acknowledged as its ideal, but rather the law of 1764 on vagrancy, tailored by administrative ordinance to cover begging as well. For all its constructive and reformist intentions, therefore, the purely repressive element in the government's involvement in poor relief was to continue to dominate. Considering that it was based on a botched and truncated piece of legislation, the campaign against begging and vagrancy which the government initiated in 1767 - and which got under way in Languedoc in the spring of 1768 — was remarkably ambitious in scope. The aim was nothing less than to 'purger [le] royaume non seulement des vagabonds et gens sans aveu mais encore des mendiants'. 24 To this end, both the ailing and infirm on the one hand and the able-bodied beggar on the other were to be liable to arrest. Initially, an exception was made in the case of individuals found begging within two leagues of their homes: these were to be accounted 'domiciled beggars' and were to be let off with a warning. Soon, 22 The most thorough-going plans were those of Turgot in 1774 and 1775. They are reviewed in T. Adams, 'Turgot, mendicite" et reforme hospitaliere: l'apport d'un memoire inedit' (based on A.N., F 15 138). C.N.S.S., 1976. 23 See below, page 150. 24 B.N., Fondsfr., 8129, fo. 154. For the campaign in Bas Languedoc, seeesp. C 560, 562, 567, 568, 569, 570, 583, 586. See too the excellent unpublished memoire de maitrise of M.R. Santucci, 'Mendicite" et vagabondage en Languedoc a la fin de l'Ancien Regime: une etude des depdts de mendicite', Montpellier, Law 1974, in comparison with which R. Molis, 'De la mendicite en Languedoc (1775-1783)', R.H.E.S., 197'4, is poorly researched and unhelpful.
140
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
however, the distance from his home which a domiciled beggar could stray was reduced to half a league and, in 1769, all such qualifications were removed. 25 Priority in arrests was at first given to individuals accounted professional or dangerous beggars — those who begged in groups, for example, with threats, or with some other aggravating circumstances. Such individuals could be tried as vagabonds under the provisions of the law of 1764 and sentenced to three years in the galleys. All other individuals arrested were to go before the marechaussee's courts to ascertain whether they had a case to answer, If they did, they were to be despatched forthwith to a depdt de mendicite. Hospitals had now definitively given way as detention places for able-bodied beggars to the depdts de mendicite. Three such institutions, under the direct tutelage of the central government and funded out of taxation, were established in Languedoc, at Le Puy, Toulouse and Montpellier. Beggars were to be confined within them at the pleasure of the Intendant, who was charged with overall responsibility for the conduct of the campaign against begging and vagrancy. Normally, the spell of detention was for between one and three months for first offenders. Although the regime within the depdts was deliberately severe, the strategy which the government adopted wagered less on fear of confinement than on the certainty of capture to deter the needy pauper from begging: 'On est persuade [a government circular claimed] que c'est moins le terns de la detention que l'assurance qu'ils auront d'etre arretes toutes les fois qu'ils s'ecarteront de leurs domiciles qui pourra les engager a renoncer a un genre de vie si punissable et si nuisible a la societe.>26 On discharge, inmates from the depots were to be sent off either to a person of probity who would vouch for them or else, preferably, to their families. It was also hoped that hospital administrators would co-operate by opening their doors to the aged and infirm and to orphaned or institutionalised beggars who had no means of support in the outside world. Such was the confidence in the success of the campaign, that it was not thought that the added strain on hospitals would be great, or that the lifespan of the so-called 'depots provisoires' would have to be long. The campaign against begging and vagrancy certainly failed to live up to the hopes which were pinned on it at the outset. Disappointment with its evident failure to put an end to these social ills was soon being voiced both nationally and locally. In 1774, Controleur-general Turgot even suppressed the depots de mendicite outright, and put the 1767 ordinance into abeyance.27 The depots were reopened in 1776 on the fall of Turgot, 25 C 568. 26 C 560. 27 B.N., Fondsfr., 8129, fo. 343;C 569, C57O. Cf. C. Paultre, 1906, 408ff.;C. Bloch, 1908, 179ff.; and T. Adams, 1976.
Government, poor relief and repression of begging
141
however, and a law of 1777 reaffirmed the ordinance of 1767. Both the 1777 law and the depots were the subject of much abuse and hostility down to the eve of the Revolution. The major public authorities in Languedoc, which were intimately involved in the conduct of the campaign and in the running of the depots, were consistently critical. When asked his opinion on the laws on begging and vagrancy in 1763, Saint-Priest, Intendant of Languedoc, had expressed his satisfaction with the law of 1724 and saw no point in new legislation. He was to be a bitter opponent of the way in which the legislation of 1764 was applied. 28 The Estates of Languedoc too, which became financially embroiled in the campaign, were among its sternest critics. 29 Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, an old college friend of Turgot, had influenced the latter in his decision to close the depots in 1774. 30 He, the Estates and the Intendant were all dismayed by their reopening in 1776. They would doubtless have concurred with the sentiment which Ballainvilliers, Saint-Priest's successor as Intendant, expressed in 1786: despite two decades of the campaign against begging and vagrancy, *il est vrai de dire qu'il n'y a pas un mendiant de moins dans la province, que les chemins en sont couverts [et] que les villes en sont remplis'. 31 Undoubtedly a great deal of the blame for the failure of the campaign attached to the main policing agency involved, the marechaussee, which seemingly had little more effect than hospital administrators had done in the past. The marechaussee was a para-military organisation of mounted policemen responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the countryside. 32 They performed both administrative and judicial functions: on the one hand, they could arrest any miscreant found in flagrante delicto and bring him before the ordinary courts; on the other, they also had their own courts, presided over by their superior officer, or prevot, who had jurisdiction over a list of offences which had swollen over the years to include everything from robbery to poaching, from desertion to burglary and from smuggling to vagrancy. The law of 1764 was the first to give the force primacy over the chasse-gueux'of the hospitals in the application of the law on vagrancy. After 1767, moreover, they were empowered to sentence both beggars and vagrants to detention in the depots de mendicite by administrative ordinance without any need for a trial. 28 C 567. 29 A. N., H 297. See too theproces-verbaux of the Estates in Series C, cited in extenso in the list of sources in the bibliography. 30 B.N., Fondsfr., 8129, fo. 339; A.N., F 15 138. Cf. L. Dutil, 'Philosophic ou religion? Lomenie de Brienne, Archeveque de Toulouse', Ann. du Midi, 1948. 31 C 1564. 32 The best introduction to the marechaussee is to be found in I. Cameron, 'The police of eighteenth-century France', Eur. Stud. Rev., 1977. The best of the older treatments is Larrieu, Histoire de la gendarmerie depuis les origines de la marechaussee jusqu' a nos jours, Paris, 1933. See also
O. Hufton, 1974, and N. Castan, 1976.
142
Poverty under the And en Regime
Over the course of the eighteenth century, the marechaussee had been progressively streamlined. Prior to important reforms in 1720, the force had comprised less than two score companies which were situated in the big cities and which at periodic intervals rode en masse around their jurisdictional area. After 1720, these quasi-military shows of strength ended. The companies were split up into brigades of four or five men posted thickly throughout the country. Each brigade was now to make frequent routine patrols in the countryside. Their activities became less overtly terroristic and repressive and more administrative and preventive. Brigades were now to be found supervising inns, policing fairs, public holidays and religious holidays, prohibiting the illegal carrying of arms, checking on transport workers and other 'dangerous trades' and even, in Languedoc, collecting taxes and acting as postal messengers.33 Considering the range of tasks which it was expected to perform, the marechaussee was tiny. Its national strength in the 1760s was 3,263 men, of which Languedoc's share was a mere 183 men in thirty-three brigades. 34 Aware of the enormity of the responsibilities it was placing upon the force by requiring it to implement the new campaign against begging, the government tardily, in 1768, increased its size. After this date Languedoc boasted fifty-eight brigades, containing 254 men. This was insignificant when set against an estimated total population of 1.7 millions. 35 The same was true of the future department of the Herault, whose quarter of a million inhabitants were patrolled by a police force numbering only 59 men in eleven brigades. The size of the marechaussee was also small when set against the vast geographical expanse of the province. The regulation ideal was to have brigades stationed at approximately four or five leagues' distance from each other. Yet the distance between some of Languedoc's brigades exceeded twenty leagues — much of it difficult mountain terrain. In a great many localities, patrols were rare, and police work excessively thinly spread: years went by in some villages before a cavalier of the marechaussee was seen. Ballainvilliers, the Intendant of Languedoc on the eve of the Revolution, was convinced that only a doubling in the size of the force could get it to function remotely as efficiently as was expected.36 The government had gradually evolved a method of concentrating the attention of the small and hard-worked marechaussee on tasks to which it gave priority, namely, the payment of bonuses and gratifications. The importance which the government attached to the campaign against begging may be gauged by the fact that Controleur-general de l'Averdy 33 C 696. 34 C 697, C 8481. Cf. Larrieu, 1933, 73. 35 C 697, C 700, C 8481. 36 C 699-
Government, poor relief and repression of begging
143
agreed from the start to award brigades a bonus of 3 livres for every capture which they made. 37 Payment by results was popular within the force. It was even too popular perhaps, for the abuse of the bonus system was to be the bane of the whole campaign against begging in Bas Languedoc. Only a matter of months after the campaign opened, the sub-delegate of Montpellier was complaining that the brigades were arresting, without any apparent discrimination, 'toutes les personnes mal vetues qui ne sont point munies de passeports et lorsqu'ils ont mauvaise mine'. 38 Soon too a stream of protests began to issue from both the Intendant and the Estates of Languedoc on behalf of 'des malheureux paisans trop legerement arrestes'. 39 In order to check what he suspected was sheer venality on the part of bonus-hungry brigades, Saint-Priest sought to bring the arrest procedures of the force under his own orders. The apparent concession which Controleur-general d'Invau made in 1769 whereby bonuses should be awarded only for arrests which led to confinement was in practice meaningless: for the greffier and prevot, who both shared in the bonus system, preferred to send virtually all individuals wTho were brought before them to the depot and only to make enquiries about their background from there. 40 In 1777, Saint-Priest finally inveigled the Controleur-general into allowing him to control the awarding of bonuses. He restricted awards to arrests of those individuals whom careful enquiry had shown to be bona fide beggars, and refused claims for bonuses for indiscriminate arrests and confinements. The consequence of Saint-Priest's action, however, was an arrest strike by irate marechaussee brigades. Complaints from local authorities that the law on begging was being flouted, and protests from the marechaussees superiors in Paris that the Languedoc brigades were being unfairly treated for carrying out the law to its letter led to a change of policy. The government backed down, prohibited Saint-Priest from his selective treatment of arrests, and insisted that the Languedoc brigades should receive full remuneration for every arrest which was followed by a committal to the depots. 41 There was almost certainly a strong element of truth in Saint-Priest's contention that the local marechaussee, in their desire to be awarded bonuses, were making indiscriminate arrests. Corruption riddled the marechaussee of Languedoc and probably reached as high as the prevot himself.42 Its roots were in the frail economic position of the force over the course of the eighteenth century. Their wages remained stable from 1720 to 1768, a period of steep price rises. After 1768, the method of payment was changed: wages were reduced, but this was offset by the extension of a 37 C Paultre, 1906, 370. 38 C 568. 39 C 569. 40 C 568. 41 C 562. 42 M.R. Santucci, 1974, 117.
144
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
Table 11. Arrests of beggars and vagrants made by the brigades of the Languedoc 'marechaussee', 1768-86
Brigade
Arrests, 1768-75
Arrests, 1776-86
Total arrests, 1768-86
1. Montpellier Lieutenance
Montpellier (H) Lunel (H) Ganges (H) Gignac (H) Lodeve (H) Beziers (H) Pezenas (H) Bouzigues/Meze (H) Nimes Ales Uzes Remoulins Bagnols Sommieres Jean/Gard Unattributed
500
465
149 56 24 159 292 219 287 76 173 78 170 132
9 274
1109
467 241 70 62 245 225 140 477 128 223
176 233
207 —
1609
932 390 126 86
404 517 359 764 204 396 254 403 339 9 274
3 063
4003
7 066
71
56 3 — 85
127
2. Carcassonne Lieutenance
Carcassonne Castres Saint-Pons (H) Narbonne Sejean Saissac Lezignan Limoux Le Mas de Cabardes Mirepoix Caudiez
96 9
122 25 21 62 8
99 9
207 25 21 100 13
1
— 38 5 — 12 —
418
199
617
85 27
1710
1795
3 —
3
12 1
No arrests: Chalabre 3. Toulouse Lieutenance
Toulouse Albi Lavaur Fronton Castelnadaury
69
12 21
73 114 1 248
100 183 13 269
145
Government, poor relief and repression of begging
Table 11 (cant.)
Brigade Villefranche Grisolles Rabestens Rieux Le Monestier
4. Le Puy Lieutenance Le Puy Annonay Aubenas Villeneuve-de-Berg Privas Villefort Mende
Arrests, 1768-75
36
Arrests, 1776-86
Total arrests, 1768-86
26 14 1 4
104 166 87 14 14
140 192 101 15 18
295
2531
2 826
6 17 20 37 7 — 5
— 9 66 — 3 —
6 17 29 103 7 3 5
92
78
170
No arrests: Tournon, Langogne, Le Monestier, Marvejols, Florae, Montfaucon, Chalenc.on, Le Cheylar,Monpezat, Joyeuse Recapitulation: Montpellier Carcassonne Toulouse Le Puy
3 063 418 295 92
4003 199 2531 78
7 066 617 2826 170
3 868
6811
10 679
Sources and presentation: (i) (H) signifies that a brigade was situated in a locality within the future department of the H£rault. (ii) The above is drawn largely from the quarterly accounts of the campaign against begging, on which payments of bonuses are marked. Where this information is lacking, recourse has been had to other lists found at random in the papers of the Intendance and the central government. Full references: C 569, C 570, C 582-586 and A.N., F 15 2791. (iii) Although bonuses paid to the marechaussee do not cover all arrests made, it would appear that they do cover the vast majority. According tofigurescompiled by the central government in 1774, 4 311 individuals were arrested in Languedoc up to 1773. 3 481 of these were treated as beggars and vagrants and subjected either to a prevotal ordinance (3 434) or to sentencing (47). The sources indicated above show that for the same period, 3 296 bonuses were paid out to local brigades — 93.7 per cent of those treated as beggars or vagrants. It seems probable that the couple of hundred others were arrested by other authorities, notably the municipalities. These did not receive the bonuses in the same way as the brigades of the marechaussee.
146
Poverty under the And en Regime
system of allowances for expenses incurred in the line of duty. The change probably did not improve the basic economic position of most cavaliers. It favoured the growth of corrupt practices based on over-generous claims for expenditure. There was to be a major corruption trial in the 1780s of officers and men from the brigades of Montpellier and Bas Languedoc for this type of malversation of funds. 43 This almost certainly extended into the sphere of begging. In the 1770s and 80s, the Intendant received reports, for example, of individuals paying brigades to arrest personal enemies and to fabricate evidence against them; of prostitutes paying to be arrested so that they could benefit from the depot de mendicite's facilities for the treatment of venereal disease; of rejects from the marechaussee's own prisons being passed off as beggars; and of brigades making personal profits from the expenditure they claimed for the imprisonment and transport of beggars to the depots, so that many beggars were arriving in the depots half dead from neglect. 44 Besides the corruption of many of the brigades of the Languedoc marechaussee^ there was an additional problem of inexperience. The expansion of numbers in 1768 and 1769 from 183 to 254 men brought in an influx of raw recruits, unused to policing duties. If the eighteen brigades of the Lieutenance of Montpellier — roughly speaking, the plain of Bas Languedoc and the southern reaches of the river Rhone — were guilty of endangering the campaign against begging by their hyperactivity, the torpor which the other brigades displayed was equally damaging. The forty brigades of the other three Languedoc Lieutenances of Toulouse, Carcassonne and Le Puy made only one arrest in four in the years down to 1775, and eleven of the brigades made no arrests at all down to the eve of the Revolution. 45 It took experience and determination to break down the resistance to the activities of the marechaussee which was often shown by urban patriciates and the mafia-like notables of much of Languedoc, and the almost universal loathing in which the force was held by the poorer classes. Not only were many brigades desperately short of the necessary resolution and experience, they were not blessed with much intellectual acumen either: their officers sometimes spoke of their men as if they were only marginally more intelligent than their horses!46 So poor was the performance of the marechaussee outside the Bas Languedoc corridor that both the government and local authorities were fully in agreement in 1776 that the 43 A.N., Z l c 475, 476. 44 C 562, C 572, C 2192. Cf. A.N., F 16 965. 45 Table 11. The figures down to 1775 were as follows: Lieutenance of Montpellier, 79.2 per cent; Carcassonne, 10.8; Toulouse, 7.6; and Le Puy, 2.4. 46 C 700. There are some revealing comments here concerning the evident incapacity of a number of cavaliers.
Government, poor relief and repression of begging
\Al
depots of Le Puy and Toulouse should remain closed, and that the depot in Montpellier would suffice for the whole of the province.4T Although a depot was eventually opened in Toulouse in 1782, it appears to have admitted predominantly beggars of the city and its environs, who were finding it difficult to gain admittance to the recently bankrupted Hopital de la Grave, the local hopital general. 48 The deficiencies in the performance of the marechaussee owed much to the overall orientation of the law as well as to their own evident short-comings. The law of 1764 on vagrancy had evidently been framed with the social problems of northern France in mind. The law's main target was the work-shy agricultural proletarian who tended to compose the backbone of the gangs of criminal vagrants which, under the guise of begging, terrorised the lonely farmsteads of the pays de grande culture in the Orleanais and the Beauce, and from whose numbers the Parisian criminal underworld tended to be drawn. 49 Thus the vagabond was defined as the property-less individual who could find no person of recognised probity to vouch for him and who had not worked for six months. This period of time was evidently designed to exclude from the workings of the law the agricultural labourer who was unable to find work in the 'dead season' of the agricultural year. It did not think to exclude, however, the manufacturing worker from regions such as Languedoc who might experience much longer bouts of unemployment as a result of the vagaries of the business cycle. Moreover, in the event, the instructions which the marechaussee received at the beginning of the campaign against begging in 1767 were even more stringent than the 1764 definition: any individual, whatever his circumstances, who was found begging was to be subject to arrest. The repromulgated law of 1777 did eventually, it is true, concede that the provisions of the law should not be used against the 'ouvrier travailleur [qui] ne mendie que par necessite ou manque de travail'. 50 Such orders contradicted the orders of the marechaussee, however, and were too vague to be effective. The marechaussee continued to arrest individuals who, in the opinion of Saint-Priest, were only 'mendiants momentanes', that is, 'les journaliers et artisans reduits a 47 C 570. 48 The main change discernible in the arrest pattern before and after the closure of the d£p6ts in 1775 was the larger number of arrests made by the Toulouse Lieutenance. The majority of these were made by the two urban brigades of the city of Toulouse itself. Thus one had a situation in which about 50 per cent of arrests down to 1786 (3,304 out of 6,811) were centred on and in the environs of Languedoc's twin capital cities: 1,795 arrests by the Toulouse brigades, 1,609 by those of Montpellier. 49 See above, note 21. Cf. C. Bloch, 1908, 34ff.; and M. Vovelle, 'De la mendicite" au brigandage. Les errants en Beauce sous la Revolution franchise', C.N.S.S., 1962; and R.C. Cobb, Reactions to the French Revolution, Oxford, 1972. 50 C 562.
148
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
cette necessite pendant un certain terns de l'annee par la suspension des travaux de la campagne ou des manufactures'. 51 It was understandable that the government should see in the rigid and uniform application of the law of 1764 and the ordinance of 1767 throughout the whole of France an essential prerequisite of the success of the campaign against begging. The mass criminal vagrancy of many northern French landscapes, however, was simply not to be found in most areas of Languedoc. There was always some risk that the rootless individual could turn to crime, but in general the pauper found far from home and with hand outstretched did not have the same dangerous and anti-social air in the Midi which he did elsewhere. In particular, the seasonal migrant on his way down from mountain to plain for the hay, grain and wine harvests was a perennial and accepted figure in Bas Languedoc. Yet travelling as they normally did in groups, usually without travel documents and often begging a living en route, the summer migrant fell outside the letter of the law, and was susceptible to arrest. The Intendant of Languedoc would gladly have winked at the begging and wanderings of such individuals because of the important contribution which their labour made to the prosperity of local agriculture. The marechaussee, however, was instructed to think otherwise. Freshly primed by the government, egged on by the incentive of a bonus for each arrest and, furthermore, empowered since 1760 to arrest any individual travelling without authenticated documents, the brigades of Bas Languedoc set about arresting droves of mountaindwellers on their annual descent. Despite the loud and long protestations of both the Intendant and the Estates, they were to continue in this vein down to the Revolution. No amount of compromise could stop the conflict over migrant workers between local officials anxious to protect the local economy and wary of over-reacting to a problem of vagrancy which had not reached serious proportions, and a marechaussee hell bent on following orders if only so as to fill their pockets. In 1772, Saint-Priest had attempted to stem the flow of needless arrests by writing to each of Languedoc's 2,500 communities stressing the need for summer migrants fo carry with them passports authenticated by their maires and consuls. This circular cut little ice, 51 C 569. With the specific and rather unusual exception of the masques armes in the northern parts of Bas Languedoc, it is probably true to say that Mediterranean France was not affected by the waves of criminal brigandage which afflicted many parts of France following the closure of the d£p6ts in 1775. For comparison with Provence, F.X. Emmanuelli, Pouvoir royal et vie regionale en Provence au declin de la monarchie. Psychologie, pratiques administratives, defrancisation de I'lntendance dAix, 1745-1790, 2 vols., Paris, 1974, ii, 65Off., 662. For elsewhere in France, besides the text of the 1777 law itself, see also V. Boucheron, 'La Mont£e du flot des errants de 1760 a 1789 dans la g£neralite d'Alen^on', Annales de Normandie, 1971, 60; F. Mourlot, La Question de la mendicite en Normandie a la fin de I'Ancien Regime, Paris, 1903, 381; C. Paultre, 1906, 4 1 1 , 452f. (Orleanais), 476f. (Burgundy).
Government, poor relief and repression of begging
149
1000 g
800
?
600
o 400 ^
200 0 1768 691770 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 1780 81 82 83 84 85 86 = = = = =
arrests by all Lieutenances arrests by Montpellier Lieutenance id., Toulouse Lieutenance id., Carcassonne Lieutenance id., Le Puy Lieutenance
Graph 4 Arrests of beggars and vagrants by the brigades of the four Lieutenances of the Languedoc marechaussee, 1768—86 Sources: as given in note to Table 11, page 145
however, in communities whose members were long accustomed to make their annual descent without travel documents, and whose officials were often barely literate. Furthermore, the marechaussee had just received fresh instructions ordering them to ignore passports, which were in fact often forged or out of date. As a result, helped by a rise in grain prices which placed additional pressure on local consumers, the year 1772 saw a new high-point in the number of arrests. 52 Reiterated attempts by Saint-Priest in 1777 to insist upon migrants carrying passports, and to regulate the zeal of the marechaussee also failed to have any effect.53 The vexed question of arrests brought into the open a fundamental ambiguity in the status and allegiance of the marechaussee. As the force had acquired a more police-orientated and less militaristic hue over the eighteenth century, it had been obliged to take commands from the major civilian authorities, including the Intendant. Early instructions in the campaign against begging in the 1760s, for example, emphasised that it was the Intendant who was to be responsible for the local conduct of the campaign. Yet the force which was supposedly subordinated to him had become increasingly militarised and professional in its general bearing. It was increasingly modelled on regiments of the line; its administration was streamlined and more direct chains of command instituted; it was placed under the supreme authority of the Ministry of War and was made subject to more frequent military inspections; there was a new insistence on the wearing of uniform; stricter internal discipline was introduced; the force 52 Graph 4.
53 C 570.
150
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
was increasingly assigned to barracks, like regular troops; and, finally, a prolonged spell of military service came to be regarded as a requirement for entry. Matters came to a head when the Languedoc marechaussee, long since one of the most militarised companies in the whole of France,54 started to receive orders from the Intendant which ran counter to those of their military superiors in Paris, which in turn were based on explicit government instructions. A dispute over the nature of the subordination of the marechaussee to military and civilian authority thus became conjoined with an equally serious dispute over the degree to which the law might be acclimatised to local conditions. In the event, professional solidarity and the rigidly uniform application of the law won the day: the Intendant's sphere of initiative was restricted over the question of arrests, and the letter rather than the spirit of the law prevailed. The overall effectiveness of the campaign in Languedoc suffered accordingly. The government's hostility to any local variation in the application of the campaign also put paid to the alterations which the Estates of Languedoc proposed in the early 1770s. Horrified at the large sums which the government was expecting the province to pay towards a campaign which seemed to be damaging rather than bolstering the local economy, and urged on by the influential Archbishops of Narbonne and Toulouse, the Estates offered to assume responsibility for the conduct of the campaign themselves/ 5 Their proposals recaptured something of the comprehensiveness of the ill-fated plans of the Bureau de Mendicite. The depots would become no more than entrepotspassagers;56 criminal vagrants would be shipped off to the galleys; the infirm would be accommodated in the hospitals; and the able-bodied would receive employment in massive public-works schemes which the Estates offered to organise and finance. This return to first principles was too extreme for the central government. The state bureaucrats who were running the campaign were well aware that the hospitals had proved incapable of supporting any additional burden, and they ruled out the idea of radical reform of poor-relief institutions. They refused to use the galleys as the 1764 law had envisaged. Above all, they were not willing to allow local experiments which seemed to endanger the uniformity in the implementation of the law in which they saw some sort of guarantee of limited success. The government ceded control of the depots to the Estates — and enjoyed the discomfiture of the Estates at the huge sums which they were obliged to spend on them. But it was not prepared to 54 A. Corvisier, 1964, ii, 926. 55 For this episode in the campaign in Languedoc, see the proces-verbaux of the Estates for 1771 (C 7564, C 7570), 1772 (C 7574) and 1773 (C 7578). See also C 569, C 8481; and A.N., F 15 138. 56 C8481.
Government, poor relief and repression of begging
151
incorporate any other part of their far-reaching programme in a campaign which had swiftly become far less amibitious than when it had begun. The failure of the campaign to live up to the high hopes of 1767 and 1768 also affected the role and the functioning of the depots de mendicite. Originally, they had been conceived of as institutions neither deterrent in purpose nor prison-like in appearance. They were simply temporary holding-places in which beggars arrested by the marechaussee would be detained. 57 They would also receive, it was planned, the occasional vagrant too frail or too old to be sent to the galleys under the provisions of the law of 1764. Since the running down of the royal galley-fleet in 1749, the punishment of a spell in the galleys had been transmuted to a period of forced labour in the docks of the main naval ports. 58 Under this scheme, there was neither the former need for oarsmen nor perhaps the available facilities for large numbers. Consequently, the marechaussee had received specific instructions as early as 1765 to be highly circumspect about sentencing individuals to the galleys. They were told to prefer the use of detention in the depots even for individuals against whom there was a good prima-facie case for vagrancy. 59 The Languedoc brigades were to keep well within these instructions: while 3,464 individuals found their way into Languedoc's depots de mendicite in the period down to 1773, only 17 individuals were despatched to the galleys as vagrants. 60 The resulting presence of professional and semi-criminal vagrants among the inmates highlighted the confusion which presided over the whole campaign. Not only were beggars being arrested under the provisions of a law — that of 1764 — which applied to vagrants, but vagrants were being detained in institutions specially designed for beggars! The composition of the inmate population became even more variegated as the government used the depots as convenient dumping grounds for other types of individuals besides the beggar and vagrant. Many of these were individuals on the margins of the worlds of poverty and crime. After 57 C 567, C 568. For policy concerning the depots, cf. T.Adams, 'Moeurs et hygiene publique au XVIIIe siecle. Quelques aspects des de"p6ts de mendicite', Ann. demog. hist., 1975. 58 P.W. Bamford, The procurement of oarsmen for French galleys, 1660-1748', Am. H.R., 1959, 47;and A. Zysberg, 'La Soci&i des galeriens au milieu du XVIIIe siecle', Ann. E.S.C., 1975, 43ff. 59 C 568; B.N., Fondsfr., 8129, fo. 12960 B.N., Fondsfr., 8129, fo. 335. This table is given in its entirety in C. Paultre, 1906, 603, and O. Hufton, 1974, 390. The figures for Languedoc are as follows: Number of arrests till 31/12/1773 4,113 Number condemned to detention following sentence 30 Number condemned to detention following prevotal ordinance 3,434 Number condemned to the galleys 17 Number of escapes 29 Number of releases 563 Deaths prior to detention 2 Number remaining to be sentenced 38
152
Poverty under the Ancien Regime
February 1769, for example, prostitutes and camp-followers suffering from venereal disease could be forcibly detained within the depots and subjected to mercury treatment for their ailment. 61 Individuals detained under royal lettres de cachet — often those who had infringed conventional codes of morality — also came to be confined within them. 62 In 1770, Controleurgeneral Terray instructed Intendants to make special provision within the depots for the insane. 63 The authorities were also surprised to find that in practice there was a danger of the depots becoming 'des hopitaux et les azilles de la mendicite au lieu d'en etre le remede'. 64 However austere the general atmosphere, the stabilities and certainties of depot life seemed attractive to a great many poverty-stricken and physically or mentally handicapped individuals for whose needs existing poor-relief institutions were progressively less able to cope. The government sent out special instructions to guard against voluntary entries to the depots on the grounds that they were irrelevant to its function. It was clear, however, that a fair proportion of inmates always regarded detention as a blessing rather than a punishment. The development of the depots into catch-all institutions for a wide variety of social and legal cases contributed towards a transformation of the status and orientation of the institutions, in Languedoc as in the rest of France. What had originally been viewed as depots provisoires came to be seen as repressive institutions serving a deterrent function in their own right. The original logic behind the whole campaign - that certainty of capture rather than the misery of conditions within the depots should constitute the prime deterrent against begging - was, first of all, made to look somewhat shopworn by the manifest inability of the marechaussee to make a durable impression on the incidence of begging. Second, the presence within the depots of criminal and para-criminal cases, who were often serving lengthy sentences, necessitated greater precautions against escapes and encouraged a harsher internal regime. Third, the presence of paupers who regarded the depot as a refuge led the authorities to promote internal austerity in order to discourage voluntary entries. Finally, the method in which the depots were financed accelerated the move towards a more repressive atmosphere. From the earliest days, the contractors who took on the provisioning of the Languedoc depots found it difficult to make profits without surreptitiously reducing the quality or the quantity of rations and supplies. Although the Intendant struggled valiantly against such abuses, he failed to stamp out corruption. In addition, the greater supervision of life within the depots by 61 C 568. 62 C 569. Cf. C. Paultre, 1906, 405. 63 C 569, C 562. 64 C 7574; A.N., F 15 138.
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the Estates of Languedoc, which were keen to reduce what they regarded as excessively high costs, led to economies which contributed towards a greater starkness and austerity in internal conditions. 65 The transformation in the role and functions of the depots led to a change in policy regarding releases. The more hardened professional vagrant whom the depots now received made the authorities sceptical of the sufficiency of short stays. It would be, opined Controleur-general de l'Averdy, in 1769, 'illusoire de mettre en liberte des gens qui seraient dans le cas d'etre repris quelques jours apres'. 66 Forsaking the fast turnover of inmates which had been the original aim, the authorities now placed greater emphasis on discovering the backgrounds of beggars who had found their way into the depots and on seeking guarantees about their future behaviour from persons of probity. Normally, a guarantor would have to agree to pay part of the costs of a second detention in the depot. In 1777, Controleur-general Necker introduced new regulations which sought to harmonise releases with the calendar of agrarian employment. Although some individuals would still be released after guarantees had been sought, or after having themselves given an undertaking of future good behaviour (a soumission), most inmates were to be detained over the winter and only released in April and May as the seasonal demand for labour asserted itself.67 The most obvious manifestation of the change in the role of the depots was the progressive worsening of the conditions of inmates. The degree of austerity which was planned from the start, combined with the effects of financial stringency and the dishonesty of contractors, produced conditions which were far from euphoric. About one entrant in ten died in captivity and the Montpellier hotel-Dieu, which admitted many of the sick from the local depot, was appalled at the state of physical privation in which they entered. Life within the depots was subject to a progressively harsh code of discipline. Chains and bars made their appearance as the authorities strove unavailingly to make the makeshift rented buildings in which depots were housed escape-proof. In the Montpellier depot, cells, dungeons and new quarters for a squad of marechaussee on the premises to oversee the maintenance of internal discipline attested to the atmosphere of naked coercion which developed. 68 More thorough-going efforts were made especially after the issuing of revised regulations in 1785 - to introduce forced labour into the depots' daily timetable. The inmates of the Montpellier depot were made to spin and weave for local textile manufacturers. Work, in theory at least, could help to make the depots 65 C 560, C 568, C 569, C 570. 61 C 570. 68 C 560, C 562.
66 C 568.
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self-financing. It could also be used to produce a moral reformation in the hardened characters subject to long spells within the depots. 69 The slowing-down in the rate of turnover of inmates meant that the transformation of the depots de mendicite into prison- or workhouse-like institutions affected a smaller number of individuals than had been originally planned. In the twenty years of their existence down to the Revolution, something less than 20,000 beggars passed through the three Languedoc depots. 70 Even if the probably groundless assumption that these individuals were deterred into changing their ways by their experiences within the depots actually applied, this is still a very tiny figure to set against the proportion of the 1.7 million inhabitants of the province who were beggars, vagrants or simply poor and destitute. The supporters of the depots — seemingly a very select band — might point to the value of the institutions in soaking up some of the fringe elements within the world of poverty. Most inmates were able-bodied adults between the ages of fifteen and forty, and those arrested in, or in the environs of, big cities like Montpellier and Toulouse doubtless included a sizeable proportion of the 'dangerous classes'.71 Yet the two capital cities of Languedoc were as infested with begging and public disorder on the eve of the Revolution as ever. 72 The depots in addition had become supplementary refuges for some individuals - the aged, the simple-minded, many abandoned children who in happier times might have gained admittance to the hopitaux. Yet the numbers of such individuals were small, and the government discouraged their admittance. As the successor to the hopitaux as the centrepiece of governmental social policy, the depots were an evident disappointment. They were no solution to the problems of poverty which had preoccupied the government at their inception and which were arguably worse in the 1780s than they had been two decades earlier. For all the grandiose intentions of the Bureau de Mendicite and of Turgot, and despite the proliferation of minor relief measures backed by the state, the legacy of the governments of the last decades of the Ancien Regime in this sphere was unimpressive and sterile. There was little which the proponents of bienfaisance could find to admire in institutions as repressive as the depots - and too little either to satisfy the 69 C 560, C 562. For the 1785 regulations, A.N., H 556. 70 This figure, suggested by M.R. Santucci, 1974, 132, seems to be an absolute maximum. Cf. above, page 145. 71 Of the beggars admitted to the Montpellier depot about whom information is available, 54.9 per cent of the men and 67.4 per cent of the women were aged between 15 and 40. M.R. Santucci, 1974, 152ff. For the predominance of arrests made by the brigades of the big cities, see above, note 48. 72 For Toulouse, J. Rives, 'L'Evolution demographique de Toulouse auXVIIIesiecle', B.H.E.S.R.F., 1968. For Montpellier, C 1564; and cf. the cahier of the city of Montpellier cited in D'Aigrefeuille, op.cit., iv, 637ff.
Government, poor relief and repression of begging
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advocates of firm measures of social control. The experiment with the depots seemed to bear out those social thinkers who since the middle of the century had been arguing against the confinement of the poor and in favour of poor-relief schemes which were orientated around the home. It was, however, to be left to the Revolutionary assemblies to venture further along this track.
PART III
The treatment of poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
8 i
to^
Towards a 'welfare state', 1789—c. 1795
The voluminous reports of the Comite de Mendicite which the Constituent Assembly established in January 1790 to investigate the provision of poor relief were based on the most thorough national enquiry into poverty and assistance in the eighteenth century. The Comite drew most of its members from the ranks of professional philanthropists and Ancien Regime bureaucrats. Its views, which were more or less reducible to those of its foremost member, the egregious and indefatigable Due de Larochefoucauld-Liancourt, constituted in breadth of outlook and sympathies a sort of intellectual testament to the social thinking of the Enlightenment. They also provided the framework for government action for most of the Revolutionary decade. 1 Empirical investigations confirmed members of the Comite in their view that, by permitting charity to remain the foundation of the body of poor-relief institutions and by failing thereby to give aid where and when it was needed, the Ancien Regime and above all the church had tacitly acknowledged the insuperability of the problems of poverty and distress. Even the plans for a parish poor-rate on English lines, such as the ill-fated Bureau de Mendicite had endeavoured to introduce in 1764 and 1765, would have failed to remedy that misery which resulted from flagrant disparities of wealth between regions. 2 The Comite was convinced that 1 C. Bloch and A. Tuetey (eds.), op. cit., the introduction of which gives an account of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Comite and short biographies of members. For the ideas of the Comite' see also R.B. Du Boff, 'Economic thought in Revolutionary France: the question of poverty and unemployment', Fr. Hist. St., 1966, and F. Dreyfus, Un philanthrope dautrefois. Larochefoucauld-Liancourt (17 47-1827), Paris, 1903. For the general history of poor relief in the early years of the Revolution, the most reliable guides are J. Imbert, LeDroit hospitalier de la Revolution etde I'Empire, Paris, 1954; M. Rochaix, Essai sur devolution des questions hospitalieres de la fin de I'Ancien Regime a nos jours, Dijon, 1959; M. Bouchet, L'Assistance publique en France pendant la Revolution, Paris, 1908; and F. Dreyfus, L'Assistance sous la Legislative et la Convention (1791-1795), Paris, 1905. 2 The recent sombre history of the parish poor-rate in England is a constant leitmotiv in the minutes and reports of the Comite. See, for example, C. Bloch and A. Tuetey (eds.), op. cit., 68ff., 366ff., 54 Iff. etc.
159
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only the state, by centralising all relief funds in its own hands and by distributing assistance rationally according to criteria such as surface area, population and tax burden, could possibly hope to eradicate obdurate pockets of poverty. If assistance was really the 'dette sacree' which society owed its poor, as the Comite maintained and as the Constituion of 1791 was to state, only the central government had the means and the ability of discharging this moral burden. Reliance on religiously inspired charity— at best 'une vertu compatissante', at worst a manifestation of'une sensibilite irreflechie* — was now roundly condemned. Charity was to give way to the secular virtue of bienfaisance, 'une science politique qui veut etre soigneusement etudiee'. 3 The Comite de Mendicite mercilessly arraigned the deficiencies of Ancien Regime charitable institutions in a manner which, if somewhat one-sided, did reflect many of the failings of the institutions of the Montpellier region over the last half-century of the Ancient Regime. Bureaux de charite, the Comite contended, were frequently poorly administered and gave aid on denominational grounds, while their predilection for the pauvre honteux attested a greater desire to shore up the existing social hierarchy than to tackle the problem of poverty head on. In their favour, however, the Comite noted, bureaux de charite had at least orientated assistance around the home. Faithful to the anti-hospital bias which had permeated thinking on poor relief in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, the Comite regarded the home as the best place for care and aid. 4 Ancien Regime hospitals were badly administered — as their secretiveness, their recourse to ruinous rentes viageres and their penchant for chapel-building showed. In addition, it was held, hospitals actually aggravated poverty and disease instead of combating them, for they were unhealthy and tended to encourage improvidence and sloth among the needy. Hospitals, the Comite recommended, should only be reserved for special cases: orphans and foundlings prior to fostering, the homeless aged, the insane. Alongside this skeletal hospital network, a whole range of other relief institutions should concentrate their efforts upon providing aid which did not oblige the recipient to uproot himself from his home. There should be bureaux de charite in every community to provide home relief for the aged, infirm and impotent poor; ateliers de secours to provide work for the unemployed and able-bodied; and savings institutions to encourage workers to set something aside for their old age. Finally, houses of correction were to be established for the incorrigible beggar who refused the relief measures which the government, in its wisdom, supplied. The high 3 Seventh report of the Comite, C. Bloch and A. Tuetey (eds.), op. cit., 536. 4 From their very earliest meetings, the members of the Comite were agreed that their rule of thumb should be, 'secours a domicile autant que possible'. Ibid., 2.
Towards a 'welfare state'
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degree of flexibility in this proposed system of relief and the care taken to provide an appropriate form of aid for every eventuality — from womb to tomb - was, in the eyes of the Comite, both an earnest of success and a guarantee of economy. This point would not be lost on the government which was to foot the bill for the projected 'welfare state' from its tax revenue. The Comite's plans to replace the variously assorted, un-coordinated and flawed charitable initiatives of the Ancien Regime by an integrated and finely tuned system of secular poor relief firmly rooted in the Enlightenment concept of bienfaisance were undeniably ambitious. Poor relief was now envisaged neither as an appendage of the problem of law and order — as the Ancien Regime monarchy had seen it - nor as an occasional, spiritually motivated virtue, as had been the traditional view of the church. The Comite was, moreover, aware of the problems inherent in any putative equalisation of existing wealth. Given the levels of poverty in France which their enquiries amply documented, this sort of approach could only lead to the generalisation of misery. The Comite's view of wealth was, in contrast, generative rather than redistributive: what Marx was later to label the 'mode of production' was changing, and this meant that more wealth could be created for all. The latter claim was very much in tune with the times: most politicians caught up in the ardour of the Revolution's early years assumed that 1789 had ushered in an era of social justice, tranquillity and an all-round improvement in living standards. 5 Thus while the Constituent Assembly's self-appointed task was to dismantle the mechanisms of 'feudalism' which had retarded social and economic development, the brief of the Comite de Mendicite was not simply to palliate miseries but to propose means of utilising the labour of the poor so as to generate higher levels of affluence. Charity, it was held, had prospered in conditions in which wealth was conceived of as static; only the bienfaisance of the Enlightenment took into account the dynamic nature of social processes. Hence, for example, the Comite's emphasis on the provision of employment. Hence too its suggestion that the property of the Church be subdivided into small lots and distributed among the poor. The latter should be brought more securely within rational and productive economic circuits: property and employment were the best standbys against the growth of poverty. In the event, the Revolution was not to bring the far-ranging changes in French social and economic life that the Revolutionaries had anticipated. Nor — and this would be no surprise to Marx who, with his emphasis on social conflict and contradiction, was at the antipodes to Enlightenment 5 Ibid., 509.
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thinkers, who foresaw harmony and convergence of interests — did the changed mode of production reverse the long-term factors in the pauperisation which had characterised eighteenth-century France. Indeed in the Montpellier region, as was often the case elsewhere, many of these factors — rising prices, the decline of real wages, the fragmentation and attenuation of peasant holdings, the problems of local industry and trade — were even exacerbated by the Revolution, and in particular by the wars which emerged from it. The provision of poor relief in the early 1790s in the Montpellier region as elsewhere would thus be organised around the assumption of an improvement in the social context of poverty which was not attained. The social crisis which marked the last years of the Ancien Regime was to continue almost unabated well into the Revolutionary decade. The records of the poor-relief institutions of Montpellier showed a sharp increase, for example, in the amount of food and drugs which the Misericorde distributed in the late 1780s and early 90s, a steady rise in the number of transactions performed by the Pret Gratuit, in the number of children farmed out to wet-nurses by the Hopital General and in the number of inmates in the local depot de mendicite. These figures revealed something of the added strain which the Revolutionary crisis brought to institutions already sorely over-taxed during the last decades of the Ancien Regime by inflation and by the decline in charitable giving.6 During the 1790s, the effects of high prices consequent on poor harvests and the price controls and economic regulation of the Terror were aggravated by the monetary crisis which the Revolution inaugurated. The Constituent Assembly in 1789 attempted to soak up the debts of the Ancien Regime monarchy by nationalising church lands. A paper currency, the assignat, was launched with these biens nationaux as surety. The assignat soon proved as much a fiasco as John Law's paper money in 1720. Its face-value in the department of the Herault had fallen to 68 per cent by the end of 1792 and 22 per cent by the end of 1794. It was to reach its nadir in Ventose Year IV (March 1796), when one livre in specie was worth nearly 300 litres of assignats. The currency was only gradually stabilised as the return to specie began to be achieved after 1796 and 1797. 7 The drawn-out monetary crisis of the 1790s would have severely 6 Figure 1. Among the numerous local monographs which deal with the Revolutionary decade and which are listed in the bibliography see in particular the rather dated studies by L.J. Thomas, Montpellier, ville marchande. Histoire economique et sociale de Montpellier des origines a 1870, Montpellier,
1936; J. Duval-Jouve, Montpellier pendant la Revolution, Montpellier, 1879; and F. Saurel, 1898. 7 P Caron, Tableaux de depreciation dupapier monnaie, Paris, 1949, 176ff.; P. Viard, 'Vers l'ajustement des prix (m6tal et papier) dans l'Herault a la fin de l'an V , A.H.R.F., 1928. Cf. J.E. Harris, The Assignats, Cambridge, Mass., 1931.
Towards a 'welfare state1 (i) Misericorde's meat distribution z
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Figure 1 The social problems of the 1780s and early 1790s. Pressure on Montpellier's charitable institutions Sources: Fonds Mis.; Archives du Fret Gratuit; HG I F 17, HG II F 17: C 588 (for
depot de mendicite) Presentation: in all cases, 100= figure for 1786 damaged the fabric of poor-relief institutions whatever the social or political context. It shook the finances of the institutions in much the same way that the John Law episode in the 1720s had done — although even more savagely. Individuals who had borrowed from the institutions and who in return made annual payments in the form of rentes constitutes were able to discharge their debts in devalued paper currency. As monetary depreciation proceeded apace, moreover, many reimbursed in assignats the capital sum
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Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
on which the rentes were based.8 Most of the important revenue which poor-relief institutions drew from rentes constitutes came, not from loans to private individuals, but from loans to corporate and religious bodies such as the provincial Estates, the dioceses, the cathedral chapters and the like. Most of these had been nationalised in 1789 and 1790 and the government initially agreed to continue payment of their rentes until further arrangements for the financing of poor-relief had been made. This commitment began to seem increasingly less secure as the central government came to question the utility of hospitals; and increasingly less valuable as the state bureaucracy, always a stickler for legal formalities in financial matters, made its payments in devalued assignats. Just as long-term economic pressures on poor-relief institutions built up in the atmosphere of the 1790s, so too the steady decline in the role of private charity in supporting these institutions was accelerated by Revolutionary developments. The thinning of the ranks of notable public figures, the obliteration of traditional secular and religious authorities and the increasing dangers of public life consequent on the Revolution, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the emigration must have played an important part in this. Montpellier itself was particularly severely affected. From being a provincial capital, the annual meeting-place of the Estates, home of a sovereign court, a key military garrison, a major university town, the city fell in rank to become merely a departmental chef-lieu. The provincial Estates and the university were abolished, the departmental bishopric was transferred to Beziers and the great religious houses and chapters dissolved.9 All this helped to explain the flaccidity of the response of private charity to the financial problems of the city's poor-relief institutions in the crisis years of the late 1780s and early 90s. 10 The falling away in the charitable income of poor-relief institutions, which was remarked upon throughout the department of the Herault from the early days of the Revolution, was, however, as much a matter of 8 One example among many of how damaging this monetary crisis could be: the capital invested by the tiny bureau de charite of Moules-et-Baucels was worth 1,430 litres on the outbreak of the Revolution. In 1794 it was reimbursed in assignats worth, in specie, only 436 livres. E Sup Moules-et-Baucels, GG 2. The monetary problem was exacerbated by the unwillingness of hospital suppliers to accept paper money. Cf. HG I E 31 (21/11/1790); L 2902. 9 For the deleterious effect of the loss of the ecclesiastical establishment in two towns where the urban economy was heavily dependent upon it, see the classic studies ofJ. McManners, French Ecclesiastical Society under the Ancien Regime. A Study of Angers in the Eighteenth Century, Manchester, I960; and O. Hufton, Bayeux in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Social Study, London, 1967. The other former
diocesan centres in the department of the Herault — Agde, Beziers, Lodeve and Saint-Pons — also sustained substantial losses as a result of the administrative and ecclesiastical reorganisation of 1789 and 1790. 10 Figure 2. Comparison with Figure 1 is particularly revealing.
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Towards a 'welfare state' 'Quette Generate'
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Figure 2 Stagnation and decline in voluntary charity in Montpellier, 1780—92 Sources: H D I E 31; Fonds Mis.
Presentation: to facilitate comparison with Figure 1, 100 = 1786 figure in all cases priorities as lack of concern. n Not all giving was in bad odour. In 1789, for example, a colossal public subscription in Montpellier allowed the creation of the first ateliers de charitem the whole of Bas Languedoc. The government encouraged these public-works schemes throughout the department down to 1791. If most of the funds came from central government, aid from local bodies - such as the loan provided in 1790 by Montpellier's Societe des 11 Proces-verbaux des seances de I'Assemblee administrative du departement de I'Herault pendant la Revolution, 4 vols., Montpellier, 1889-98, i (13/12/1791). Cf., for Sette, L 2886; for Saint-Pons and Saint-Chinian, L 1400; for P£zenas, L 2902; and for Lodeve, HS Hop Lod 29.
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Amis de la Constitution - revealed a substantial degree of regional support. Similarly in 1789, a newly formed Association Patriotique, an interdenominational body comprising much of the elite of Montpellier's high society, from the Intendant of Languedoc to Protestant millionaires, supplied grain to the municipality without a profit and organised a collection in benefit of the local poor. It was typical of the seeming preference for forms of relief which lay outside the traditional framework of existing institutions, that this sum was channelled through the hands of parish priests and the Protestant pastor.12 Enlightenment bienfaisance was evidently making inroads into customary forms of charity. The general trend of Revolutionary thinking, which was increasingly inimical to the theory and practice of almsgiving, also contributed to the drying up of the wells of voluntary charity on which poor-relief institutions customarily relied. The Comite de Mendicite had demoted charity from the foremost of all the Christian virtues to the rank of adjunct to statefinancein the organisation of poor relief.13 As the course of the Revolution fanned the flames of incipient anti-clericalism in the Legislative Assembly (1791-2) and the Convention (1792-5), it came to be held that charity had not only revealed its moral bankruptcy as the basis of poor relief but also lay at the root of the social deference and the religious fanaticism which the Revolutionaries were struggling to eradicate. In the inflated rhetoric which many now affected, charity, orientated upon the spiritual salvation of the donor rather than the material well-being of the recipient, was both an affront to humanity and the basis of tyranny. This type of thinking reached its apogee in Barere's contention in Floreal Year II (May 1794) that the very word aumone should be expunged from the dictionary as being incompatible with a true republican's vocabulary;14 and the inscription of the age-old prohibition on manual almsgiving into the statute-book by the law of 24 Vendemiaire Year II (15 October 1793) on the grounds that such charities constituted an incitement to begging. The reports of the Comite de Mendicite in 1790 and 1791 made increased state intervention in the affairs of poor-relief institutions intellectually respectable. The decline of charity, along with the effects of the monetary debacle and poor economic conditions made the aid of the central government essential: all the more in that the often dilapidatedfinancesof poor-relief institutions deteriorated as a result of reforms introduced after 12 For the ateliers decharite, L 2260, L 2261; A.M. Montpellier, D 1, D 2; J. Duval-Jouve, 1879, 94. For the Association Patriotique, J. Duval-Jouve, 1879, 158; H. Bourderon, 1953, 117; and C. Domenge-Dusfour, Les Subsistances dans le district de Montpellier de 1789 a I'an V, Montpellier, 1924, 27. 13 C. Bloch and A. Tuetey (eds.), op. cit., 333, 370. 14 P.J.B. Buchez and P.C. Roux, Histoireparlementaire de la Revolution frangaise, 40 vols., Paris, vol. xxxiv, 44.
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1789. The removal of privilege, the abolition of feudalism and religious reforms all, in different ways, worsened the situation. The Revolution knocked hospitals and other poor-relief institutions from the humble pedestal which they had occupied within the corporative, hierarchical and privilege-ridden fabric of Ancien Regime society. The value of their privileges, often enshrined in royally approved letters patent, was insignificant when set against the great nexuses of privilege within society which were the real target of the Revolutionaries. It was inevitable, however, that the levelling blade should strike these institutions and severely lacerate their already tattered finances. The attack on privilege meant the removal of many of the exemptions from which the institutions normally benefited. The introduction of the principle of fiscal equality, for example, led to them paying taxes for the first time. 15 All royal subsidies and subventions to hospitals were stopped, and diocesan and municipal subsidies seem to have disappeared too. 16 Perhaps most important for many institutions in the Montpellier region, the abolition of municipal tolls meant the loss of the very substantial sums which some institutions derived from this source: the Hopital Saint-Charles at Sette, for example, lost some 40 per cent of its revenues in consequence, and Montpellier's hopital general claimed losses of nearly 40,000 livres.11 Poor-relief institutions here fortunately lacked the extensive propertyholdings of many of their counterparts in northern France, which lost substantially from the abolition of feudalism. Most typical in the Montpellier region were the hotels-Dieu in Montpellier and Beziers which lost merely a couple of hundred livres in seigneurial dues. Besides them several country hospitals or bureaux de charite lost a relatively small sum or income from a poorly cultivated fiefde la charite. The hospital at Montagnac in the diocese of Beziers, which lost 800 livres from a total fixed income of 1,300 livres and collapsed completely, was a significant exception to the slightness of the effects of the abolition of feudalism in the Montpellier region. 18 Religious changes brought about by the Revolution caused much worse damage to the network of poor-relief institutions than the abolition of feudalism. The disappearance of monasteries and the ecclesiastical super15 L 2902 for complaints from a number of institutions about the loss of tax-exemption and other privileges. 16 HGII E 12 (22/5/1791). 17 L 2902; HG II E 56. The administrators of the Montpellier Hopital G£n£ral seem to have been exaggerating since they had lost much of their income from octrois just prior to the Revolution. HG I E 31(17/5/1789). 18 HG I B 14 (Montpellier); A.N., F 15 226 (Beziers); L 2908 (Montagnac). Among hospitals, the losses were as follows: Capestang, 498 livres (L 2902); Clermont, 297 livres (L 2908); Florensac, small sum, exact value unknown (A.N., F 15 284); Lodeve, 378 livres (L 2908); and Lunel, 300 livres (1 X 15).
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structures of the Ancien Regime dioceses meant the cessation of charitable foundations which had formerly been in their hands. 19 Also affected were a number of religious institutions which had effected charities coincidentally or on a part-time basis. In Montpellier, for example, the early 1790s saw the closure of the Oeuvre de la Providence and the Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi which had both, under the guise of proselytising, offered education and training to boys and girls of poor family; and the Bon Pasteur, which, besides its role as prison for prostitutes, had also taught many a feckless serving girl to sew and spin. Moreover, despite a passionate plea before the Convention by Montpellier-born Joseph Cambon, the confreries despenitents were included in the provisions of the law of 18 August 1792 which abolished lay confraternities and congregations. Only the Montpellier Pret Gratuit managed to survive the hecatomb of Montpellier's home-relief and minor charitable institutions. 20 Other changes of a religious kind were equally damaging. The ranks of rural bureaux de charite, for example, were more than decimated by the abolition of the tithe in 1789, for tithe-alms had comprised the main and often the sole item of the income of many of them. 21 The decline in charity disposed of other bureaux and Misericordes, which normally drew a much higher proportion of their incomes than hospitals from alms, collections and benefactions.22 The fact that many home-relief institutions were effectively run by local cures or by well-heeled dames de la Misericorde also made them very vulnerable to the religious changes introduced under the Revolution and to the desire to secularise the administration of assistance. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the tendency for religious dissent to lead to exclusion from public life dealt a serious blow to institutions which relied heavily on administrators' organising talents and the gratuitous expenditure of time and energy. The greater intrusion of the public authorities into their internal affairs also struck a blow against the solidarity of the lay confraternities which ran the most substantial of the home-relief institutions. Even before the law of 18 August 1792 which was to abolish all such bodies, local Misericordes had been in considerable disarray. In the early days of the Revolution, the reform of municipal government had often been accompanied by closer municipal supervision 19 L 2902 for the Benedictines of Saint-Thibery: L29O3 for those in Aniane, for example. Cf. above, page 49, however, for the paucity of the sums which were lost in this way. 20 For the Propagation de la Foi, see the Fonds Propagation de la Foi; for the Providence, L 2903; for the Bon Pasteur, Fonds Bon Pasteur and C. Jones, 1978; for the confreries, A. Aulard, ha Revolution frangaise et les congregations, Paris, 1903, 289, n. 1; and for the Pret Gratuit, Archives du Pret Gratuit and L. Mandon, 1892. 21 L 1400. 22 Cf. for the Montpellier Misericorde above, page 55.
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over local poor-relief institutions. In Beziers in February 1792, for example, a special commission reported to the new municipality that, in its opinion, X'Oeuvre de la Misericorde a ete regie et administree avec un arbitraire qui parait incompatible avec les principes generaux de la constitution et du nouvel ordre des choses', and went on to urge that the institution should be brought under the direct control of the municipality. 23 The central government encouraged this kind of 'municipalisation' of the administration of poor-relief institutions in the belief that organisational autonomy under the Ancien Regime had cloaked secrecy and negligence in the exercise of important public functions. The effect of such intervention by the authorities, however, was to undermine the spirit of charity and self-abnegating sacrifice which was the inspiration behind the services of many administrators. Most bureaux de charite and Misericordes had in fact disappeared by 1792 and 1793. 24 With the exception of the Montpellier Misericorde, whose jHies dela charitesoldiered valiantly on, and the occasional freak bureau de charite, like that at Baucels - whose total expenditure on home relief between 1791 and 1803 was the grand sum of 48 livres\ — no home-relief institution continued in existence throughout the troubled 1790s. 25 By the early 1790s the map of poor-relief institutions in the department of the Herault was being sadly denuded by the sorry demise of bureaux de charite and Misericordes. Ironically, considering the clear preference which the Comite de Mendicite had shown for home relief over hospital care, the overall situation of the region's hospitals was markedly better. Several smaller hospitals had foundered completely, and all had suffered losses in income. 26 But the situation was far from uniformly bleak. In 1791 in its seventh report, the Comite de Mendicite claimed that the nation's hospital patrimony had fallen since 1789 from between 29 and 30 million livres to about 20 million livres - a fall of about one-third. Calculations from 23 L 4625. For the 'municipalisation' of poor-relief institutions, especially after the laws on the subject of 28 October and 5 November 1790, see L 2902 (Sette, Marseillan, Saint-Pons, Saint-Thibe'ry, Gignac and Vias); L 4627 (Be"darieux); HG II E 12 (22/5/1791) and E 23 (Montpellier Hopital General); and HDII E 1(22/5/1790, 14/6/1791) (Montpellier Hotel-Dieu). Cf. J. Imbert, 1954, 30ff., 36. 24 For details surrounding the demise of bureaux de charite and Misericordes in Saint-Chinian in 1792, L 2910; in Gignac (1793), 1 X 140; and (Year II or just before) Beziers, 1 X 35, 1 X 139; Lodeve, A.N., F 15 284; Pezenas, L 4638; Saint-Pons, L 2910, L 5328; Cazouls-les-B6ziers and Capestang, L 2908. 25 For the continuity of Montpellier's Mis£ricorde throughout the Revolutionary decade, L 3964 (Years II and III), L 2907 (Year IV), L 2891 (Year V), A.N., F 15 340 and L 2912 (Years VI and VII) and Fonds Mis. Cf. E Sup Moules-et-Baucels, GG 2. 26 Hospitals which appear to have closed down by 1792 include Ganges, L 2904, L 3963; and Bedarieux, L 2902, L 2967. Financial losses were not always, however, desperate. The Gignac hospital had lost only 18 livres from an annual income of about 2,500 livres by 1792, L 2902.
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hospitals within the Herault, however revealed local losses of only about one-fifth.27 Some changes softened the blow, moreover. The commitment of the government to maintain the payment of rentes which had been constituted upon abolished religious and corporate bodies meant that, while depreciation of the assignatwas not yet excessive, the backbone of the revenue of hospitals in the Montpellier region was still provisionally intact. Additional government subsidies were also sometimes made available to hospitals which petitioned for aid. 28 Finally, that 'municipalisation' of hospital administration in the early years of the Revolution was often beneficial in that many municipalities began to be sensitive to the problems of local hospital for the first time, and to extend them considerable credit to cover many of their needs. 29 Any form of aid was welcome in a period when, in efforts to keep bankruptcy at bay, hospital administrators were borrowing extensively, alienating their capital, and adopting a battery of money-spinning stratagems and money-saving expedients in a manner to which the financial problems of the Ancien Regime had often inured them. The administrators of the two great Montpellier hospitals, for example, exhibited their wonted imaginativeness in endeavouring to maximise income. When in 1791 the municipality decreed that burials were to take place only in the major parish and hospital cemeteries, the hospitals at once increased their scale of charges. Fees for the attendance of the children of the hopital at funerals were raised too, and attendance was accompanied by the strict understanding that any left-over candles were to become the property of the hopital - a claim which on occasion led to brawls with down-at-heel parish clergy also seeking additional forms of income. The price which the hopital charged for accepting illegitimate children and the offspring of over-numerous families was also increased, while the price of bonnets manufactured within the hopital's workshops was lowered so as to obtain a swift return on outlay. 30 The spectre of strict economy and parsimony loomed over the deliberations of the Montpellier hospitals. Any expense which could be deemed non-essential was likely to be cut or suspended. Payment of rentes viageres 27 C. Bloch and A. Tuetey (eds.), op. cit. ,537. These figures did not include the Montpellier hospitals, however: ibid., 538 n. 1. 28 Government aid was, however, far from abundant, and benefited only a small number of institutions. The hospitals of only 41 localities in the whole of France received funds in 1791 and 1792. F. Dreyfus, 1905, 20. The complexity of administrative procedures and a certain amount of defaulting by local authorities meant that there was usually also something of a decline in income from rentes. 29 Cf. for Montpellier, HG I E 388. 30 HG II E 12 (18/9/1791, 6/11/1791, 3/3/1793), HD II E 1 (6/8/1791) (for burials); HG II E 12 (26/6/1792, 15/9/1793) (for funerals); HG IIE 12 (24/2/1793) (for illegitimate children); and HG II E 12 (2/2/1792) (for manufactures).
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and of various pensions was stopped. Ancillary services felt the axe of economy: the hopital, for example, reduced the number of charitable apprenticeships it provided from nearly three dozen to a mere handful; the Misericorde closed down its chambre de travail, put a moratorium on charitable dowries and drastically reduced its commitment to aiding prisoners. 31 The administrators favoured cuts which could be made without entailing a sharp deterioration in the living standards of the inmates of the hospitals. Expenditure on buildings and repairs on one hand and on bed-linen and clothes on the other consequently slumped. Stores of drugs and medicines were left unreplenished after use. Food-rations too were affected: the meat content of the hotel-Dieu's daily bouillon was reduced, while the administrators of the hopital began to experiment with bread made from flour of rye and powdered potato. 32 As was the case in many other places, the administrators of Montpellier's hospitals took pains to ensure that their dwindling resources were not eaten up by huge influxes of the needy. The administrators of the Montpellier Hopital General, for example, stepped up supervision of visitors to ensure that no one slipped surreptitiously into the ranks of the poor. Parents of illegitimate and unwanted children now found their circumstances closely vetted to ensure that only the most destitute gained admission. Symptomatically, perhaps, both hospitals began to keep systematic registers of admissions and discharges from this time. Great pains were also taken to break up the flourishing blackmarket trade in bread and other supplies, diverting goods from the hospitals into the town. 33 The history of the Montpellier hospitals in the early years of the Revolution was fairly representative of the fate of those hospitals in the region which were able to survive the losses and changes which the Revolution had brought. A mixture of internal expedients, municipal support and sporadic government aid kept the hospital network more or less intact: but only at the cost of further reductions in the services which hospitals performed within the local community - in, moreover, a period of often pressing social needs — and by causing a deterioration in the living standards of inmates. It was becoming clear by 1792, however, that the straitened circumstances in which hospitals found themselves could not be much prolonged: measures of economy were cutting close to the bone, the limits to borrowing seemed to be being reached, capital reserves were falling dangerously low and, not least, the government's pledge to continue payment of expropriated rentes constituees expired on the last day of 31 A.N., F 15 172 (for rentes viageres); HG I G 56; Fonds Mis. 32 Examples: HD II E 1 (1/6/1791, 30/7/1790); HG II E 12 (10/3/1793). 33 HGIE 31 (22/11/1789, 4/7/1790);HGHE 12(23/1/1791, 2/9/1792, 17/9/1792,25/11/1792); H D I I E 1(25/11/1792).
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1792. 34 A strong political and above all financial commitment on the part of central government seemed essential if hospitals were not, like home-relief institutions, to succumb, and if levels of care were to be restored to pre-Revolutionary standards, let alone improved upon. The war against Ancien Regime Europe and internal counter-revolution which began in the Spring of 1792 indefinitely postponed the initiative from central government which hospital administrators had hoped for. The radical shift of the Revolution towards the Left under the Terror exacerbated the monetary problems, the decline in charity, and the social and economic problems which hospitals had to face. The increasing wretchedness of their situation paled in significance, in the government's eyes, when set against the primordial need to win the war. The priority accorded the war effort was evident in the favour which the central government now showed military over civilian hospitals. The war revealed the inadequacies of the system of regimental infirmaries with which the reforms of 1788 had sought to replace military hospitals. 35 The medical facilities to the rear of the Armee des Pyrenees Orientales, for example, were soon overburdened once the campaigns began in 1793, and the quartermaster was obliged to seek the aid of the civilian network of poor relief far behind the front line. 36 From 1792, the civilian hospitals of the department of the Herault found themselves having to cope with ever-increasing numbers of wounded and convalescent soldiers.37 Some civilian hospitals — notably those at Sette and Meze — were wholly placed at the disposal of the army's medical corps. Others, such as those of Clermont and Lodeve, had parts of their premises commandeered for military purposes. Elsewhere, new establishments were created in vacant buildings or deserted monasteries. In particular, an extensive network of convalescence hospitals was set up after Pluviose Year II (February 1794) to try to offset the epidemics which plagued all hospitals which admitted soldiers and lasted down to the end of the war emergency in 1795. By Fructidor Year II (September 1794) there were no less than fifteen military hospitals in the Herault, containing 4,005 beds. Nearly one-third of these beds were located in Montpellief, which contained five military hospitals: the hotel-Dieu had placed 200 beds at the disposal of the troops; there were 86 enfants de mars et de venus (!) in the hopital des veneriens\ 300 soldiers 34 J. Imbert, 1954, 59. 35 See above, page 60. For previous attempts to evade these highly constricting regulations, cf. HDII F 4;L 3773. 36 For all pertaining to local military hospitals, see E. Rouffiandis, 'Les Hopitaux de l'armee des Pyrenees Orientales. Etude historique sur l'organisation du service de sante de cette armee pendant les campagnes de la Revolution dans le departement (1793-1794-1795)', Rev. fr., 1937-8. See also my article 'The welfare of the French foot-soldier', History, 1980, esp. 206ff. 37 L 2099. For the mineral spa at Balaruc, HG I G 3.
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suffering from skin diseases were housed in the hopital des galeux; while the hopital dit ambulant des sans-culottes and the hopital dit ambulant auxiliaire each contained a further 300 places.38 The very fact that the 4,005 places which the military hospitals contained at the height of the campaign on the Pyrenees represented nearly three times the number of beds which all military and civilian hospitals in the future department of the Herault had contained on the eve of the Revolution is eloquent testimony to the priority which the Revolutionary Government accorded military over civilian hospital care.39 The contrast was all the more striking in the light of the run-down in the capacity of many civilian hospitals since 1789. Significantly, whereas the government accorded just over 50 million livres to the upkeep of military hospitals in France in Year III, less than 10 millions were dispensed among civilian ones. 40 The great outpouring of legislation and military regulations which sought to make conditions in the army's hospitals and medical services both effective and humane further indicated the government's preference for military welfare over civilian poor-relief. In this radical phase of the Revolution, in the words of the historian of assistance, Ferdinand Dreyfus, ^'assistance se fait patriote . . . L'idee d'humanite se confond avec le souci de recompenser les braves qui luttent contre la Coalition'. 41 The Convention's decision on 14 Frimaire Year III (4 December 1794), for example, to create three new medical schools — at Montpellier, Paris and Strasbourg — was largely determined by the crying need for reliable officiers desante&t the front. 42 The important law of 3 Ventose Year II (21 February 1794) not only fixed regulations regarding the administration of military hospitals but also, by insisting that special comites de surveillance were established under the guidance of local societes populaires, co-ordinating with municipalities, ensured that the law was properly implemented. The comite de surveillance established in Montpellier was tireless in its efforts on behalf of sick soldiers. It supported and revitalised an existing bureau de sante of trained medical men who advised on measures of hygiene and diseaseprevention. It assiduously visited the five military hospitals within Montpellier, ensuring, for example, that the medical services were functioning properly; that isolation measures were taken in the case of 38 E. Rouffiandis, 1937-8. L 2095, L 2097, L 2098, L 2101, L 2888, L 4497, L 4931. Cf. C. Alberge, 'Vie et mort des soldats de l'an II a l'Hopital de l'Egalite de Pezenas', Et. Pez. reg., 1971. 39 Cf. above, page 47, and Appendix B. The exactfiguresare 4,005 beds as against 1,477 civilian beds in the same area at the end of the Ancien Regime. 40 M. Bouchet, 1908, 469. 41 F. Dreyfus, 1905, 43f. 42 J. Godechot, Les Institutions de la France sous la Revolution et VEmpire, Paris, 1968, 45If.; and
L. Dulieu, 'La Vie me"dicale et chirurgicale a Montpellier du 12 aout 1793 au 14 Frimaire an III', KM. Sri., 1955, 42.
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soldiers suffering from infectious disease; that accounts were scrupulously maintained and registers of entries and deaths kept up to date; that rations were properly cooked vand served in an orderly fashion; that the staff was vetted for royalist sympathies; and that in general the republican virtues of hygiene, cleanliness and ventilation were suitably observed. 43 Military welfare was a popular enthusiasm as well as a governmental priority. Other measures taken locally included the placing of all biens nationaux at the disposal of the authorities for use as military hospitals; the confiscation of religious furnishings and the property of emigres and suspects - bed-frames, bed-linen, pillows, table-cloths, towels, cooking utensils and the like —for use in military hospitals; and the organisation of collections to raise much-needed funds. 44 Far more destructive than the militarisation of the hospitals in the department of the Herault was the government's change of policy towards hospitals after 1792. Instead of coming to the aid of the hospitals as their beleaguered situation in 1792 required, the government placed added strains upon them. The pledge to continue payment of rentes constituted on expropriated bodies was not extended beyond the end of 1792. Funds of a more or less charitable nature drawn from the nationalised property of the church which the Comite de Mendicite had planned should be used for the reorganisation of the system of poor relief were now earmarked for the war effort. Moreover, by the law of 23 Messidor Year II (11 July 1794), the government went so far as to nationalise all hospital property. The sales of hospital property as biens nationaux soon began, with the proceeds again being diverted into the voracious war effort. The nationalisation measure of 23 Messidor Year II is frequently represented as a crushing blow to the existence and fortunes of hospitals. 45 One informed estimate in Year V claimed that the national hospital patrimony had been reduced thereby from 25 to 4 million livres. The effect of the law was not, however, as drastic in the department of the Herault as it appears to have been elsewhere. The main reason for this was the only very small fraction of local hospital income — perhaps 5 per cent — which derived from property. 46 The manner in which the law was implemented locally also attenuated its effects. The law was not in force for very long: its future was being debated soon after the death of Robespierre and a moratorium on 43 L 2905, L 2100, L 3774, L 5576, L 5590, L 5596. For the operations of Montpellier's comite de surveillance, HD II G 1, G 2. 44 L 2098, L 2100, L 3774, L 3776, L 5576. 45 The law played a not inconsiderable role in the religious disputes of the nineteenth century. Its importance was emphasised by Catholic historians such as L. Lallemand (e.g. L. Lallemand, 1898), who continues to exercise some influence among present-day historians to the detriment of the more balanced appraisals of M. Bouchet, F. Dreyfus etc. 46 C. Bloch and A. Tuetey (eds.), op. cit., 564f.
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sales was introduced in Fructidor Year III (September 1795), prior to the final abrogation of the law on 2 Brumaire Year IV (23 October 1795). Much of the year or so in which the law was in force was spent in drawing up lists of property affected. Even when this stage of the operation was over, sales were not brisk. The case of Cazouls-les-Beziers, where the sale of the main hospital building effectively brought the institution's history in the eighteenth century to an end, was something of an exception. What would appear to be a sizeable proportion of local hospitals lost no property at all under the provisions of the law of 23 Messidor.47 Others lost property from which they did not derive any income: the Hopital Saint-Joseph in Beziers for example lost the home of the Bon Pasteur, a reformatory for prostitutes, which had been annexed to the hospital only after 1789 and which had never brought it any revenue. The losses of the two great Montpellier hospitals were minimal too: the hotel-Dieu's pre-Revolutionary income of well over 100,000 livres was depleted by a mere 1,170 litres as a result of sales of property; while the administrators of the hopital congratulated their predecessors on observing the provisions of the royal edict of 1749 on mortmain so exactly that by 1794 there remained virtually no property at all to be expropriated. 48 In fact, the Montpellier hospitals — as a great many others in the region lost less from the specific provisions of the law than from its confirmation of what was already a de facto situation: namely, the non-payment of rentes constituted on expropriated and nationalised corporate bodies. By abandoning payment of these rentes at the end of 1792, the government had effectively deprived the hospitals of the department of the Herault of the single most important item of their income. The occasional grants of funds which the Convention made for distribution among needy hospitals were quite insufficient to offset these losses. Although the Revolutionary Government displayed relative indifference towards the deteriorating situation of the hospitals, it did commit itself to far-reaching poor-relief schemes outside and beyond the framework of existing institutions. The inspiration for these schemes was the image of the 'welfare state' which the reports of the Comite de Mendicite had projected in 1790 and 1791. A series of general measures now endeavoured to bring into existence a secular, standard and systematised form of relief whose premises would have warmed the heart of Larochefoucauld-Liancourt, the 47 L 468; 131M 1 (for Cazouls). According to a far from complete government enquiry in Year VII, the hospitals of Agde, Clermont, Frontignan, Gignac, Lodeve, Montagnac, Olargues and SaintThibery lost no property at all. Others may well have been in a similar position. L 2908. 48 L 2909 (Be'ziers); and HGII B 10, E 33 (Montpellier). Some hospitals had their tills ignominiously raided by the public authorities under the provisions of the law of 23 Messidor: Sette, for example (L 2891, L 2907). By this time, however, most hospitals had precious few liquid resources remaining.
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Comite's chairman. The Convention fully accepted the notion that it was the responsibility of the state to discharge the debt which society owed its poorer and less fortunate members. The state would provide an appropriate form of relief for every kind of need which social conditions or an individual's biological processes could produce. The able-bodied pauper was to be made to work: houses of correction were to be established for the recalcitrant under the provisions of the law of 24 Vendemiaire Year II (15 October 1793) on begging. A few marginal elements within the world of poverty, such as the homeless aged and the insane were to be housed in hospitals, whose very name Barere, in a fit of rhetorical humanitarianism, maintained should be changed from hopital or hotel-Dieu to hospice in respect to the alleged terror which the old names had caused the poor under the Ancien Regime. All the other main categories of the needy were to be assisted in their homes. The important laws of 19 March and 28 June 1793 laid the foundations for a wide-ranging system of state pensions. An even more elaborate pensions scheme, to benefit rural areas, was introduced by the law of 22 Floreal Year II (11 May 1794): a 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale' was to be created, entry into whose hallowed pages entitled a pauper to an annual pension. This series of major laws, and a number of other minor measures, was aimed to bring assistance to the traditional types of paupers: the sick, the aged and the infirm. New types of recipients of relief— testimony to the extended frontiers of the Revolution's bienfaisance— were also to benefit: unmarried mothers, for example, were to obtain pensions for themselves and their offspring; and wounded or disabled defenseurs de la patrie and their families were made the object of special provisions. 49 Dazzled perhaps by the aspirations of the new legislation, some members of the Convention grossly exaggerated its significance. Barere even claimed that the 'Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', combined with the effects of the other measures, would put an end to poverty altogether. 50 This was more than a little premature: not least because the comprehensive system of relief envisaged was never fully introduced. Bar a handful of isolated road-works schemes, no serious effort was made, for example, to provide work for the able-bodied unemployed. 51 Complementary measures which combated indigence by equalising wealth rather than by introducing evermore complex poor-relief schemes were conspicuously lacking. Most of the levelling social and economic programme of the Terror was dismantled after 49 For unmarried mothers, A.N., F 15 3530. Cf. C. Brinton, French Revolutionary Legislation on Illegitimacy, 1789-1804, Cambridge. Mass., 1936, 26ff. For defenseurs de la patrie, M. Bouchet, 1908, 334ff.; and Brice and Bottet, he Corps de sante militaire en France. Son evolution, ses campagnes, 1708-1882, Paris, 1907, 5Iff. 50 P.J.B. Buchez and P.C. Roux, op. cit., xxxiv, 44. 51 L2263, L4972.
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9 Thermidor. Nothing came, for example, of Saint Just's Laws of Ventose, whose aim had been, according to their author, the destruction of begging by the division of the expropriated property of suspects among the poor, a more constructive means of tackling the problem than the repressive stipulations of the law of 24 Vendemiaire Year II. 5 2 Although a start was made in the department of the Herault to draw up lists of paupers who might benefit from the implementation of the laws, local representants en mission took the initiative in discontinuing the scheme in Fructidor Year II (September 1794) before any property had exchanged hands. 53 The elaborate pensions schemes around which the Convention's poorrelief programme was orientated proved singularly unimpressive in practice too. Once again, the government gave priority to relief measures connected with the war effort. While the defenseurs de la patrie and their families received something between 80 and 100 million litres in pensions in Year II, the civilian beneficiaries of the home-relief measures of 19 March and 28 June 1793 had to wait until the beginning of 1794 before the government placed any funds at the disposal of the district agencies which were entrusted with the implementation of the laws. In the whole of Year II, these agencies received only 15 million livres from the government, with a further 10 millions in Pluviose Year III (February 1795). 54 Once these sums had been divided among the departments, subdivided among the districts and then distributed among communes according to what seemed to be their respective needs, there was precious little left. To take one example from the department of the Herault, the notoriously poverty-stricken commune of Saint-Pons -population 5,271 - received just over 2,000 livres in the main issue of funds in Year II. 55 Municipal officials proceeded to divide this sum among approximately 300 individuals at the basic rate of 14 livres per family. What was supposed to be an annual pension thus boiled down - given 1794 price levels - to scarcely enough to feed a family of five for a couple of weeks. Moreover, most communes in similar circumstances to Saint-Pons concurred that the sparseness of funds obliged them to restrict the distribution only to the most desperately poverty-stricken from among a group of needy which was far larger. The law of 22 Floreal Year II was, however, more thoroughly implemented than the measures of 19 March and 28 June 1793 - in the 52 For details of this law and its application, see below, page 243ff. 53 For the circumstances surrounding the introduction of these laws, see G. Lefebvre, 'Les Decrets de Ventose' in his Questions agraires au temps de la Terreur, La-Roche-sur-Yon, 1954. For their implementation in the Herault, L 3946; and A.N., D III 103. 54 F. Dreyfus, 1905, 48. The sums accorded were 4.6 million livres by the law of 16 Ventdse Year II (6 March 1794); 0.5 millions by the law of 7 Germinal Year II (27 March 1794); and 10 millions by the law of 21 Pluviose Year III (9 February 1795). 55 L 5313 (population figures for 1793 from L 1101). See also, for the implementation of this law in the Herault, L 4498, L 4499, L 5315; and A.M. Montpellier D 8.
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department of the Herault at least. 56 Arguably the most radical poor-relief measure introduced under the Convention, this law aimed at remedying the shortcomings of poor relief in the countryside: all communes with a population over 2,000 individuals were therefore excluded from the provisions of the act. Three officiers desante who were to provide free medical aid to the needy, were to be put on the government payroll in each district, which again constituted the administrative framework within which the law was applied. The main provisions of the law concerned pensions. Recipients of pensions were to be divided into four classes: aged or infirm farmers; aged or infirm rural artisans; aged widows; and mothers and widows adjudged overburdened with children. In the event, 1,000 individuals from the department were to have their names inscribed in the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale' — with 397, 200, 253 and 150 individuals respectively from each category. The law met with a favourable response at the local level. Applications for pensions were soon raining in upon the offices of the district administrators, while the latter urgently set about appointing officiers de sante and despatching drugs and medicines to communes affected by epidemics. 57 The final list of names on the 'Grand Livre' and extant returns in the archives of the department show that over four-fifths of the agrarian communes eligible for pensions had forwarded applications by 27 Pluviose Year III, when a Fete du Malheur was held in Montpellier to inaugurate the scheme and at which the pension-holders paraded gallantly before publicly receiving the first instalment of their pensions. 58 The general enthusiasm with which the law was received was matched by the achievement of district and departmental authorities in answering calls for help where they were most to be heard. Few communes could feel actively discriminated against, as only about one in ten of those which made application received no award. 59 Moreover, there was a crude but clear correlation between districts with the largest number of pensions — notably the Saint-Ponais — and those which the investigations of the Comite de 56 For a general survey of this important law, see F. Dreyfus, 1905, 7Off. There are no satisfactory discussions of the application of the law in the provinces. Two minor, but non-quantitative exceptions are E. Chaudron, UAssistance publique a Troyes a la fin de I'Ancien Regime et pendant la Revolution, 1770-1800, Paris, 1923, 338f.; and J. Dubois, L'Assistance dans le district de Bar
pendant la Revolution, Paris, 1930, 57ff. For the application of the law in the Herault, see L 2878 to 2880, L 3946 to 3951, L 3954 to 3957, L 4603 to 4617, L 4620 to 4624, L 4963 to 4970 and L 5317 to 5327. The final departmental contribution to the 'Grand Livre' is to be found in L 2878, L 2879. 57 L 2877, L 3947, L 3948. 58 For the Fete du Malheur, A.M., Montpellier, D 10. The proportion of communities within each district which sent in returns was as follows: Montpellier, 75.2 per cent; Beziers, 83.5; Lodeve, 83.3; and Saint-Pons, 100.0 per cent (sic). Departmental average, 83-3 per cent. 59 The figures, by district of those localities which made successful applications are as follows: Montpellier, 96.1 per cent; Beziers, 84.5; Lodeve, 88.2; and Saint-Pons, 79.2 per cent.
Towards a 'welfare state'
179
Table 12. Pensions from the Grand Livre deBienfaisanceNationale per thousand head of the agrarian population
District Montpellier Beziers Lodeve Saint-Pons
Agrarian population
Number of pensions
Pensions per 000 head of population
38 137 63 143 35 692 42 751
181 232 245 342
4.8 3.7 6.9 8.0
179723
1000
5.6
Mendicite had revealed as the most wretched. 60 This was a tribute to the law, for it showed that state intervention could act to counter the tendency, under Ancien Regime conditions, of the greatest concentrations of charity leaving the most impoverished areas desperately lacking in funds for poor relief. To take a single example, the inhabitants of Cessenon in the district of Saint-Pons, which had possessed no charitable resources whatever under the Ancien Regime now found themselves in receipt of pensions from the 'Grand Livre' whose annual value amounted to some 1,560 livres.61 Whatever the virtues of the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale' in attempting to remedy gross inequalities in the geographical distribution of relief, the insufficiency of government funds limited the overall effectiveness of the law of 22 Floreal. Above all, it diminished the real value of the pensions. Farmers received 160 livres a year, artisans 120 livres and the women 60 livres. Paid in assignats and in a period of high prices, such sums could scarcely keep a pauper and his family for more than a couple of months, and certainly not the full year as had been intended. 62 Shortage of funds also prevented the scheme for officiers de sante for the rural poor getting off the ground. By Vendemiaire Year V (October 1796), one of the officiers from the district of Montpellier was claiming that he had not received his salary from the government since his appointment on 2 Messidor Year II (20 June 1794), while the three officiers of the district of Lodeve requested back pay for the period beginning in Prairial Year III (June 1795). By this time, however, the government was disclaiming any financial responsibility, and referring them to the administrators of the hospitals in their districts. 63 60 Table 12. 61 C 561 (Ancien Regime); L 5324 {Grand Livre, Year III). 62 The price of a setter of rye on the market in Beziers in Year III was 13-9 livres. Taking the Ancien Regime assumption that each individual needed 5 setters per annum, well over 300 livres would be required to feed a family of five for a year. 63 L 2878, L 2891.
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
180 Over 1.5 Over 1.0 Over 0.5
O
Under 0.5
Map 6 Pensions on the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale' per hundred head of the population Sources: L 2878, L 2879 The shortage of funds owed much to the rather doctrinaire manner in which the law had been drawn up. Barere's starting-point in drafting the law had been that the indigent population represented some 5 per cent of the total population, a figure which, though sanctioned by the reports of the Comite de Mendicite, almost certainly, in the fraught social and economic conditions of the mid 1790s represented a considerable underestimate. 64 The arithmetic which Barere went on to use was almost certainly his own, and seems to have owed nothing to empirical observations and very little to common sense. Half of the indigent 5 per cent of the population, he claimed, were able-bodied and would be catered for by other laws. So too would that quarter of the 5 per cent who were children. Finally, half the remaining 1.25 per cent of the population were women who were to fall outside the provisions of the law. This latter calculation ignored the fact that half the individuals whose names were to be inscribed into the 'Grand Livre' were widows and mothers! The law which its sponsor claimed would be instrumental in the eradication of poverty was thus founded on faulty arithmetic, aimed in practice at aiding only 0.6 per cent of the population — and was financed accordingly. There were other features of the law which suggested a rather unconvincing grasp of the problems of poverty. In particular, the adoption 64 For comments on the way in which the Comite de Mendicite deliberately scaled down the figures of those in need, see O. Hufton, 1974, 21 and n . l . Cf. C. Bloch and A. Tuetey, op. cit., 480ff.
Table 13. Applications from the districts ofthe department ofthe Heraultfor inscription into the Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale
Farmers
District oo Montpellier ^ Beziers Lodeve Saint-Pons
Applications 110 208
136 246 700
Awards No. %
Applications
Awards % No.
112
120.0 81.4 152.1 123.1
200
116.3
15
18
97
90.9 48.1 73.5 39.4
43 23 91
35 35
397
56.7
172
100 100 100
Mother? with children
Rural artisans
Applications
Awards No. %
Applications
Awards % No.
63.2 83.3 125.9 101.1
81 235 85 154
39 37
95
60 73 96
37 37
263
253
96.2
555
150
38 72 58
24
TOTAL
Aged widows Applications
Awards % No.
43.5 24.0
244 558 302 586
181 232 245 342
74.2 41.6 81.1 58.4
27.0
1690
1000
59.2
48.1 15.8
Presentation and sources: This table is based on the departmental contribution to the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', L 2879, 2880; and on extant returns, L 3946-3951 (district of Montpellier), L 4603-4617 (district of Beziers), L 4967-4970 (district of Lodeve) and L 5321-5327 (district of Saint-Pons). In those places where an excess of awards over applications is evident, there were probably last-minute nominations to fill vacant places which have not survived.
182
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
of four general headings seemed to be based wholly on aprioristic assumptions. How far they diverged from the realities of the world of indigence may be appreciated in the discrepancies between the number of applications and the number of pensions for each category. As far as extant documents allow us to judge, the administrators of the department of the Herault experienced great difficulty in finding rural artisans with the requisite qualifications for a pension; yet at the other end of the scale, only one out of four of the women who applied for inscription as aged widows — the customary stock-in-trade of the bureaux de charite and Misericordes of the Ancien Regime, it will be remembered — managed to receive a pension. 65 The over-rigorous application of the qualifications laid down by the government may have been partly responsible for this. It was the opinion of the officier de sante of the district of Lodeve, for example, that the municipalities had acted 'avec trop de rigueur envers leurs miserables et que les tableaux devraient etre beaucoup renforces'. Even if municipal officials were enthusiastic about the law of 22 Floreal, government insistence on the presentation of birth certificates or medical certificates, while doubtless in the interests of administrative equity, slowed down the administrative process and may well have reduced the number of potential applicants. 66 Moreover, some municipalities were unnecessarily strict over qualifications. One individual's application for a pension as an aged farmer was turned down on the grounds that the hernia which incapacitated him was not a result of his labours in the field, but was the sort of ailment to which every man was liable. 67 One widow was refused a pension because, although she had eight children in her home, she was not breast-feeding one, as the law was construed as requiring. Elsewhere, an unmarried mother was refused a pension as an overburdened mother because, allegedly, 'la Convention n'entend pas payer le vice et l'immoralite'. 68 In such ways, local authorities took the government at its word in its plea to 'bien distinguer la pauvrete qui resulte de l'impuissance de travail de celle qui n'est que l'effet de la paresse et de 1'inconduite'.69 As it turned out, there was to be little chance of the Convention subsidising anything of the sort. The rightward swing of the Revolution after 9 Thermidor was to bring a speedy retreat from the principles of 'welfare state' poor relief. The days of the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', along with those of the radical social legislation of the Terror, were numbered. The abolition of districts by the Constitution of Year III severely inhibited the implementation of the measures, since the district had provided the framework within which most of the pensions schemes 65 Table 13. Cf. above, page 55f. 66 L 2878, L 3947, L 3948, L 5326. 67 L 4967. To qualify, 25 years' hard labour in the fields were normally required. 68 L 4969. Cf. L 4999. 69 L 4999.
Towards a 'welfare state'
183
had been applied. Eventually, the law of 16 Vendemiaire Year V (7 October 1796) officially abrogated the laws of 19 March 1793, 28 June 1793 and 22 Floreal Year II which were in fact already being widely ignored. 70 The experiences of 1793 and 1794 showed devastatingly clearly that the government was neither willing nor able to afford the ambitious poor-relief programmes which the Comite de Mendicite had mapped out. The whole emphasis of the poor-relief schemes which the Convention had drawn from the Comite's reports had been to sew together the isolated and uncoordinated charitable initiatives of the Ancien Regime, with their inevitably uneven geographical coverage, into a rational, nation-wide and secular system which regulated the provision of relief in accordance with the scale and exigencies of poverty. The Convention's schemes had looked undeniably good on paper. But it was on paper that most of them remained. There was much in addition that remained unclear about the bienfaisance of this radical phase of the Revolution. Would the poor-relief schemes have been complemented, in the fullness of time, by more radical social legislation? Saint-Just, author of the Laws of Ventose, had suggested this was the only way in which the Revolutionaries could hope to end poverty as they claimed to wish. If more radical laws had not been forthcoming, however, would the Convention have dared to ask the taxpayer to fund the ambitious poor-relief schemes which would have to be envisaged? Or would the laws on poverty come to contain a stronger deterrent and repressive aspect than had been foreseen? Ambiguity attached also to the welcome which the poor themselves reserved for the new schemes. There was no shortage of grateful pension-holders in the department, it is true. Yet the doctrinaire ethos about some of the laws evinced an insufficient knowledge of the poor, which was translated within the schemes by a strong degree of inflexibility. There was too an ostentatiously public aspect to the new legislation - most evident in the parades of the Fete du Malheur which inaugurated the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale' — from which, one may suspect, the self-consciously proud Languedocian pauper would shrink. Despite its incomplete nature, the philanthropic record of the radical phase of the Revolution was not one of which reformers could be proud. It offered more than ample scope for criticism. The volume of protest against the destruction of the Ancien Regime network of poor-relief institutions was, moreover, amplified in the following years as, following the disintegration of the Revolutionary Government's comprehensive relief schemes, the remaining institutins had to suffer an unparalleled period of neglect which cast a permanent stain on the beinfaisance of the hospital and charity reformers of the late eighteenth century. 70 L 2878.
Retreat from the 'welfare state?, C.1795-C.1800
The relative lack of concern which the Revolutionary Government had shown towards hospitals had sprung from, and was compensated by, a strong and positive commitment to alternative forms of relief. Its immediate successors in the Thermidorean period and then under the Directory (4 Brumaire Year IV to 19 Brumaire Year VIII, 26 October 1795 to 10 November 1799) not only dispelled any lingering ambitions concerning the introduction of a 'welfare state' but also displayed an insouciance towards hospitals which bordered on wilful and cruel neglect. 1 The strain which this placed on surviving poor-relief institutions — in the Montpellier region as in most other parts of France — was intensified by the general deterioration in social and economic conditions in the mid and late 1790s. The trade slump caused by the war, the crisis in most local branches of manufacturing, monetary depreciation, high prices and bread shortages, combined with a chronic lack of political stability and administrative authority, produced a rise in the levels of demand for assistance with which crisis-racked poor-relief institutions could hardly hope to cope.2 The de-nationalisation of hospital property by the law of 4 Brumaire Year IV (26 October 1795) — in essence the revocation of the notorious law of 23 Messidor Year II — was the most important single measure concerning poor relief in this period and showed clearly - and ominously - the general attitude of the government to the provision of relief. By reneging on the law of 23 Messidor Year II, the government was implicitly refusing the 1 For social policy generally in this period, see the recent guide of A. Forrest, The French Revolution and the Poor, Oxford, 1981. See also the coverage given by M. Bouchet, 1908; J. Imbert, 1954; and M. Rochaix, 1959. For hospitals, M.C.R. Gillett, Hospital Reform in the French Revolution, Washington, D.C., 1978. The works of L. Lallemand, treated with caution, are still useful: La Revolution et lespauvres, Paris, 1898; and Histoirede la charite. IV. Les temps modernes(du XVleau XIXe siecle), Paris, 1910. 2 For social and economic conditions in the department from 1791 to 1800 see the series of quarterly administrative reports in L 461 to L 488. For socio-religious and socio-political conditions, cf. (especially) G. Cholvy, 1973; also F. Saurel, 1898; and J. Vercier, La Justice criminelle dans le departement de I'Herault pendant la Revolution, 1789-1800, Montpellier, 1925.
184
Retreat from the 'welfare state'
185
primordial role in the organisation of assistance which had been one of the leitmotivs of social policy from 1789 to 1794. It also manifested the government's desire to shed any burdensome financial responsibility for poor-relief institutions. Debates on the law of 4 Brumaire in the Convention revealed not only a feeling that the bienfaisance preached by the Comite de Mendicite had dried up charity and led to inflexibility in the provision of relief, but also that the return of the property of the hospitals would allow the latter to function effectively, thereby relieving the Treasury of a substantial financial burden. 3 If the latter was true of some of the great hospitals of the northern departments, the bulk of whose income had derived from rural leases, it was patently not the case in the department of the Herault, whose hospitals drew very little of their income from property. It was sheer fantasy to expect the restoration of alienated lands which itself was only achieved with difficulty4 — to restore the financial stability of institutions here. Until Year VIII, when the government finally began to concern itself with compensating poor-relief institutions for the rentes constitutes which they had lost in the Revolution, hospitals had to look for aid to a government which felt that it had discharged its moral obligation towards them in the manifestly insufficient law of 4 Brumaire Year IV. Though not entirely insensible to the requirements of the hospitals, the government in the late 1790s was not willing to devote to them the enormous sums which would have been necessary if they were to make anything resembling a complete recovery. There were, moreover, additional drawbacks to government aid. The insistence, for example, that hospitals should produce ample documentation to prove their state of need, though doubtless a laudable attempt on the government's part to check against malversation of funds, ignored the extent of the disruption which the Revolution had produced in the management of the institutions. Here, documents lay hidden away or forgotten in the dusty cupboards of municipal, district or departmental authorities; there, a bonfire of 'feudal' documents had put paid to essential title deeds; elsewhere, a former treasurer had absconded with the accounts. 5 The problem was all the more acute in the case of the smaller hospitals, whose accounting procedures and administrative techniques had always been rudimentary and informal at the best of times. Even the most urgent requests for aid from their harassed administrators might now be returned to them with the comment that they could not be 3 M. Bouchet, 1908, 619. 4 J. Imbert, 1954, 125f. A. de Watteville, Legislation charitable, Paris, 1843, 105f. gives figures for restituted property to Herault hospitals which suggest that by 8 Ventose Year XII only about 10 per cent of the hospitals' landed patrimony had been restored. 5 L 3963, L 4634, A.N., F 15 373. For complaints about the seemingly gratuitous complexity of government administrative procedures, cf. L 486 (hospital of Montpeyroux).
186
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
considered before the appropriate covering documents had been forwarded. 6 Matters were particularly bad in the mid 1790s, when no central clearing-house for petitions existed and when the comitedes secourspublics, the commission des secours publics or even the comite de salut public might be successfully petitioned for aid. Although there was an improvement following the reinstatement of ministries after 1795 the lament of Collot d'Herbois at the height of the Terror, that 'trop souvent la bienfaisance nationale est etouffee dans le difficile passage des bureaux', remained valid long after 9 Thermidor. 7 Even if a hospital's case was adjudged worthy of an award of funds, government aid normally disappointed. Bureaucratic delays or incompetence, the distance factor and the government's inbred parsimony combined to make such funds, in the words of one desperate hospital administrator, 'longtemps sollicites et toujours au dessous du besoin'. 8 The life of administrators was further made a misery by the government's practices of predicting hospital requirements on the assumption of stable prices and a generally accepted paper currency; of normally providing grants on a quarterly basis; and of according funds for current needs rather than for the payment of accumulated debts. 9 Their Ancien Regime patrimony in shreds, obliged to rely on a government which seemed to care little for their problems, hospital administrators had to learn to live with hope, hesitancy, uncertainty and disillusionment. The experiences of the two great Montpellier hospitals in this trying period illustrate the hand-to-mouth existence to which administrators had to habituate themselves. On 3 February 1792, the Convention voted 4 million livres for the relief of hospitals. Montpellier's Hopital General, whose administrators had been digging deep into capital reserves and borrowing extensively in order to make up for the substantial losses they had suffered at the hands of the Revolution, immediately sent in a claim for 60,000 livres. Eventually, however, a mere 24,000 livres materialised with the comment that the hospital's petition had been received only when most of the cash in hand had already been promised elsewhere and that in any case the sum was to be used for running expenses and not for the payment of debts as the hopitals administrators had wished. 10 The government evidently refused to take into account the fact that, running at a constant deficit, it was crucial for 6 L. 2902 (Saint-Chinian); L 2891 (Florensac). 7 Quotation from E. Chaudron, 1923, 533. For the lack of a clearing-house for petitions, cf. F. Dreyfus, 1905, 38ff. 8 HD II B 73. 9 Cf. the pertinent remarks of the administrators of the Beziers hospitals in 1793 concerning this (L 2902); and the extended example of the Montpellier hospitals given below. 10 HG II E 33.
Retreat from the 'welfare state'
187
the hospital to pay off some of its debts periodically if continued credit was to remain available. A year later, the situation was far graver, with the creditors of the hopital demanding immediate repayment and with a virtual absence inside the hospital of even the most essential supplies. Only heavy borrowing from the municipality kept the institution solvent until finally in Thermidor Year II (August 1794) a donation of 29,000 livres was received from the government. Much of this went immediately on the repayment of loans. 11 The next eighteen months were to see the hospital placed in an ever-tightening vicious circle, with periodic grants from the government being spent on the payment of debts - in particular to past administrators and to the municipality - while the internal situation of the institution deteriorated ever more rapidly as the administrators struggled to keep running expenses to a minimum. 12 By Nivose Year IV (January 1796), the inmates were clothed only in rags, there was not enough linen to send inmates to their funerals in a shroud and the children — in midwinter — were running barefoot. An emergency package of economy measures of an unparalleled harshness endeavoured to remedy the situation. 13 Yet by Floreal Year IV (April, May 1796), the hopital again had neither cash in its coffers nor grain in its granaries. A massive credit of three-quarters of a million livres from the government allowed the administrators to settle most of their debts, but the highly depreciated assignats which they received from Paris went precious little further. Within a month or two, the hopital was again devoid of grain, oil, wine and indeed any means of procuring the subsistence of inmates. When the Minister of the Interior rejected a claim for funds because of an accounting error in the documents they had sent to Paris, only emergency loans floated from the administrators' personal accounts prevented total collapse. Although the next government handout, in Vendemiaire Year V (September 1796) had the great merit of being in specie, the new administrators installed in Pluviose of the same year (February 1797) found the hopital already with 'ni fonds, ni grains, ni vetements, ni linge, en un mot, aucun objet de premiere necessite'. Years III, IV and V were among the most fraught and problematical in the history of Montpellier's Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi also. Matters there were prevented from becoming as serious, however, by the large numbers of soldiers who frequented the hospital, particularly after the closure in Year III of most emergency military hospitals in the surrounding region. The 11 HG II E 13 (Prairial and Thermidor II). Cf. A.M. Montpellier D 4. 12 The Hopital General received the following allocations of funds from central government: 36,000 livres in Brumaire III (October 1794); 70,000 livres in Ventose III (March 1795); 120,000 livres in Messidor III (July 1795); and 200,000 livres in Vendemiaire IV (September 1795). HG IIE 13. 13 HG II E 13, E 33, for this episode and events down to 1800.
188
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
government had thereby an incentive to keep the hotel-Dieu intact, and from 2 Nivose Year III (22 December 1794), the hospital board was permitted to draw upon the military granaries in the town. Even so, by Nivose Year IV (December 1795) the hospital was said to owe its treasurer, the Protestant businessman Farel, nearly half a million livres, while it was itself owed two million livres by the Ministry of War for journees militaires.14 After Year V, the situation of the big Montpellier hospitals improved somewhat. The running down of the 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale' and the other schemes of the Revolutionary Government released more funds for the hospitals. The law of 29 Pluviose Year V (17 January 1797) dissolved hospitals from responsibility for payment of any debts contracted prior to 23 Messidor Year II. 15 The gradual revival of supplementary forms of income also contributed towards the general improvement in the fortunes of the two hospitals. 16 Even so, things were far from stable: the apparent cessation of government subsidies in Year VII brought both hopital general and hotel-Dieu temporarily to the brink of closure.17 If many of the occurrences in the history of the two Montpellier hospitals in the 1790s illustrate problems experienced by other poor-relief institutions in the region, their overall history was far from typical if only because they continued to function whereas many others did not. The Montpellier hospitals had trump cards which humbler institutions might envy but could not emulate. Situated in a big town — the departmental chef-lieu to boot - the plight of the Montpellier hospitals could more easily be impressed upon local authorities, while their traditions of sound administration and correct accounting, their large capital reserves and the easy access which they still had to wide-ranging circuits of credit all helped them through the worst patches of the Revolutionary decade. The debacle of traditional charity, the losses of income, militarisation during the war emergency and the expropriations consequent on the law of 23 Messidor Year II — together with a host of local and specific problems — exacted a much heavier toll on less privileged institutions. The disappearance of home-relief institutions in the department by the mid 1790s was virtually total. Although the record of the hospitals was better, here too there were losses. Seven hospitals closed down either temporarily or permanently in the decade, most from Year III or Year IV to about the turn of the century. Several hospitals — including those at Ganges, Olargues, Montagnac, 14 15 16 17
HG II E 13; HD II E 2 (12 Germinal IV/3 April 1796). A. de Watteville, op.tit., 1843, 43. For the revival of charity, see below, page 267ff. HG II E 33; HD II E 2 (22 Messidor VII/11 July 1799).
Retreat from the 'welfare state'
189
Servian and Thezan - retained their identity and continued on a reduced scale as institutions purely for the distribution of home relief.18 At the very minimum, nineteen of the department's forty-three hospitals (44.2 per cent) were forced to close their doors, at least temporarily, during the Revolutionary decade. 19 At least twelve of these (27.9 per cent) were permanent closures. These figures probably represent an underestimate of the extent of the damage which the Revolution had wrought on the provision of hospital care in the department. 20 In a prefectoral enquiry in Messidor Year VIII (July 1800), for example, the sub-prefect of Lodeve reported that a great many of the so-called hospitals in his district were 'plutot des etablissements de bienfaisance pour secours a domicile', while his colleague in Beziers maintained that in his district 'les portes de l'indigence sont presque toutes fermees par defaut de moyens'. 21 Several hospitals seem to have been vegetating quietly with only a few faithful servants kept on without wages, but with bed and board. Enquiries in the late 1790s suggest deliberate under-use of hospital space by administrators anxious to keep running costs low. 22 It was of course a heart-rending experience actually to throw inmates and servants out on the streets and most administrators preferred to cut numbers by restricting admissions or by speeding up convalescences.23 Continued to excess, however, cuts in numbers could rebound against the hospitals, for the government always proportioned its indemnities to an institution's proven state of need, thereby making it difficult for hospitals to expand their provision once they made drastic cuts. 24 Given these circumstances, it is idle to speculate how many hospital administrators combated government parsimony with fraud, as those at Saint-Pons were said to have done by presenting numbers of inmates within hospital walls far in excess of reality. 25 The hospital crisis of the 1790s, then, caused the disappearance of some 18 See above, page 169. 19 Temporary closures at Sette (A.N., F 15 284); Agde (L 4626, L 2888, L 469, 131 M 1); Saint-Chinian(A.N.,F 15 340); Serignan (L 2889, 1X7, 131M 1); Bedarieux(L2889, 131M 1) and Capestang (L 4626, L 2888, 131 M 1). Permanent closures at Ganges (L 468); Meze (ibid.); Le Pouget (131 M 1); Olargues (L 464, L 2889); and within the district of Briers, Loupian, Montagnac, Montblanc, Murviel, Nissan, Pom£rols, Puisserguier, Servian and Th£zan (L 464, L 484, L 485, 131M 1, 8 X 5, 8 X 10, A.N., F 15 284). Other hospitals seemingly only receiving passants malades at the end of the decade were Lunel ( I X 1); Vias (HS Hop Marseil 49) and Gignac (1 X 15, 2 X 72). 20 The hospital at Saint-Pons, for example, may or may not have been closed in Year VII. 1 X 7 . For fuller details, cf. below, page 190. 21 131 M 1. 22 For example: Gignac in Year V, 3 inmates for 10 beds; Florensac, 3 inmates for 10 beds also; and no inmates in the 13 beds at Meze. L 2888, L 2889. At the turn of the century, there were seemingly only 2 and 16 inmates respectively in the couple of dozen beds of the hospitals at Saint-Pons and Saint-Chinian. 1 X 144. 23 HG II E 13 (Montpellier hospitals); A.N., F 15 284 (Saint-Pons). 24 A.N., F 15 313. 25 A.N., F 15 284.
190
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
hospitals and reduced the size of others, thereby very effectively diminishing the assistance which they were able to offer to the community at large. It also produced a marked reduction in the quality of life of the reduced numbers of inmates within those institutions which had been able to survive. From fairly early on in the Revolutionary decade, for example, hospital administrators had neglected expenditure on everything which did not have a direct and immediate bearing on the subsistence of inmates. The variety and the quality of food-rations was progressively whittled away. From Fructidor Year III (August 1795), for example, the inmates of Montpellier's Hopital General were being given as virtually their sole sustenance a pitiful fourteen ounces of bread which was made up with the bran included and which was highly indigestible. Although rations had improved somewhat by the turn of the century, the average price of a day's care in the Hopital General in Year IX was only two-thirds of 1789 levels — a fall which owed almost everything to reduced standards. 26 Elsewhere in the department, the situation was much the same. Bread rations at the hospital at Saint-Pons were heavily cut during Year IV, for example, and wine and meat reserved for emergency cases only. 27 The solution of the administrators of the hospital at Pezenas was more ingenious: they stopped all food-rations, sent inmates out to beg their living on the streets, and even made a profit out of the enterprise by confiscating all the surplus bread, wine and tobacco which inmates brought back with them when they returned to the hospital to sleep.28 The forced neglect of expenditure on repairs and construction, drugs and medicines and linen and clothing from the early 1790s affected the salubrity of many hospitals. Some closures may have been due to this. In the hospital at Saint-Pons, for example, the bottom-floor rooms, always subject to dampness and flooding, had since the cessation of proper upkeep become literally uninhabitable. 29 The closed-down hospital at Bedarieux was soon in a state of almost total disrepair, and rats and insects had eaten through all the furniture and bed-clothes. 30 A similar state of dilapidation characterised the hospital at Olargues, where any pauper admitted was expected to sleep on filthy straw, since the beds had rotted completely away.31 In the hospitals at Frontignan, Montagnac, Pezenas and La Salvetat — and doubtless elsewhere — bed-clothes and linen were almost entirely missing. 32 Elsewhere, squalor and neglect were so far advanced that hospitals — whose pharmaceuticals-cupboards had long been bare — came to represent serious 26 28 30 32
HG II E 13, passim, F 53. 27 A.N., F 15 284. 1 X 64. 29 L 2888. Cf. L 2890, 1 X 7. L 2889. 31 Ibid.; and, for Loupian, L 2900. L 2888. For similar tales of woe, 1 X 16 (Gignac); L 2888 (Bessan, Puisserguier); A.N., F 15 748 (B&ziers Hopital Saint-Joseph).
Retreat from the 'welfare state'
191
health risks. Ironically, this was particularly the case in hospitals whose location had been improved early in the Revolution by the purchase of a bien national iot new premises. Neither the Clermont hospital, not the Hopital Mage at Beziers, for example, could afford the repairs necessary to adapt their new sites properly, with abysmal results. 33 The buildings of the Hopital Mage were in particular so ill-suited to the requirements of a hospital that those suffering from wounds and injuries were placed cheek-by-jowl alongside individuals suffering from various infectious diseases including smallpox. In the Agde hospital orphans and foundlings shared rooms and even beds with the feverish and dying. The hospital at Pezenas was housed in what had become through lack of maintenance, poky, humid and overcrowded rooms, pervaded by the stench of the adjacant latrines. The children's wing here had to endure 'point de jour, point d'air, beaucoup d'humidite' while the aged and infirm were kept in a sort of dank cupboard which opened only onto a dark and airless corridor.34 The threat to comfort, salubrity and hygiene was most acute in hospitals which admitted soldiers for treatment. This was especially true during the years of the war mobilisation from 1793 to 1795, when sheer pressure of numbers on ill-adapted establishments brought serious overcrowding and multiplied the risks of deadly infection, for hospital staff and inmates alike. Dysentery, fevers of various kinds — most seriously typhoid fever — and gastric complaints proliferated and constituted the stock-in-trade of military and militarised hospitals: only one of the 1,984 soldiers who died, for example, in the military hospital at Grange-des-Pres near Pezenas was held to have died of war wounds!35 Many of the soldiers admitted to hospitals came from camps, where conditions were often squalid and unhygienic to a degree. The Launac Camp near Montpellier was particularly notorious in this respect during Year II, when it was estimated that one-quarter of the troops stationed there had to be despatched to military hospitals within two months of their arrival. In addition, military hospitals were frequented by prisoners-of-war, deserters and others who had been exposed to the region's prisons, and who might enter unknowingly carrying the dreaded 'gaol fever' — the generic name for typhus. 36 The presence of soldiers in the hospitals not only reduced the space available to civilians and constituted a major source of insalubrity; it also made the lives of inmates and staff a misery. Soldiers ruled the roost. They constituted, as the administrators of the Montpellier hotel-Dieu were to 33 HS Hop Cler (unclassified); A.N., F 15 284, F 15 313. 34 2 X 1, 1 X 139 (Agde); L 4626 (Pezenas). 35 C. Alberge, 1971, 21. 36 HDII E 1 (2 Thermidor 11/20 July 1794 andpassim); C. Caizergues and S. Rogery, op.tit.; Roucher, op.tit. For disease in other hospitals, L 2884 (Meze), L 2889 (Lodeve); and L 4930 (Lodeve and Gignac). For soldiers as the vectors of disease, R.C. Cobb, The Police and the People. French Popular Protest, 1789-1820, Oxford, 1970, 11 If.
192
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
put it, 'un genre de malades qui n'ont d'autre occupation que de boire, manger et detruire'. 37 They deliberately flouted regulations within the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi, for example, by gambling and swearing; they fought among themselves and engaged in wanton destruction; they came and went within the hospital as they saw fit; they pilfered from the hospital's gardens; they leant out of windows and conducted lewd conversations with passers-by and prostitutes. Finally, the reception burlesque which they gave every new entrant — which consisted mainly of throwing a bucket of water over him — was scarcely likely to endear them either to staff or to civilian entrants. 38 It was little wonder that the great waves of sick soldiers in Years II and III left the militarised hospitals in a state of serious dilapidation after their running-down. The hospital in Sette, for example, which had been entirely militarised in Years II and III was by the turn of the century in a quite pitiable state; the cisterns were leaking and causing dampness throughout the hospital; the privies stank from disrepair; the surviving furniture was broken-down and useless, the windows holed, the door-locks broken, the roof leaking. Conditions in the part-militarised hospitals at Lodeve and Meze were little better. 39 The heightened squalor and sordidness of conditions in the 1790s inevitably exacted a heavier toll on the fragile organisms of orphans, foundlings and abandoned children under the care of the hospitals than on the adult inmate population. The death-rate of children less than five years old attached to the Hopital General in Montpellier which had varied between one-half and two-thirds under the Ancien Regime had already by 1792 reached the level of four-fifths - with the worst of the hospital crisis still to come. 40 There were three main aspects to the problem of caring for such children: accommodation, numbers and finance. Since 1791, each of the main district hospitals in the department — at Montpellier, Beziers, Lodeve and Saint-Pons — had been obliged to take in enfants abandonnes.41 When they refused, or proved unable to offer suitable accommodation, other, smaller hospitals found themselves saddled with the children. Many such institutions had no experience of children's needs and lacked space for them. Not infrequently, hospital administrators were obliged to accommodate them willy-nilly in the same rooms - and even in the same beds - as adult inmates both infirm and disease-ridden.42 37 HD II E 127. 38 H D H E 1 (9 Frimaire 11/29 November 1793; 7 and 19 Pluviose 11/27 January and 7 February 1794; 9 and 12 Ventose II - 27 February and 2 March 1794; 8 Fructidor 11/25 August 1794; 11 Germinal VI/1 April 1798); HG II G 2. 39 1X 139, L2899. A.N.,F 15 284(Sette); L2900, 1 X64, HSHopLod 32 (Lodeve);L2888, 1X16 (Meze). 40 L 3943. Cf. above, page 106f. 41 1 X 1, 1 X 15. 42 1 X 64 (Agde); 1 X 139 (Pezenas).
Retreat from the 'welfare state'
193
Pressure of numbers exacerbated the problem. From the earliest days of the Revolution, such children had proliferated as never before. By January 1791, the normally well-prepared administrators of Montpellier's Hopital General were having to put two infants in each cot, and were signalling immense difficulty in finding sufficient wet-nurses. 43 By Year IX, the Ministry of the Interior estimated that the number of such children in France as a whole had risen from 23,000 in 1789 to 62,000 - an increase which contemporaries ascribed to the corruption of morals, the misery of the times and the large number of men in the army away from their families. 44 Although the increase was probably not as steep in the department of the Herault as elsewhere in France, the added burden which the additional numbers of children imposed on hard-pressed hospitals was sorely felt. The shortage of funds which characterised the life of poor-relief institutions in the 1790s was the third contributory factor in the worsening fate of children in hospital care. The whole decade was to witness a prolonged battle over wages between the hospital administrators and the wet-nurses from the Cevennes who traditionally fostered the children. 45 Hospital administrators could get away with stopping the wages of their domestic servants if they continued to provide bed and board for them and if they appealed to their better natures. Such economies were, however, out of the question with wet-nurses, whose pay was essential for their own families' upkeep, especially in a period of social and economic disruption like the 1790s. From the earliest days of the Revolution, the Montpellier Hopital General, like most others, had been obliged to raise 43 HGII E 12 (23/1/1791). 44 12 X 4. 1 X 1 and 1X15 contain some highly defective information on the scale of the problem in the department in Year IX which does, however, suggest something of the growth in the problem:
Locality Montpellier Beziers Pezenas Saint-Pons Lodeve Clermont
Number of
Number of
enfants abandonnes
enfants abandonnes
in 1789
in Year IX
149 (more or less as Year IX) 45
230 198
+ 54.4
37
- 21.6 stable?
p 10 0
402?
4 29 12 510
Percent difference stable
+ 190.0 —
+ 26.9
For the neighbouring department of the Aude, cf. M. Laget, 1973. 45 HG I E 31; HG II E 12, 13, 14, passim; HG II G 58, G 91. In principle the hospitals were reimbursed by the government for expenditure on children. In practice, however, these payments were subject to the inconveniences noted concerning all government payments.
194
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
the wages it paid its wet-nurses. The latter were not tardy in making it clear that they would not be fobbed off. Early in 1796, when the hopital's administrators had been forced to make payments in highly depreciated assignats, Cevenol wet-nurses assaulted the hopital's messagere to make their point. 46 Others who had not been properly paid for months — even years - made their displeasure known at about the same time too, and the administrators of the department's hospitals faced what amounted to a full-scale revolt by irate and penniless wet-nurses. 47 The government eventually eased the hospitals' dilemma by making larger grants — in specie — for the upkeep of the children. 48 The consequence of the perpetual wrangling between hospital administrators and wet-nurses must have been particularly odious for the children involved, however. First, hospital administrators were obliged to retain a higher number of children than previously within the hospitals - a fact which even before the squalor of the 1790s would have sent up the death-rate. Second, the squeeze on the economic position of the wet-nurses could only cause a deterioration in the quality of the care which they provided. Even if they were conscientious foster-parents - and many were not - they would have found it difficult to prevent the welfare of the children from suffering. The death-rate remained high, while those children who survived their infancy in the Cevennes returned to the hospitals suffering from a variety of deficiency ailments which the doctors of Montpellier's Hopital General characterised as a single species of malady, ou hereditaire ou communiquee par les nourrices ou l'effet de la malproprete ou du mauvais regime qui suit le sevrage des infortunes que nous voulons secourir. Elle s'annonce quelquefois comme une maladie venerienne masquee, d'autres fois elle complique desfievresou autres maladies connues et contre lesquelles le traitement le plus methodique est souvent infructueux; d'autres fois enfin elle developpe des maladies de la peau ou de la lymphe ou degenere en vice scrophuleux, scorbutique ou ecrouelleux.49 Skilful and dedicated management was essential if the effects of the deterioration in living conditions within the hospitals were to be minimised. Unfortunately, however, the crisis of finance which characterised the 1790s was accompanied - and aggravated - by a crisis in management. The ending of the traditional corporative autonomy of hospital administrations early in the Revolution had been partly compensated for by their consequent 'municipalisation'. Municipal backing had 46 HGIIE 13 (30 Brumaire IV/21 November 1795, 12 Nivose IV/2 January 1796). For trouble earlier in the Revolution, cf. HG I E 31 (10/1/1790), HG II E 12 (11/12/1791, 28/7/1793). 47 HG II E 2 (30 Thermidor III/17 August 1795), G 166. Cf. for Lodeve, HS Hop Lod 36; and for Beziers, L 2884. 48 HG II E 13 (19 Brumaire V/10 November 1796, 22 Messidor V/10 July 1797). 49 H G I I G 119.
Retreat from the 'welfare state'
195
meant extra credit to help them through the dark days of the 1790s. Yet hospitals were also thereby tied in much more closely to the vagaries and discontinuities of local political life. In Montpellier, for example, the old administration of the Hopital General had been kept on, under municipal surveillance, until May 1791 when it was replaced by a mixture of elected and appointed officials and municipal officers under the chairmanship of the maire. As local politics hotted up, however, the administrative board suffered; over the next five years, no less than 103 individuals served on the board, 30 for less than a year and a further 47 for between one and two years.50 This lack of continuity - in such contrast with the balanced pattern of change and stability in Ancien Regime administration — bred a lack of concern. In a period in which time-serving was a less dangerous option in public life than conspicuousness, it proved difficult to get the administrators to take their duties seriously. Even when the hopital was on the brink of financial catastrophe in Years III and IV, quorate meetings were only organised with the greatest difficulty.51 The basis of future stability in the administration of poor-relief institutions was laid by two important laws in Year V. The law of 16 Vendemiaire Year V (7 October 1796), first, stipulated that the hospitals in each commune should be managed by a single hospital board (commission administrative des hospices civils) composed of five individuals appointed by and responsible to the municipality; secondly, the law of 7 Frimaire Year V (27 November 1796) stated that five individuals chosen in the same manner were to form a bureau de bienfaisance which was entrusted with the organisation of home relief within the commune. 52 In some localities, these laws almost immediately inaugurated an era of long, stable and effective management by dedicated servants of the public interest. This was certainly the case in Montpellier, whose hospital board now responsible for both the Hopital General and the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi - became notorious for the long service of its members: one of them, Etienne Bartelemy, served continuously from 13 Prairial Year V (1 June 1797) to his death on 16 November 1833. Although there were one or two similar success stories elsewhere in the department, the introduction of stability and reliability into the management of poor-relief institutions was still, however, a very patchy affair.53 It proved difficult - as under the 50 HG II E 12 (21/4/1791, 22/5/1791), E 23. 51 HGIIE 13(esp. 10ThermidorIII/28July 1795, 20 Vendemiaire IV/12 October 1795, 21Nivose IV/11 January 1796 and 30 Floreal IV/19 May 1796). 52 A. de Watteville, op.cit., 1843, 4 If. for the full text of these laws; and for comments on their significance, M. Bouchet, 1908, 63Off., and J. Imbert, 1954, 103ff. 53 The hospital board at Marseillan had signal success in restoring the hospital's fortunes. HS H6p Marseil 1, 27, 32, 38, 49; and L 2902. For the patchiness of coverage, cf. the quarterly administrative reports, L 461 to L 488. For Montpellier, HG II E 23, E 33.
196
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
Ancien Regime — to find sufficient literate individuals to make a success of managing the bureaux de bienfaisance and hospitals of small villages and bourgs. In addition, placing the institutions under the general supervision of the municipalities exposed them to manipulation and maladministration by local political cliques. Four of the five members of the hospital board at Valros in Pluviose Year XIII (January 1805), for example, were closely related to each other and were said to have been cooking the books since the outbreak of the Revolution. At Serignan, most of the hospital board were related to the institution's main debtor and displayed a cousinly concern not to press him for payment. A similar situation obtained at Saint-Bauzillede-Putois, where the bureau de bienfaisance's main debtor himself sat on the bureau. 54 Uncertainty and instability also characterised the internal management of many hospitals for most of the 1790s. The close and critical attention which municipal administrations paid to the affairs of poor-relief institutions brought the conduct of the nursing sisters who ran them under careful scrutiny. The increasingly anti-clerical temper of national and local politics led to attempts to 'republicanise' and 'dechristianise' the religious decor, identity and tempo of hospital life, even at the cost of losing the aid of the nursing sisters. This process was particularly marked in Montpellier. The decor of hospital life in Montpellier was brought into line with what were regarded as the new social and political realities. In July 1792, coats of arms of noble benefactors were erased from the Hopital General's chapel, and this was soon followed by all 'marques de royaute et de noblesse'. In January 1793, gold and silver braiding, pointing and fringes were removed from church ornaments and sent to the municipality as a contribution towards the war effort.55 In Brumaire Year II (November 1793) the campaign quickened under the impulsion of the representant en mission Boisset. Portraits of benefactors were removed from administrative offices on the grounds that the uniforms depicted were an offensive reminder of the Ancien Regime, and they were replaced by framed copies of the Acte constitutionnel and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The following month, the chapel bell was taken down, the chapel closed and all religious ornaments and effects despatched to the town hall as a pledge of Revolutionary good faith and as a contribution to the war effort. At about the same time trees of liberty were ceremoniously planted in the main courtyards of both hospitals. 56 54 1 X 36 (Valros); 1 X 7 (Serignan); 1 X 35 (Saint-Bauzille). For other cases of maladministration, L 2889 and 2 X 66 (Frontignan) and L 2900 (Loupian). 55 HG II E 12 (8/7/1792, 14/10/1792, 6/1/1793). 56 Ibid. (13 Brumaire II/2 November 1793, 10 Frimaire 11/30 November 1793). Cf. HD II E 1 (3/11/1792, 19 Frimaire II/9 December
Retreat from the 'welfare state'
197
The identity of the hospitals underwent a republican and anti-clerical sea-change. True to the precept of Barere in the Convention that the very word hospital was to be expunged from the republican vocabulary, Montpellier's Hopital General came to be known as the 'hospice d'humanite' and the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi was rechristened — though that is hardly the word! - the 'hospice des malades civils et militaires'. The rooms of the hotel-Dieu were renamed too: each was called after a Revolutionary hero - Marat, Lepelletier, Ballard - or a republican virtue - Humanite, Vertu, Raison, Bienfaisance, Unite, Fraternite, Ami tie, Union and — fittingly for the operating theatre - Courage!57 The tempo of hospital life was affected too. With the chapel closed, the bell silenced and almost all religious decorations removed, the hospital round lost its liturgical air. The authorities endeavoured to set the hospitals working to the new republican metronome. The decadi replaced Sundays as the day of rest. On each decadi, the children of the hopital - no longer the supplicants on the community's charity but primed as a republican example to all - were paraded around the city wearing the bonnet rouge. Religious processions of all sorts were stopped and an end was put to the attendance of children from the hopital at funerals. Republican festivals now replaced church holidays as occasions for collective rejoicing: a special effort was made, for example, to fete the fall of counter-revolutionary Toulon in Nivose Year II (19 January 1794). 58 The 'dechristianising' of hospital life extended, in Montpellier's Hopital General, to the expulsion of the order of nursing sisters who ran it. Both the government and local authorities throughout the department had treated nursing sisters with great leniency, despite the latter's notorious hostility towards the constitutional clergy. 59 It was only when the hopital's chapel became renowned as the storm-centre of the opposition to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and when the sisters began obstinately to refuse inmates permission to attend the funerals of benefactors presided over by constitutional clergy, that pressure built up for their removal. In August 1792, they were replaced by a company of more than eighty citoyennes devouees au service des pauvres which seemingly had its origins in the dames patriotes, headed by the wife of the Montpellier businessman, Granier, who had paraded in civic processions earlier in the year. Most were drawn from the middle and upper classes and they included the wives and daughters of municipal, district and departmental dignitaries. 60 57 HD II E 1 (9 Frimaire 11/29 November 1793), E 99. 58 HGIIE 12 (30 Nivose 11/19 January 1794, 13 Brumaire II/2 November 1793, 10 and 20 Frimaire 11/30 November and 9 December 1793). 59 HGIIE 1 (31/7/1791). For the national pattern, D.B. Weiner, The French Revolution, Napoleon and the nursing profession', Bull. Hist. Med., 1972. See also J. Duval-Jouve, 1879, 193. 60 HGII E 12 (6/8/1792).
198
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
The citoyennes proved an ineffective replacement for the Hopital General's nursing sisters. The fact that they included Protestants produced a hostile reception by inmates and staff who were staunch supporters of the non-jurors. The servants remaining from the previous administration refused to work with them. Indiscipline ran amok, with adolescent girls proving the most refractory. Basic duties were neglected, there was a widespread refusal to work on Sundays, with 'propos contrerevolutionnaires' being muttered about the citoyennes and secret prayermeetings being held in remembrance of the royal family. Attempts to restore discipline - in particular by introducing the public flogging of miscreants — only redoubled disturbances, while expulsions were similarly unable to quell insubordination. 61 Disheartened by the uphill struggle which confronted them, and disarmed by the rightward swing of the Revolution after Year III, many of the citoyennes withdrew from service, while others became embroiled in sterile squabbles about hierarchy and subordination. Alarmed by the decline in the standards of internal service, the hopital's administrators petitioned the Minister of the Interior for permission to request the filles de la charite, who were still running the Misericorde, to assume responsibility for internal management. Though this project failed because of the paucity of sisters attached to the Misericorde, the return to normality was finally achieved in Pluviose Year V (February 1797), when the old company of sisters was allowed to return to replace the andful of citoyennes who were still offering their services.62 Although there was to be a revival of the 'dechristianising' ethic after the coup of Fructidor Year VI (August/September 1798), with Revolutionary cockades, the decadi, the Rights of Man and the 'maximes d'une saine morale* making their reappearance,63 the changing religious circumstances of the late 1790s gradually erased the memory of this intense expression of the desire to 'republicanise' hospital life. There was less discontinuity in personnel in other hospitals in the department than might have been expected. Apart from Montpellier's Hopital General, only the hospitals at Pezenas and Clermont lost their sisters, although the closure of other institutions such as the hospitals at Agde and Cazouls-les-Beziers inevitably brought their disappearance from these localities.64 Elsewhere however the sisters continued at their posts. The main reason behind their retention was the undisputed value of the 61 Ibid, passim. 62 HGII E 13 (10 Fructidor 111/27 August 1795, 21 Messidor IV/9 July 1796, 3 j.c. IV/1 September 1796, 15 Pluvidse V/3 February 1797 and passim). 63 HD II C 1; HG II C 1, E 39, E 75 and E 13 (passim). 64 A.N., F 15 748 (P&enas); HS Hop Cler E 13 (17/2/1792) (Clermont); L 2888 (Agde); L 2889 (Cazouls). The Montpellier H6tel-Dieu came very close to dismissing its filles de la charite too. L 5590.
Retreat from the 'welfare state'
199
services which they performed. If the municipality at Lodeve, for example, could in Year VI bewail Tesprit de Tancien regime* which the sisters at the local hospital had conserved, they had ruefully to admit that the sisters were nonetheless irreplaceable. 65 The presence of no less than thirty-four sisters and servants for the care of only fifty-two inmates inside Beziers' Hopital Mage in Nivose Year IV (January 1796) raised eyebrows among the economy-conscious clerks of the Ministry of the Interior. When challenged to explain this flagrant disproportion, however, the administrators made no bones about the indispensability of the filles de la charite de Saint Augustin who ran the hospital: 'Avec elles point de couturieres, point de cuisinier, point d'apothicaire, point de gargons, presque point de domestiques, presque point de journees externes. Ce qu'on depense en apparence pour elles se retrouve d'un autre cote avec usure au moyen de leur charite industrieuse.' 66 Yet if more often than not nursing sisters remained at their posts during the Revolutionary decade, they no longer dominated the running of the hospitals as they had done under the Ancien Regime. Doctors and surgeons, for example, made important inroads into their prerogatives in the field of medication and care. 67 The sisters were also subject to the close vetting of local authorities. With the exception of the sisters of the hospital at Saint-Pons, who supported the Civil Constitution of the Clergy — a course of action which was to lose them their livelihoods after the Concordat — none of the orders of sisters welcomed the religious changes ushered in by the Revolution. 68 Yet all tranquilly conformed with the prohibition on the wearing of nun's costume and observed regulations relating to the practice of religion with barely a murmur. The erstwhile martinets of internal hospital life thus lost their bark and much of their bite in the Revolutionary decade. They seemed a declining, though not yet a spent, force. Deaths thinned their ranks. By 1795, for example, only twelve of the fifteen sisters who had run Montpellier's Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi in 1789 were still alive. 69 Poor recruitment was a further problem. The decree of October 1789 which had prohibited religious vows as being contrary to the principle of personal freedom struck a severe blow against the nursing orders. Lack of renewal within their ranks led to an aging of nursing personnel which was not conducive to administrative efficiency. Montpellier's Misericorde in the 1790s, for example, possessed nine sisters; but two of these were octogenarians and 65 L470. 66 A.N., F 15 284. 61 See below, page 2O3ff. 68 For Saint-Pons, I X 145. For the nursing sisters in general, J. Boussoulade, Moniales et hospitalieres dans la tourmente revolutionnaire. Les communautes de religieuses de I'ancien diocese de Paris de 1789 a 1801, Paris, 1962, 55f.
69 HD II E 1 (2 Fructidor 111/20 August 1795). Cf. HD II F 22.
200
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
another completely bedridden. 70 Similarly, of the nine sisters attached to Montpellier's Hopital General who had survived the Revolutionary decade only two were under forty years old, and the others — whose age varied from forty-five to seventy-five — had all been recruited between 1753 and 1786. 71 The decision of Chaptal, the Minister of the Interior, and a native of Montpellier, to allow the reconstitution of the Filles de la Charite in Nivose Year IX (December 1800) was the first step towards the full recovery of the orders of nursing sisters. 72 By that time, both the crisis in finance and the crisis in administration, which had made the history of poor-relief institutions in the 1790s so appalling, were gradually being brought to an end by a government which, if it eschewed the extravagant claims of the Revolutionary Government in the field of poor relief, nevertheless maintained that the state should play a more active role than the Thermidorean or Directorial regimes had done. 70 A.N., F 15 284. 71 HG II F 54. 72 J.A. Chaptal, Mes Souvenirs sur Napoleon, Paris, 1893, 71; J. Boussoulade, 1962, 206; and D.B. Weiner, 1972, 29 Iff.
10 Poor-relief institutions from the Concordat to the Restoration
The turn of the nineteenth century witnessed the beginnings of the recovery of the network of poor-relief institutions following the crisis-racked years of the 1790s. This recovery owed much to the rehabilitation of the Catholic church by the Concordat between Bonaparte and the Pope in Messidor Year IX (15 July 1801) and the general strengthening of civilian authority under the Consular and Imperial regimes. The Concordat was of far more than religious significance: in the Herault as in many other departments of the Midi it also contributed forcefully towards the return to a more pacific and routine public life following the lawlessness, the dissensions and the witch-hunts of the Directorial regime. Despite the rough ride which the department gave its first post-Concordat bishop, the irascible and intolerant Rollet, the local church was to be thoroughly overhauled during the long episcopacy of the popular Bishop Fournier (1806-34) and the way paved for the 'Catholic restoration' which marked the first half of the nineteenth century in the department. * The religious revival had a profound influence on poor-relief institutions which even under the Directory had begun to feel the effects of the religious thaw in the wake of the dechristianising episodes of first Year II and then Year VI. The structure and context of poor relief were effectively 'rechristianised' in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Confraternities of dames de la Misericorde came to recharge the energies of many bureaux de bienfaisance and, although the government insisted that every pauper was openly to justify his state of need, the old concern for secrecy and discretion and the old favouritism towards the pauvre honteux soon crept 1 'La restauration catholique' is the title of the second chapter of the authoritative thesis of G. Cholvy on the religious history of the diocese in the nineteenth century. G. Cholvy, 1973. See also id., 1976. The outdated works of F. Saurel, 1898, and his Marie-Nicolas Fournier, Eveque de Montpellier, Baron de Contamine, surnomme leperedespauvres, Montpellier, 1892, are still of value because they are based on documents many of which are no longer extant. For the overall effects of the Concordat on the French church, J. Godechot, 1968, 713ff.; and J. Godel, 'L'Eglise selon Napoleon', R.H.M.C., 1970. None of these works gives more than very scanty treatment to the aspect of poor relief and charity.
201
202
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
back into the administration of home relief.2 The pristine ecclesiastical texture of hospital care was restored by the return of the nursing sisters. Much to the pleasure of inmates, hospital chapels began to function again, and chapel bells were blessed and re-hung. The larger hospitals reappointed chaplains. The wards of the Montpellier hospitals were re-baptised with the names of saints rather than of republican virtues - with the Salle Saint-Napoleon soon making its first appearance! The liturgical tempo of hospital life returned too, with church festivals rather than, or as well as, civic occasions punctuating the daily routine. Hospital inmates and administrators ceremoniously attended funerals once more. Indeed, some funeral processions, such as that which in Year XIII followed the coffin of a former president of Montpellier's hospital board bid fair to rival the ostentatious 'baroque piety' at which the city had formerly excelled.3 So comprehensive was the Catholic triumph that there was some danger of it rebounding against those not fully in tune with its precepts. There were dark mutterings in various localities, for example, that home care was being withheld from individuals who had accepted the Civil Constitution in 1791, while in Montpellier the inmates and sisters of the hospitals had to be restrained from browbeating ailing Protestants into abjuring their faith.4 The service which administrators now gratuitously and often unstintingly gave to the reviving poor-relief institutions contrasted strongly with the time-serving of many administrators in the mid 1790s. If they were normally less narrowly denominational in their outlook than under the Ancien Regime — Protestants served on the Montpellier hospital board, for example, and were among the staunchest champions of the nursing sisters — the change marked a return to the old-style paternalism. The damaging inroads wrought on the fabric of hospital establishments in the Revolutionary decade seemed only to confirm the members of Montpellier's hospital board in their opinion that the prime aim of every hospital administrator must be 'de conserver dans toute sa purete l'azile de l'infortune, de placer les pauvres sous les auspices de ceux que les lois leur ont donne pour pere et pour appui'. 5 2 See, for example, the very full records of the bureau de bienfaisance at Olonzac, A.N., F 15 1423; and Fonds Mis. 3 HG II C 5; HGII E 2 (26 Thermidor XI/14 August 1803, 23 Brumaire XII/15 November 1803); arrete of 11 Fructidor XI/29 August 1803 and governmental circular of 27 Fructidor XI/14 September 1803 in A. de Watteville, op. tit., 1843, 101 (for chapels). Fonds Mis; 2 X 73 (Gignac); and G. Cholvy, 1973 (chaplains). HD II E 99; L. Dulieu, 1953, 173; H. Creuze de Lesser, op. cit.,. 417 (wards), HG II E 2 (10 Brumaire XII/2 November 1803, 23 Prairial XII/12 June 1804); G. Cholvy, 1973, 286 (festivals). 1 X 16; HG II E 1 (3 Messidor IX/22 June 1801, 1 Thermidor IX/20July 1801); HG HE 2 (15 NivoseXIII/5 January 1805); A. de Watteville, 1843, 112(decree of 12 Prairial XII/1 June 1804) (funeral pomp). 4 2 X 231; HD II C 4; HG II E 2 (12/7/1808); G. Cholvy, 1973, 391; A.N., F 7 8560. 5 HD II F 40.
From the Concordat to the Restoration
203
Their self-assigned task was to improve the living conditions of their charges up to a level just inferior to that enjoyed by the poor in the world outside. Despite its occasionally sentimental expression, theirs was a paternalism which retained a strong moralising edge. It viewed idleness as the scourge of the poor, for example: forced labour would not only aid the tottering finances of the hospitals but also comprised, in the words of Chaptal, himself a native of Montpellier, l a morale pratique du peuple'. Chaptal, Minister of the Interior from Year IX to Year XII, would doubtless have applauded the conviction of the administrators of his native city's Hopital General that 'tous ceux qui trouvent un azile dans les hospices et des moyens de subsistance qu'ils ne pourraient se procurer par leur travail doivent l'emploi de leurs moments a la maison qui les fait vivre'. 6 Central to the paternalistic mission of the administrators of Montpellier's hospitals was the desire to safeguard the poor from influences which they regarded as harmful. The customary segregation of inmates from the outside world was reimposed.7 The administrators of the h6tel-Dieu had originally - though in vain — opposed the government's plans to mobilise their hospital for sick soldiers on the grounds that this ran counter to the interests of the poor. 8 For similar reasons, they were later to deliberate that the insane within the hospital should be kept under lock and key: allowing lunatics to wander freely around the wards was to 'negliger la surete des individus de l'interieur' and might give rise to 'divers actes de folie' which could *interromp[re] le repos des malades'. 9 Finally, hospital administrators devoted a great deal of energy to their secular struggle to protect the sick poor from the overweening presumption of the academic doctor, the insouciance of the medical student and the brutality of the surgeon's knife. The Revolution was an important milestone in the history of French medicine. 10 Although in the early 1790s medical faculties, colleges of surgery, guilds of surgeons and apothecaries and their ilk had been closed down under the attack launched upon 'aristocrates de la science', the need for medical personnel in the army and the desire to halt the damage being wrought by ignorance and charlatanism led the Revolutionary assemblies to sanction the teaching of medicine and eventually, by the law of 19 Ventose Year XI (10 March 1803) to redefine the legal contours of the medical, surgical and pharmaceutical professions. The pragmatic requirements of 6 HG II E 1 (18 Floreal V/7 May 1797). Cf. for Pezenas in Year XI, 1 X 64. 7 HD II E 18; 1 X 64. 8 HD II F 7. 9 HG IIE 1 (2 Vendemiaire VIII/24 September 1799); HG IIE 2 (20/10/1807). Cf. L 3774; HD IIG 8. 10 E.H. Ackerknecht, 1967; M. Foucault, 1961 and 1973; M. Bariety and C. Coury, Histoire de la medecine. Paris, 1963; P. Huard, Sciences, medecine, pharmacie de la Revolution a I'Empire,
Paris, 1970.
1789-1813,
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Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
the Revolutionary era also helped to coax academic medicine down from the rarefied heights of theory and system-building to more down-to-earth social medicine. Montpellier felt these influences even before the Convention had by the law of 14 Frimaire Year III (4 December 1794) fixed its medical vocation for the future by placing in the city one of France's three Ecoles de Sante. n In Prairial Year II (June 1794), the local societe populaire\\zA been instrumental in creating an etablissement provisoire de clinique, centred in the hotel-Dieu, at which the celebrated Baumes gave courses on the 'maladies des armees'. 12 The establishment of the Ecole de Sante reinvigorated the campaign of academic doctors to establish clinical teaching methods within the hospitals. The first professeur de dinique interne, the veteran Encyclopediste
Henri Fouquet, used the law of 14 Frimaire Year III to inveigle the hotel-Dieu's administrators into providing the Ecole with two rooms of inmates for teaching and research purposes. 13 Although the hospital administrators at first retained their own doctor for other inmates, in Floreal Year VIII (May 1800) the Minister of the Interior stipulated that the entire medical service of the hospital should be entrusted to the professors.14 The incursions of clinical medicine continued even after this. In Brumaire Year IX (October 1800), the medical service of the city's Hopital General was placed in the hands of members of the Ecole de Sante. In Pluviose Year IX (January 1801), Vigaroux, the hopital's new doctor, was permitted two rooms in the hotel-Dieu for experimenting with Jenner's smallpox vaccine on children from the hopital and in Year XI an etablissement gratuit de vaccination was established there. In Nivose Year XII (January 1803), a further couple of rooms were set aside in the hotel-Dieu for the clinical study of incurable diseases and in 1807 a course in practical midwifery was instituted. 15 The administrators of the Montpellier hospitals did not, however, acknowledge the victory of the academic doctors in extending their control over medical services without a fight. Deploying the same sets of arguments with which their Ancien Regime predecessors had combated the pretensions of the old Faculty of Medicine, utilising the same paternalistic rhetoric, ceding ground only grudgingly and with bad grace, making concessions but never abandoning the cause altogether, the administrators 11 The other two were at Paris and Strasbourg. 12 HD II E 1 (29 Prairial 11/17 June 1794); L. Dulieu, 1955, esp. I66f. 13 HD II E 1 (2 Floreal and 12 Prairial II/21 April and 31 May 1794); L. Dulieu, 'Les articles d'Henri Fouquet dans YEncyclopedia, R.H. Sci., 1952. 14 HG II E 1 (27 Floreal VIII/17 May 1800); HD II E 26. 15 HG II E 1 (1 Brumaire IX/23 October 1800), HG II F 56 (Hopital General's medical services). HG II E 1 (11 Pluvi6se IX/31 January 1801), 1 X 1 (smallpox). HG II F 60, HG II E 2 (22 Nivose XII/12 January 1803) (incurable diseases). HG II E 2 (5/5/1806, 22/4/1807) (midwifery classes).
From the Concordat to the Restoration
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fought a rearguard action throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods against the claims of clinical medicine. If Tutilite publique' was admittedly served by allowing the professors access to the poor in the hospital, 'le repos des malades' was 'le veritable but de son administration*. The professors were not allowed to forget that the hospital was above all Tazille sacre de l'humanite souffrante'.16 In the late 1790s, when the hotel-Dieu's medical service was divided between the professors and the nominees of the hospital board, the latter imposed severe restrictions on the number of medical students allowed into the hospital in the train of their teachers and insisted that they do nothing which might in any way inconvenience, tire or alarm the inmates. 17 The administrators baulked too at providing a women's ward for clinical teaching and, although they eventually gave way, they used overcrowding in the hospital as a pretext for long delaying the opening of such a ward. 18 In Floreal Year VIII (May 1800), they protested in the strongest terms direct to the Minister of the Interior against entrusting all the hospital's medical services to the professors. Although their complaints were ineffective, they did manage to extract from the professors a promise that they would abide by all house regulations imposed by the board. The doctors proved sensitive, for example, to the administrators' request that they only converse in an oblique manner before inmates concerning their illnesses and only make 'des observations relatives aux malades avec une telle circonspection qu'ils ne puissent etre affectes'.19 When the traveller Millin visited the hotel-Dieu around 1810 he found Professor Victor Broussonet on his rounds holding forth to his student in Latin, much to the mystification of his patients. Despite such a tactful concern for house rules, however, clashes between the professors and the administrators continued to occur.20 The fate of the bodies of the poor after their deaths raised even stronger passions than their treatment while they were alive. The battery of Ancien Regime measures restricting the number of corpses from the hotel-Dieu for dissection and regulating the manner in which they were handed over to surgeons was reactivated in the course of the 1790s. Although the monopoly of the hospital's medical service which the professors acquired after Year VIII swung the pendulum in their favour, a public scandal in 1806 occasioned by the discovery of the grisly remains of the dissection •16 HG II E 1 (21 Ventose VII/11 March 1799, 26 Frimaire Vl/16 December 1797). 17 HDII E 1 (22 Frimaire IV/13 December 1795); HG II E 1 (28 Frimaire VI/18 December 1797). 18 HG II E 1 (21 Floreal VIII/11 May 1800). 19 HG II E 1 (28 Frimaire VI/18 December 1797, 4 Messidor VIII/23 June 1800); HD II E 26. 20 A . L . Millin, Voyages dans les departments du Midi de la France. IV. Languedoc, Paris, 1 8 1 1 , 3 1 1 . For disputes, cf. HD IIE 26, G 10 (over midwifery course); and HG IIE 2 (27/1/1806) (over observance of regulations pertaining to the treatment of sick soldiers).
206
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
table scattered carelessly around the city's perimeter led to the reimposition of tighter controls. 21 The justification for such measures was always identical: 'le bien des malades'. 'L'ouverture des cadavres repugne aux malades', the Montpellier hospital board maintained. If fears of the scalpel admittedly constituted a Vain prejuge', such emotions were nonetheless 'indomptables' in the board's view and had to be accommodated if only because it was possible to 'aggraver le mal [des malades] par la crainte meme de cette ouverture'. 22 There were other factors too which influenced the administrators in their stand. Capitulation to the demands of the professors risked losing the hotel-Dieu valuable charitable income from individuals who might feel that the best interests of the poor were not being properly served. It would in addition exacerbate the unwillingness which the local poor still felt to enter the hospital. 23 Finally, the administrators were influenced by the nursing sisters, ever the champions of the sick poor and stern critics of the medical profession. The dominance of nursing sisters within hospitals had been severely affected by the greater supervision which these institutions had to endure from local authorities and by the growing prestige of the medical profession. The sisters' well-known opposition to clinical medicine had been insufficient to prevent its final introduction into the hospital. In most matters pertaining to medical care, moreover, their influence had been irreparably damaged. A ministerial circular on 28 Ventose Year X (18 March 1802), for example, made it clear that the sisters were to obey orders from doctors and even from subaltern medical personnel on all matters which related to treatment. Indeed, the inmates' consumption of food and drink — which had proved such a contentious issue in Montpellier's hotel-Dieu on the eve of the Revolution — was now unquestionably in the hands of the doctors and surgeons. 24 Perhaps in compensation for the attenuation of their influence in the medical sphere, the sisters in Montpellier's hotel-Dieu appear to have become especially intractable in everything which concerned religion and morality. They vigorously opposed the introduction of practical midwifery classes into the hospital in 1807 on the grounds that this would bring them and inmates into contact with loose women and 'les fruits de la debauche'. 25 21 HG II E 2 (17/3/1806), F 51, F 60. For the reactivation of old regulations on medical service, cf. HGHE 1(7GerminalV/27March 1797, 11 BrumaireVII/1 November 1798, 21 VentoseVII1/12 March 1800), HG II E 2 (1 Brumaire X/23 October 1801); and, for the Hdpital General, HG II E 13 (17 Germinal IV/6 April 1796, 9 Nivose V/29 December 1796). 22 HG II E 1 (7 Germinal V/27 March 1797). 23 HG II E 1 (7 Germinal V/27 March 1797) 1 HG II E 2 (12 Floreal XII/2 May 1804); HDII C 7. 24 HD II F 43; 2 X 23. Cf. A. de Watteville, op. tit., 1843, 47f. 25 100 M 17.
From the Concordat to the Restoration
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They were also most forceful in endeavouring to defend the poor from dissections and operations which - perhaps like the poor themselves - they saw as 'une espece de profanation'. 26 Their conflict with doctors and surgeons in this sphere was sharpened by the fact that the medical profession included many ardent supporters of the Revolution during the Terror, when the sisters had suffered maltreatment and loss in prestige. 27 The simmering hostility of the sisters towards the professors came to the boil after 1812, when the influence of the conciliatory Victor Broussonet proved unable to contain his more headstrong and opinionated colleague Delpech. What the sisters interpreted as an unwarranted and ruthless desire to dissect the bodies of inmates led to a protracted dispute into which the hospital board was drawn on the side of the sisters. Eventually the arbitration of the Minister of the Interior had to be invoked, following an incident in which Delpech was said to have led a party of medical students in breaking down a locked door behind which various corpses had allegedly been stowed away awaiting a decent burial. 28 The Delpech incident, which spilled over into the Restoration and led to an attempt on the part of the Montpellier hospital board to replace the professors with their own nominees as hospital doctors bore witness to the continued vitality of the rearguard action which the administrators fought against the incursions of academic medicine. 29 Their determined opposition to attempts to transform what they viewed as a social and charitable institution into a basically medical establishment can easily be characterised as reactionary and obscurantist. Medical science and its practitioners had not, however, made such great steps forward from the late eighteenth century for their efficacy to be regarded as qualitatively better. Indeed, the high death-rate in operations inside hospitals throughout Europe which followed the easier access to inmates that doctors managed to obtain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century — in what was still a pre-antiseptic and pre-anaesthetic age — showed that the Montpellier hospital administrators were not far wrong in suspecting that the interests of the clinical practitioner and those of his patient did not always coincide. 30 The rechristianisation of poor-relief institutions which such clashes highlighted presaged the revival of charity. It was not until 5 Prairial Year XI (25 May 1803) that the government permitted institutions to hold 26 A.N., F 15 1422. 27 For example, doctors had been members of the bureau de santeand advisers to its successor, the comite de surveillance, which in Years II and III supervised the medical institutions of Montpellier. L 2905; HD II G 1, G 2. Cf. above, page 173. 28 HGIIE 3 (21/4/1813); HD IIF 50; 2 X 102. For Broussonet's more tactful approach, HD IIF 42. 29 L. Dulieu, 1953, 178, 196ff., 222. 30 Cf. E.M. Sigsworth, 1972, 109; T. McKeown, 1976, I47f.
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collections and to place offertory boxes inside churches. In fact, institutions in the department of the Herault had by then long been enjoying the fruits of voluntary charity, which had re-emerged spontaneously during the slow thaw in governmental religious policy in the late 1790s. The receiving of testamentary benefactions marked the close of the secularising hiatus of the mid 1790s: the Montpellier Pret Gratuit in 1797 received its first benefaction since 1794, while the Hopital General had to wait until 1799 and the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi till 1802 for their first bequests. 31 In Brumaire Year V (October 1796), the Montpellier hospitals had resumed their traditional annual collection in the city after a lay-off of four years. Other institutions both in Montpellier and in the department as a whole soon followed suit. 32 Administrators increasingly played up the religious aspect of poor-relief institutions as a means of attracting charity. The board of the Montpellier hospitals, for example, justified the re-convening of religious assemblies within the institutions on the grounds that such meetings had always constituted 'une ressource pour les hospices dans les aumones qui s'y repandaient'. 33 On these grounds too the board planned a grand ceremonial reopening of the Hopital General's chapel — which had served as a municipal storehouse under the Terror — in the hope that it would attract 'beaucoup de personnes etrangeres qui font la charite et payent le loyer des chaises'.34 Similar arguments were deployed by administrators elsewhere: at Marseillan, for example, it was claimed that the purchase of a bell would allow masses for benefactors to be said with all due solemnity and that this would encourage testamentary bequests; and in Gignac the hospital board endeavoured to restore its chapel in the belief that its customary reputation as a place of pilgrimage could only be financially advantageous.35 There was a strong financial connotation too to the desire of hospital boards to attract testators to be buried inside hospital cemeteries; to the hiring out of children to accompany funerals; and to the resumption of the traditional franchise on the hiring out of funeral garments which some hospitals enjoyed.36 Even a measure like the return of the nursing sisters to the Montpellier Hopital General in Year V was seen in a financial as well as an administrative and religious light: improved administration, it was hoped, 31 Archives du Pret Gratuit; HG IB 22; HD II B 11, B 15. Cf. A. de Watteville, op. cit.y 1843, 100. 32 HG II E 13 (30 Ventdse and 14 Germinal V/4 April 1797), E 364. Cf. for the Montpellier Pret Gratuit in Pluviose Year V (February 1797), Archives du Pret Gratuit; for the Misericorde, at about the same time, L 2891, Ponds Mis.. By Years VI and VII, the following localities had reintroduced collections: Sette, Saint-Chinian, Gignac, Montagnac, Cazouls and Lodeve. 1 X 16; HS Hop Lod 29. 33 HG II E 1 (17 Pluvidse VI/4 February 1798). 34 Ibid. (21 Frimaire V/ll December 1796). 35 HS H6p Marseil 38 (Marseillan); 2 X 72 (Gignac). 36 HG I E 367; 1 X 16.
From the Concordat to the Restoration
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and the rechristianisation of hospital life would help to ensure that 'les liberalites seront plus frequents'.37 The scale and the significance of the resuscitation of private charity, and its utility to poor-relief institutions, may be gauged roughly in the wills made by Montpellier residents before Montpellier notaries under the Empire. Although Montpellier was far from presenting a microcosm of the very varied religious disposition of the department,38 there were few localities in the Herault in which the religious enthusiasm that underpinned the revival of charity was stronger. Montpellier had by and large supported the non-juring clergy during the Revolution; in 1801 it welcomed back the departmental bishopric from Beziers where it had been situated since the Civil Constitution; and it was to prove one of the bulwarks of the 'Catholic restoration' of the first half of the nineteenth century. Wills drawn up in 1808 and 1809 - by which time the 'rechristianisation' of poor-relief institutions was well under way - are therefore of particular interest in suggesting changes in the volume and pattern of charitable giving since the Ancien Regime.39 By 1808 and 1809, in a development which had been visible over the last half century of the Ancien Regime, the will had lost a great deal of its pristine spiritual and existential value: no longer the capturing of that moment at which the testator had stood mindful of his own mortality, the 37 HG II E 1 (15 Pluviose V/3 February 1797). 38 The importance of the religious geography of the department is emphasised in the works of G. Cholvy, 1968, 1973, 1976. 39 The continued value of wills as a source for the pattern and scale of charitable giving is unquestionable. However great the progress of religious indifference, the will was still the place in which an individual was likely to make the largest charitable bequest in his life. Bequests still, moreover, comprised the largest item in the charitable income of poor-relief institutions (see, for example, the lists of major bequests to the hospitals of Montpellier and Marseillan in HG IIB 14 and HS Hop Marseil 2). In 1839, the philanthropist de Gerando estimated that two-thirds of donations to hospitals in the whole of France still came from testamentary charities. Baron de Gerando, De la bienfaisance publique, 2 vols., Brussels, 1839-
The use of the will as a source for religious practice and, by induction, for belief, is more open to dispute. No concrete evidence appears to have been adduced, however, to support the generally held view (e.g. M. Vovelle, 1973, 74) that wills are unreliable for this purpose after 1789. There are of course a number of imponderables over which it is necessary to ride rough-shod: changes in notarial practice caused by the Revolution, for example, changes in the laws of succession and alterations in social vocabulary. These factors certainly affect the accuracy and precision of results and necessitate the utmost caution in extrapolating conclusions solely on the basis of evidence from wills. As will be argued here, however, evidence from quite different sources by and large confirms the religious picture which emerges from wills. Furthermore, it is worth remembering that the majority of testators in 1808 and 1809 were born about a half a century before the Revolution began. One would expect the sort of change in mentalites which wills help to chart to be a fairly long and drawn-out affair. The longue duree did not stop in 1789. The wills used were drawn from the archives of Montpellier notaries. See list of sources in bibliography for full references. 1808 and 1809 seemed the best years for studying long-term trends in charitable giving. They came after the revival of charity following the Concordat but before the incidence of charity was artificially swollen by the social crisis which lasted here from about 1810 to 1813.
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Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
will had become almost wholly an economic document for the disposal and transmission of property. 40 Two-thirds of wills now contained no religious preamble. Where preambles existed, they nearly all comprised the old staple phrase whereby the testator recommended his soul to God; only three wills out of nearly six hundred contained examples of the luxuriant religious phraseology which once had been so common. A very substantial fall was evident too in the other religious components of the traditional will: only a handful of individuals specified details concerning their funeral procession; requests for commemoratory masses were present in less than one-tenth of the wills; religious benefactions, though showing some renewed buoyancy in this pro-Catholic period, figured in less than one-twelfth; while only one person in every twenty-four stipulated where he wished to be buried. In all cases, women were more likely to make these provisions than men. The 'religious dimorphism' of the sexes which was to become a commonplace of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholicism and which was frequently viewed as a consequence of the Revolution is thus clearly delineated in these Montpellier wills. 41 Evidence from Montpellier wills suggests a general decline in religious practice - and, by extension, in religious belief- which other evidence largely corroborates. Although travellers from northern France and from abroad continued to be impressed by the externalised religiosity prevalent in Montpellier, 42 'baroque piety' had by the early nineteenth century become the exception where two generations before it had been the rule. The decline in requests for inmates and children from the Hopital General to accompany funeral processions and the slackness of demand for places in the hopital's cemetery confirm the general impression derived from the wills. 43 Other evidence suggests that the change was not simply one of form - a shift from a traditionally ostentatious religious sensibility to a more interiorised one — but of content. The post-Concordat clergy long bewailed the ignorance of the church's doctrines which much of the department displayed in the wake of the ecclesiastical crisis of the 1790s. The religious dissension of that period spilled over into the nineteenth century, moreover, for Montpellier became one of the outposts of the Petite Eglise- in local parlance, the Purs — that is, the hard-line refractory clergy who refused to acknowledge the Concordat. 44 In a different sphere, the sharp drop in the 40 M. Vovelle, 1973, 74. 41 G. Le Bras, 1956, passim. 42 See, for example, J.A. Amelin, op. cit., 260f.; M. Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey through France, London, 1815, 54f. C.A. Fischer, Lettersturitten during aJourneytoMontpellierperformed'in the Autumn of 1804, London, 1806, 65ff.; Voyage dune Hollandaise en France en 1819, edited by M. Garc.on,
Paris, 1966, 124ff. 43 There was a boom in demand for these services at the turn of the century, but both fell away very rapidly following the regularisation of religious life. HG II E 61 (children); HG II E 64 to E 66 (cemetery). 44 G. Cholvy, 1973, esp. 385ff., 490ff., 537ff.
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local birth-rate compared with pre-Revolutionary levels almost certainly signalled — in a France in which coitus interruptus and anti-clericalism were bosom companions - the growth of indifference towards the teachings of the church. 45 Finally, although much of the department including Montpellier was conspicuously 'white' (royalist) in 1815, it was not so thoroughly impregnated with the precepts of political and religious traditionalism not to take its place in the heartlands of the Midi rouge by the middle of the nineteenth century. 46 The wills made in 1808 and 1809 reproduced much of the Ancien Regime pattern of charitable giving, and confirmed trends present on the eve of the Revolution. Charitable bequests still far outdistanced religious benefactions. 'Intra-mural' charity was still very much the rule, with less than 2 per cent of bequests being directed outside Montpellier. The bequests continued to be channelled into the hands of the overseers of the poor — poor-relief institutions, parish priests, and now also the Protestant pastor and the Prieur of the Penitents Blancs — rather than donated direct to the poor themselves. The relative popularity of the main poor-relief institutions in the minds of Montpellier's testators remained basically the same as on the eve of the Revolution. The Misericorde, with about one-third (30.3 per cent) of the benefactions, confirmed its fairly recently acquired position as favourite.47 It was followed at a distance by the Hopital General (24.0 per cent) and the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi (15.9 per cent). A sudden rise in the popularity of the Pret Gratuit comprised a new element in the picture. In 1785 and 1786 the Oeuvre had captured less than 3 per cent of all bequests, but under the Empire it achieved the figure of 13.3 per cent. The sterling services which it — like the Misericorde — had performed through the darkest days of the Revolutionary decade had evidently won it a niche in the affections of Montpellier's benefactors which it was to maintain throughout the nineteenth century. The return of charity thus clearly benefited the traditional institutions of poor relief within the city as in former times. Moreover in some respects it would appear that charity was well up to the level of charitable giving under the Ancien Regime. The average number of bequests made by each 45 E. Le Roy Ladurie 'Demographie et "funestes secrets": le Languedoc (fin XVIIIe - debut XIXe siecle)', A.H.R.F., 1965. For the religious significance of changes in sexual mores, J. Delumeau, 1971, 316ff.; and M. Riquet, 'Christianity and population', in O. and P. Ranum (eds), Popular Attitudes towards Birth Control in Pre-Industrial France and England, London and New York, 1972, 22. 46 G. Fournier in D. Fabre and J. Lacroix (eds.), 1975, 359; L.A. Loubere, 'The emergence of the extreme Left in the Lower Languedoc, 1848—1851: social and economic factors in polities', Am. H.R., 1967-8. Cf. M. Agulhon, La Republique au village, Paris, 1970. 47 The Misericorde's popularity was even greater, if one includes the 1.8 per cent of donations which were made to the Oeuvre des prisons, which was still closely linked with it.
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charitable benefactor, for example, was higher (2.5 bequests) than the figures achieved in either the 1740s or the 1780s. If the average size of each bequest was slightly lower than than of the 1780s, it still represented a clear advance on the 1740s. 48 The gross nominal value of the charitable bequests was higher than before: the wills made in 1808 and 1809 raised some 72,93 Ifrancsas against 68,536 livresin 1785 and 1786and 62,084 livresin 1740 and 1741. In real terms too, there had been a not inconsiderable rise in comparison with the end of the Ancien Regime. 49 There was a continued drop, however, in the incidence of charitable giving among Montpellier testators as a whole: only about one-sixth (17.2 per cent) made charitable bequests under the Empire as against about a quarter (24.2 per cent) in the 1780s and nearly a half (44.9 per cent) in the 1740s. All social groups were affected, and although the professional classes, the bourgeoisie and the world of finance and business were still among the most charitably minded, none approached the figures similar groups had recorded under the Ancien Regime. 50 As with the religious part of the wills, moreover, the overall decline was more accentuated among the men than among the women: a quarter of women made bequests while only one-tenth of men did so. 51 The decline of testamentary bequests indicated a falling away in the importance and the scale of private charity in the post-Revolutionary period. The post-Concordat clergy, it is true, were ceaselessly to commemorate the victory which 'les larges conceptions de la charite' had carried off over 'les mesquines combinaisons d'une bienfaisance herisse de chiffres'.52 Yet the victory was a pyrrhic one. 'On celebre la bienfaisance/ ironised Montpellier's Bishop Fournier in one of his Lenten sermons, *et la bienfaisance n'est nulle part.' Yet when he went on to enquire, rhetorically, 'Que voit-on tous les jours? Les riches mourir de leurs exces et les pauvres de leurs besoins', the answer he provided was — knowingly — as much an indictment of charity as of the bienfaisance of the Revolutionary era which he so much deplored. 53 Fournier's influential vicaire-general, 48 In the 1740s, the average number of bequests in each will bearing charitable benefactions had been 1.8; and in the 1780s, 2.1. The average size of bequest in each period had been 167.3 and 334.3 livres respectively. In 1808 and 1809, it was 265.2 livres. 49 At the current prices for the periods under consideration, the bequests could have purchased 10,129 (1740-1), 7,291 (1785-6) and 9,928 (1808-9) sitters of meteil. The prices of 1808 and 1809 represent something of a trough prior to the flambee of prices after 1810. 50 The bestfigureswere recorded by bourgeois (44.4 per cent), the world of business andfinance(40.0 per cent) and the professional classes (29.5 per cent). The 'indeterminate' category, which seems to have included many wives and daughters of the city's social elite, was also high (31.3 per cent). None of these, however, surpassed the overall average of 44.9 per cent in 1740 and 1741. 51 The exact figures were: men, 10.4 per cent; women, 26.6 per cent. The charitable act was progressively 'feminised'. In the 1740s, 52.2 per cent of the wills bearing charitable benefactions had been made by women; in the 1780s, the figure was 67.4 per cent; and in 1808 and 1809, a remarkable 81.2 per cent. 52 The Lenten address of Bishop Thibault, 1842, cited in G. Cholvy, 1973, 526. 53 Ibid., 277.
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the Abbe Lunaret, for his part castigated the rich for their 'aumdnes parcimonieuses' and, with a reference to canon law which in postRevolutionary Montpellier had an undeniably archaic ring, he reminded the better-off members of society that they owed the superfluity of their wealth to the poor. 54 Fournier's successor, Bishop Thibault, was no less critical of post-Revolutionary charitable mores. Almsgivers were wont to 'distributer] les aumones sans jamais aller au devant de la misere'. Their charity was only 'une vaine religiosite'. 55 It was the octroi rather than the alms of the faithful which was the ultimate saviour of the network of poor-relief institutions under the Consulate and Empire. During the Ancien Regime, the government had granted hospitals the proceeds of levies and tolls on consumer goods on a purely ad hoc basis. These municipal tolls, which had been lost without compensation in the early days of the Revolution, were now reinstated and regularised. By the law of 5 Ventose Year VIII (24 February 1800), all major communes were instructed to establish an octroi de bienfaisance, the proceeds of which were to be divided between the locality's hospitals and its bureau de bienfaisance. The decline in charitable giving greatly magnified the significance of these tolls. Although in some places there proved to be difficulties in their initial imposition - for any form of indirect taxation was unpopular, and all the more so in a period of high prices — further government action in Year XII ensured that the law was properly observed.56 The annual accounts of the three great poor-relief institutions of Montpellier under the Empire bear witness to the increased importance of the octroi. The octroi was the new financial backbone of these bodies. Charity - whether in the form of collections, bequests and the like or else the fossilised' charity of rentes constitutes - was only an adjunct, albeit an important one, in their revenues. Significantly, semi-extrinsic services now made a very considerable contribution to their finances. Government reimbursements for the treatment of sick soldiers made up three-fifths of the income of the hotel-Dieu; while the Misericorde derived a sixth of its income from sales from its dispensary.57 54 Ibid., 514. Cf. the sermon by the same individual in 1 E 42. 55 G, Cholvy, 1973, 520. 56 Laws of 5 Ventose Year V (23 February 1797) and the government circular of 21 Germinal XII (12 April 1804) in A. de Watteville, op. cit., 1843, 67f., 107f. Cf. 1 X 16, A.N., F 20 196. The octroi also helped finance the municipalities. The law of 7 Frimaire Year V (27 November 1796) had also instituted a theatre tax (droit sur les spectacles) which only benefited the poor-relief institutions of a small number of communities, the sums involved rarely being large. 57 Table 14 for the annual average accounts of the three Montpellier institutions under the Empire. The largest items in the combined incomes of the three were as follows: reimbursement for sick soldiers (Hotel-Dieu only), 99,806 litres; octroi, 96,802 litres; rentes, 48, 437 livres; and charity, 41,309 livres. Prior to 1810, the Misericorde had also received very sizeable payments for attending to the needs of prisoners in the town's gaols, but after 1810, this service became a separate offshoot, the Oeuvre des Prisons.
Table 14. Average annual accounts of the three main poor-relief institutions of Montpellier under the Empire Hotel-Dieu St-Eloi Amount
Misericorde
Hopital General %
Amount
%
Amount
%
A . Income
1. Income from investments -rentes constitutes etc. —land and property
2. Octroi a n d droit sur les spectacles
3. 4. 5. 6.
Charity Fees (soldiers) Work Miscellaneous
31828
19.1
20 324 9 291 99806
12.2 5.6 59.9
5 489
3.2
[ 5 967] [ 7 259]
166738
3 383
9.5
59.4 21.5
15 714 10 291
44.2 28.9
3.6
6 194
77.4
13 226
12.4
63 117 22 804 3 240 3 872
—
[ 2 691] [ 692]
— 3.1
— —
— —
35 582
106259
B. Expenditure
1. Food and provisions -food —other 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Drugs and medicines Buildings and repairs Salaries and administration Particular services (children) Miscellaneous
[85 899] [20 766]
106 665 2 793 12 143 14 892 —
12 729 149 222
71.5 1.9 8.1
10.0 — 8.5
[56922] [16602]
73 524
69.1
4 565 6931 15 075 6011
4.3 6.5 14.2 5.6
301
106407
0.3
[16419] [ 6 528]
22 947 9 700 977
4 228 —
2 085
57.5 24.3 2.4 10.6 — 5.2
39937
Sources: Based on annual accounts as follows: Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi= 1806-15; Hopital General = 1806-15 (both in HD II E 118-27); and Misericorde = 1807-15, figures for 1806 not being available (Fonds His.)
Table 15. Importance of the 'octroi' in the income of several hospitals in the Montpellier region, Years IX—XIII Year IX Hospital Agde Beziers (both hospitals) Clermont Lodeve Pezenas Saint-Chinian Sette
Total income
6938 19 733 8 473 13 159 15 327
Octroi % Amount 6000 2 100 1800 7 650 13 900
Year XIII
Year XII
86.5 10.6 21.2 58.1 90.7
Sources: 1 X 144 (for Year IX); 1 X 16 (for Year XII); and 131 M 3 (for Year XIII)
Total income
Octroi % Amount
9 196 21562
1800 16 500
79.6 76.5
4016 18 604
3 300 1200
82.2 6.5
Total income
Octroi % Amount
12 492
8 000
64.0
15 000
14 000
93.3
216
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
Table 16. Average annual income of the hospitals ofLodeve and Marseillan under the Empire
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Rentes Octroi Charity Work of inmates Other
Lodeve
Marseillan
15.1 64.9 8.8 6.8 4.4
48.0 30.7 17.2 — 4.1
Sources and presentation: The information is presented in percentage terms. HS Hop Lod (Accounts, 1807-14); and HS Hop Marseil 27 (Accounts, 1806-15)
Replies to government enquiries in Years IX, XII and XIII reveal the at times preponderant importance of the octroi in the income of hospitals outside Montpellier at the moment of their first imposition. 58 This importance is confirmed by the more reliable information available from the accounts of two hospitals, those ofLodeve and Marseillan, under the Empire. These accounts also underline the much reduced value of charity in their income. 59 A comparison of hospital conditions before and after the imposition of the octroi allows a further means of appreciating the importance of these tolls in restoring the fortunes of the major hospitals. The contrast in a number of cases was quite striking. The hospital at Pezenas at the turn of the century for example, had been overcrowded, dank, unhealthy, and blighted by so chronic a shortage of funds that its administrators turned out the inmates onto the streets by day to beg their living. Yet by the time a government inspector called in Year XI, the hospital had become a model of cleanliness and economy, with its inmates hard at work within its walls and its medical services again assiduously attended to. 60 The metamorphosis of the Hopital 58 Table 15. 59 Table 16. Unfortunately, these are the only hospitals in the department outside Montpellier where such a tabulation is possible. Charitable income of the hospital ofLodeve had amounted to 3,769 livres on average in the years 1785 to 1789; under the Empire, it amounted to only 1,810 litres on average. On the eve of the Revolution, the Maundy Thursday Collection (bassin du jeudi saint) had fluctuated between 300 and 450 livres; under the Empire, it fluctuated between 250 and 300 livres (HS Hop Lod 29). The decline in the importance of charity is borne out by the accounts of other institutions. Income from this source had brought the Hopital Saint-Charles at Sette nearly 2,000 livres a year on the eve of the Revolution; in Year XIII, it brought in only 400 livres (131 M 1). The bassin du jeudi saint had, before the Revolution, brought the hospital at Agde about 150 livres a year; in 1814, it brought in only 42 livres. Also in 1814, it was estimated that the hospital, whose annual income from rentes prior to the Revolution had been in excess of 10,000 livres, had derived in donations, benefactions and bequests since the law of 23 Messidor Year II a paltry 1,585 livres in toto. 2X1. 60 L 4626, L 2891 and A.N., F 15 748. Ct. above, page- 190f.
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Saint-Charles at Sette was equally startling: in Year VIII it had been in a horrifying state of penury and dilapidation, yet by Years X and XI, government inspectors were admiring the efficiency of its internal management, the cleanliness of the premises and the general air of well-being which the institution exuded. 61 The story was much the same at Saint-Pons, Agde, Beziers, Saint-Chinian and elsewhere.62 The octroi, so plainly beneficial in the rehabilitation of the finances of the major hospitals, constituted the most important example of the extension of state intervention in poor relief. The prevalent mood in Brumaire Year IV at the time of the revocation of the notorious law of 23 Messidor Year II had been a desire on the part of the government to wash its hands of all but a vaguely supervisory and financially supportive role towards poor-relief institutions. Although there was never to be a return to the principle of the Comite de Mendicite that the state should be the prime promoter of social welfare and harmony, the government did gradually begin to assume a greater measure of responsibility. The laws of 16 Vendemiaire and 7 Frimaire Year V which reorganised the management of hospitals and bureaux de bienfaisance showed which way the wind was blowing. 63 Significantly, however, the laws stipulated that it was the municipalities rather than the government which were to retain the main supervisory functions over the institutions. It was only with the appointment of prefects after 18 Pluviose Year VIII (7 February 1800) that the central power, through prefects and sub-prefects, strengthened its control over municipalities and hospitals alike. 64 Although maires remained the ex officio chairmen of every hospital board and bureau de bienfaisance, the sub-prefect rather than the municipality now chose candidates for service on the administrative boards from lists forwarded by the institutions themselves.65 It was the sub-prefect too who was empowered to sue debtors of the hospitals if need arose — a measure which did more than any other to eradicate malversation of charitable funds by unscrupulous or neglectful municipal officials and private individuals. 66 In Years X and XI, government inspectors selected from the departmental administration were sent to report on the material conditions and financial state of the different institutions within the department. b7 From Year XIII, 61 1 X 64; A.N., F 15 748. Ct. above, page 192. 62 1 X 7 , A.N., F 15 748 (Saint-Pons); 1 X 64, 2 X 1, 131 M 1 (Agde); 1 X 64, A.N., F 15 313 (Beziers); A.N., F 15 748 (Saint-Chinian). Cf. A.N., F 15 748, also for Gignac and Clermont. 63 See above page 195. 64 J. Imbert, 1954, 15Iff.; M. Rochaix, 1959, 139f. 65 The law of 15 Messidor Year VII (3 July 1799) had stated that candidates for office should be approved by the central administration of the department. After Year VIII, this was transferred to the Prefect. 66 Cf. the government circular of Floreal Year IX (May 1801) in A. de Watteville, op. tit., 1843, 77. 67 1 X 64, A.N., F 15 748.
218
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
administrative boards had to submit their accounts to the sub-prefect for annual auditing, and to append a compte moral of the overall situation of the institution. 68 A series of laws and ministerial circulars also provided guidelines on a wide variety of administrative procedures: the treasurers {receveurs) of all hospitals were to provide financial guarantees of their liquidity before assuming office; all major building projects were to be vetted by the government; conditions were laid down under which the hospitals could contract rentes viageres; and codes of practice were agreed for the leasing of hospital property and for general management techniques. 69 At about the same time that the government instituted the octroi and increased its administrative powers over poor-relief institutions, it also began to develop a more comprehensive compensation policy for losses which the institutions had suffered as a result of the Revolution. The earlier concentration on restoring expropriated property had produced precious little for the hospitals of the Herault. By Year XII, property worth a mere one-tenth the departmental hospitals' rather insubstantial preRevolutionary holdings had been fully reimbursed. 70 From about Year VIII, however, the government also began to replace rentes on capital sums formerly invested in abolished corporate bodies and on ecclesiastical bodies which had been nationalised. This policy was much more attuned to local poor-relief institutions, which had incurred very substantial losses of this type. A series of laws — including those of 15 Brumaire Year VIII (4 November 1799), 4 Ventose and 7 Messidor Year IX (23 February and 26 June 1801), 3 Vendemiaire Year X (25 September 1801) and 27 Frimaire Year XI (18 December 1802) - put at the disposal of the institutions various blocs of rentes in the possession of the government. 71 Although the sums reimbursed in this way did not fully cover losses incurred in the Revolution — the proportion of rentes lost by all the institutions within France may have amounted to one half72—the not insubstantial sums which the poor-relief institutions of Montpellier, Lodeve and Marseillan drew from this source under the Empire suggest that the change in government policy towards rentes was of some help in restabilising hospital finances.73 Proof too of the importance of the government's new-found role in buttressing the interests of established poor-relief institutions was its promotion and regulation of private charity. Laws of 28 Fructidor Year X 68 7 Floreal Year XIII (27 April 1805) in A. de Watteville, op. tit., 1843, 120f. 69 Ibid, (receveurs); law of 10 Brumaire XIV (1 November 1805) and circular of 12 Frimaire XIV (3 December 1805) in ibid, 130 (building); decree 23/6/1806, circular 9/7/1806 in ibid., 133f. (rentes); and, for similar management matters, ibid., 102ff., 150ff. etc. 70 By that time, capital worth 8,852 livres out of a total of 89,725 livres had been restored. A. de Watteville, op. tit., 1843, 106. 71 A. de Watteville, op. tit., 1843, passim, for all such legislation. 72 M. Rochaix, 1959, 128. 73 Tables 14 and 16. Cf. above, Tables 4, 5 and 6.
From the Concordat to the Restoration
219
(20 September 1802) and 18 Fructidor Year XI (5 September 1803) offered inducements to individuals wishing to establish foundations to do so within the framework of existing institutions. 74 A particularly close watch was kept over the creation of rival bodies: a ministerial circular of 19 Vendemiare Year IX (11 October 1800) instructed prefects to ensure that all home-relief funds were concentrated in the hands of bureaux de bienfaisance, for example, while the law of 17 January 1806 stated that all etablissements de bienfaisance, whatever their form or status, were to be subject to government approval. 75 Although no outright veto was placed on new charitable initiatives — the services which the Montpellier Misericorde customarily provided the city's prisoners, for example, became a separate institution in Year XIII under the title of the Oeuvre des Prisons76 governmental supervision ensured that they were in no way prejudicial to existing institutions. The aim behind other legislation was much the same. Bishops were entrusted with the responsibility of controlling the number and sequence of collections and offertory boxes in the churches in their dioceses. The first draft of the Code Civil in Year XI stipulated that all testamentary bequests to poor-relief institutions were to receive governmental approval. Although this measure was later slightly relaxed, government regulation of bequests, designed to buttress the interests of existing institutions, was continued. Administrators were urged to avail themselves of their traditional right of demanding lists of bequests from all notaries, while bequests to the poor or to poorer members of bodies such as the Penitents risked incorporation into the coffers of local bureaux de bienfaisance.77 Such measures highlighted not only the extended scale of state intervention in poor relief but also the patent insufficiency of private charity in coping with the problems which beset local institutions in the aftermath of the Revolution. The increase in the number of beds available within the hospitals of the department testified to the effectiveness of state intervention under the Consular and Imperial periods. Between Year VIII and Year XI (c. 1799-c. 1803) the capacity of the hospitals of the department, at a low ebb after the earlier militarisation of civilian establishments, hovered between 1,250 and 1,700 beds. 78 By Year XIV it may have reached the 74 A. de Watteville, op. tit., 1843, 90f., 101. These laws seem to have had less application in the Herault than in many other localities, since fondations de lits, with which they were concerned, were virtually unknown here. 75 Ibid., 70f., 132. 76 A.N., F 15 812; A.M. Montpellier, I 5/6 (unclassified); Administration de I'Oeuvre des Prisons de la ville de Montpellier, Montpellier, 1814. 77 A. de Watteville, op. tit., 1843, 9 1 , 135 and passim; H G II B 12, B 15, B 2 1 . Cf. the policy of redeploying legacies for bureaux auxiliaires de bienfaisance into the bureaux centraux. 78 131 M 1, 131 M 5, 131 M 6 .
220
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
2,000 mark, while replies to a government enquiry in 1812 suggested a figure in excess of 2,200. 79 There was thus a steady improvement throughout the first decade of the nineteenth century and if the 1812 figure did not stand comparison with the bloated figures for hospital beds during the war emergency of 1794 and 1795, it was nevertheless about 50 per cent above the level of the 1,477 beds available on the eve of the Revolution. Moreover, conditions in the model hospitals of Montpellier were often invoked as proof of the favourable effects of the imperial government on local hospitals. The hotel-Dieu became one of the sights of the town for travellers and tourists, and the Restoration Prefect commented admiringly on *le soin et la proprete, l'ordre et une espece de magnificence economique' which had come to prevail within it. 80 The rosy picture of the Empire as a period in which the fortunes of the department's hospitals recovered under the consistent and beneficent tutelage of central government needs to be heavily nuanced, however. First of all, a far greater amount of hospital space was by 1812 devoted to the treatment of sick soldiers than had ever been the case under the Ancien Regime. The running down of the military convalescence hospitals in the Herault after Year III, a drastic reduction in the number of military hospitals in France in Year VIII and the closure of military teaching hospitals placed a heavy onus of responsibility on surviving civilian hospitals, which were now expected to cope with the health provision for an army of colossal size which, if mostly stationed abroad, was pretty much constantly at war. 81 Such a situation was not entirely against the narrowly institutional interests of the hospitals: the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi in Montpellier took positive pride in its quasi-military function and rectified its tottering finances through the payments which it received for the care of sick soldiers. 82 The predominance of soldiers within Montpellier's hotel-Dieu was very marked throughout the late 1790s and the early years of the nineteenth century. It became even more accentuated after 1806 and 1807 as larger numbers of troops were diverted into Spain. Of the 298 beds which the 79 M. Bulard, in his Annuaire statistique du department de V Herault pour Ian XIV, Montpellier, XIV,
gives 2,000 beds, but hisfiguresseem very rough and ready. For the 1812 enquiry, see A.N., F 15 750, with additional material from A.N., F 15 2561 (for the Beziers Hdpital Mage); HGIIF 17 (for the Montpellier Hopital General) and 2 X 73 (for Lodeve). Several of the smaller hospitals did not make returns. Even had they been over-full, however, they would not radically have altered the general picture. Appendix B. 80 A.N., F 15 748. 81 Laws of 4 Germinal and 24 Thermidor VIII (25 March and 12 August 1800) discussed in Brice and Bottet, 1907, 112ff.; P. Huard, 1970, 4Iff.; and D.B. Weiner, Trench doctors face the War, 1792-1815' i n C . K . Warner(ed.), From the Ancien Regime to the Popular Front. Essays in the History of Modern France in honor ofS.B. Clough, New York, 1969, 69ff. 82 Table 14.
From the Concordat to the Restoration
221
hospital is recorded as having in 1812, about 250 are likely to have been effectively closed to civilians. Of the 44,690 individuals admitted into the hospital between 1807 and 1815, no fewer than 37,140 - 83.1 per cent were soldiers. Most of these spent less time within the hospital than civilians. But a comparison of the number of journees each group passed there shows the soldiers still considerably ahead, with 65.7 per cent of all journees spent in the hospital in the same period. 83 The pressure on civilian places within the hospital was all the more acute in that about twenty of the open places were taken by long-term insane inmates. 84 The Hopital Mage at Beziers - which was also on the line of march into Spain - suffered in a similar way to Montpellier's hotel-Dieu: 87.7 per cent of the 33,156 individuals admitted into the hospital between 1806 and 1815 were soldiers, who collectively spent 52.3 per cent of the journees passed within the hospital over the same period. 85 Other hospitals were affected too by the re-militarisation of civilian hospitals under the Empire. Of the 804 individuals who entered the hospital in Agde in 1811 and 1812, 227 were soldiers or sailors - and a further 144 were customs officials.86 The hospital at Lunel, which the 1812 enquiry accredited with 50 beds, was almost wholly a military establishment: until 1810, the 'hospice' had been little more than a lodging-place for the occasional pauvre passant malade and had diverted all its funds into the provision of home relief. It was, however, taken over by the military authorities in that year and its dilapidated buildings were crammed tight with bedsteads to receive the overspill of sick soldiers from Montpellier's hotel-Dieu. 87 Not only did the re-militarisation of several hospitals severely reduce the number of beds within the hospitals open to civilians; it also contributed to a continuing worsening of daily living conditions. Sharing rooms and sometimes beds with soldiers was no joke, and the sick poor had, as in the late 1790s, to brave the violence, the rowdiness and the callous sense of humour of the troops. Unheralded influxes of soldiers into the hospitals of Montpellier, Beziers and Pezenas caused sudden and acute problems of overcrowding, with enforced doubling up or even tripling up in beds constructed for one person. The health risks were accordingly amplified. The death-rate rapidly rose at times of such overcrowding. In Montpellier things were worst in 1807, 1809 and 1810 when colossal numbers of soldiers were evacuated into the hospital. 88 Remarkably, the death-rate of soldiers in the hospitals was relatively low, hovering at about 5 per cent of 83 85 87 88
A.N., F 15 1423. 84 HD II E 90; 1 X 2. A.N., F 15 1423. 86 A.N., F 15 750. 2 X86; A.N., F 15 749. HGIIE 2 (esp. 6/9/1808, 13/9/1808, 31/1/1809); HD HE 18, E 19, F 1, H 11; IX 140; 2X23; A.N., F 15 385.
222
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
admissions - a proportion which was much lower than that of civilians.89 Yet this may partially be accounted for by the fact that only those civilians who were severely ill were able to gain admittance. The administrators of Montpellier's hotel-Dieu undertook extensive rebuilding and improvements and purchased large numbers of beds in order to offset the chronic overcrowding which inmates had to suffer.90 Conditions remained little short of squalid, however. In 1812, the wards in which the soldiers were housed were described as 'extremement malpropres', while, it was alleged, 'les infirmiers negligent leurs devoirs, la severite pour le rechange du linge est poussee a Texces, l'air circule difficilement dans le local et les salles sont infectees par les latrines'. 91 Government support and the benefits of the octroi were also insufficient to remedy the accumulated problems and hardships of establishments which were not re-militarised. For a number of institutions, the first two decades of the nineteenth century were of a piece with the miserable conditions of the late 1790s. Even after the hospital at Lodeve had received its octroi de bienfaisance, for example, the establishment was still in a terrible state, its roof permanently leaking in bad weather and its laundry cupboard bare, while huge back debts limited its scope of action within the local community and threatened it with imminent closure.92 In some of the smaller hospitals, conditions were little more than primitive. In the Frontignan hospital in 1807, for example, 'hommes, femmes et enfants [sont] confondus pele-mele dans un appartement au rez-de-chaussee, [et] les autres appartements au premier etage [sont] sans ouverture ny fermeture.' The internal service of this hospital was in the hands of a man who claimed the effects of every individual who died there and was suspected of deliberately neglecting the ailing in the hope of lining his pockets. The medical service of the hospital was defective, no registers of admissions were kept, there were no accounts, while any improvement in the situation was effectively ruled out by the obstinate unwillingness of the hospital board 89 Death-rates at the soldiers: civilians: overall average: Death-rates in the soldiers: civilians: overall average:
Montpellier Hotel-Dieu between 1807 and 1814 (1 X 2): 5.8 per cent 7.9 per cent 6.2 per cent. Beziers Hopital Mage between 1806 and 1815 (A.N., F 15 1423): 3.7 per cent 11.4 per cent 4.7 per cent.
(Death-rates in both cases calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the sum of entries and persons existing in the hospital.) 90 HGIIE2(13/9/1808,4/5/1809);HDIIE87,E88,E90;lXl40;A.M.MontpellierD23,D24. Cf. L. Grasset-Morel, 1896, 390. 91 H D I I F 28. 92 1 X 64; 2 X 73; HS Hop Lod 29.
From the Concordat to the Restoration
223
to chase up debts. 93 Conditions in other hospitals were aggravated by the government's own wonted tardiness in discharging its debts: in 1813 the administrators of the hospital at Agde complained that they were still awaiting reimbursement for the care of soldiers and enfants trouves since 1805 !94 The improvement in hospital finances under the Empire was still not far-reaching enough to allow for much — if any — amelioration in the treatment of orphans, foundlings and abandoned children. 95 There were some hospitals which had not received such children under the Ancien Regime, but which now were expected to provide decent conditions in cramped accommodation and with a severe shortage of funds. There were occasionally problems too with nursing sisters who neglected the welfare of illegitimate children out of a misplaced sense of pudeur. Even in those hospitals which had traditionally catered for such children, conditions were far from good. Child care continued to resemble a camouflaged form of licensed infanticide. If the children sent up from Montpellier's Hopital General in 1808 and 1809 to wet-nurses in the habitual Cevenol villages of what was now the department of the Gard are typical, only one child in three was likely to survive the experience and return to the hopital on his fifth birthday. 96 Although this was (seemingly) an improvement on the 1790s, when the wet-nurse system had seemed on the brink of collapse, it was very much on a par with Ancien Regime standards. Child care within the Montpellier Hopital General itself can scarcely have been much better, if the haste with which the hospital board endeavoured to rid itself of the children is sufficient indication. Various schemes were used. Some apprenticeships began to be given again, and the girls were hired out in the city as domestic servants. The practice of farming children out to foster-parents was revived. Other children were packed off to the naval school at Toulon to train as cabin-boys.97 After Year XIII, a number were loaned out to the textile factory which the industrialist Boyer-Fonfrede had established in the Hopital de la Grave in Toulouse. 98 The effects of poor care at the hands of mercenary wet-nurses and inside the 93 2 X 66; HS Hop Front (unclassified documents). 94 2 X 1. For similar complaints, 2X73 (Lodeve); A.N., F 15 750 (Clermont); and HGII E 3,passim (Montpellier). 95 The laws relative to the treatment of these children underwent some important changes in this period. For an introduction to this complicated subject, see L. Lallemand, Histoire des enfants abandonnes et delaisses, Paris, 1885. Cf. above, page 104ff. 96 HGIIG 141,G 142, G 143. The death-rate of 62.2 per cent was lower than that recorded in 1785 and 1786 (66.0 per cent), but higher than that recorded in 1740 and 1741 (56.2 per cent). By a statistically less satisfactory method of calculation (deaths divided by entries times 100), the mortality figure for the period 1808 to 1815 is 63.1 per cent. HG II G 171. 97 HG II E 1, passim; HG II G 58, G 113, G 119, G 173, G 190, G 191. 98 HG IIG 177; H. Causse, 'Un industriel toulousain au temps de la Revolution et l'Empire', Ann. du Midi, 1957.
224
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
hopital itself often told on the children once they were in the outside world. Though normally now vaccinated against smallpox on their return from the Cevennes," the children were still prey to bad health and prone to have weak constitutions. As under the Ancien Regime, complaints poured in from employers shocked at the viciousness or sheer incapacity of the children as workers. Boyer-Fonfrede, for example, found the children covered with scabs from various skin diseases and with a proncness to weak sight or blindness which bespoke serious vitamin deficiency. His enterprise at Toulouse was also plagued by the children from Montpellier running away. 10° The recovery of many hospitals and the large number of hospital beds available under the Empire also disguised the fact that hospitals were fewer than under the Ancien Regime: numbers had dwindled from forty-three to twenty-nine at the most and perhaps fewer than twenty — a fall of at least a third and possibly a half.101 The main absentees were the small country hospitals, especially those which had been scattered so densely around the Agadois and Biterrois. Many of these had either disappeared altogether or been transformed into bureaux de bienfaisance. The main cause of the thinning down in the numbers of hospitals was undoubtedly the absence at village level of anything as financially significant as the octroi. Although the latter was highly successful in bailing out the hospitals of the towns and large bourgs, it simply did not exist in the villages. One or two villages made subventions to hospitals and bureaux de bienfaisance out of communal funds, but such sums were usually fairly insubstantial. Those village hospitals which did survive based their continued existence on rentes which had escaped decimation under the Revolution — probably as a result of having been contracted with individuals rather than with abolished or nationalised corporate bodies. 102 Not only was there less hospital care available for civilians within the department under the Empire; the hospitals which had managed to survive were frequently niggardly and restrictive in their provision of aid. The 99 HD II E 49. 100 HG II G, 177. For other complaints about the children, see HG II G 119; 12 X 4; A.N., F 15 1422. Cf. also above, page 107. 101 It is impossible to calculate the exact figure. From evidence in 1812, it would appear that 27 were in existence. Some of these may well have been only dormant, however. Appendix B. H. Creuze de Lesser, op. cit., cites some 31 hospitals in the department; but 5 of them seemed to be functioning solely as bureaux de bienfaisance. 102 The accounts of the hospital at Cazouls-les-Beziers, for example, give the following figures for income between 1807 and 1814 (9 X 2): rentes 81.7 per cent communal subvention 16.4 per cent charity and other 1.9 per cent For other information on communal subsidies, cf. Table 16 (Marseillan); and A.N., F 15 2295 (bureau de bienfaisance of Marsillargues).
From the Concordat to the Restoration
225
replacement of the bishop by the local maires as nominal chairmen of hospital boards marked a tendency for the administrators — still drawn from the local community — to view their charge as a civic responsibility rather than as a religious duty. The added importance of local sources of income — alms, benefactions and above all the octrois — intensified the feeling of many hospital boards that it was above all 'their' paupers who should benefit from hospital care. The government, conscious of the limitations of the hospital network, endeavoured to combat this localist outlook. The institutions of poor relief in each department, the Minister of the Interior informed the Prefect, should be thought of as constituting a common charitable patrimony: 11 ne faut jamais isoler les uns des autres, mais les considerer dans leur ensemble. Rien ne vous empecherait de faire servir aux besoins reconnus des uns les moyens excedents des autres, surtout ceux qui proviennent de l'octroi.' 103 The government's hopes were, however, to prove chimerical. In practice, the complexion and behaviour of poor-relief institutions remained unrepentantly communal. The clash of attitudes was particularly clear in the case of Montpellier's Hopital General, which remained the largest institution in the whole of the department of the Herault. The hopital had been a diocesan institution prior to the Revolution, but now its administrators proudly proclaimed that it was 'specialement destine aux indigents de la ville [de Montpellier]'. 104 Although the hospital board was willing, under pressure, to admit indigents from the neighbouring villages, on the grounds that since they marketed their produce in Montpellier they contributed to the octroi, they were highly piqued at being expected to provide for individuals from communes outside the locality which had charitable resources of their own. 105 Members of bureaux de bienfaisance shared this resolutely localist mentality, and behaved as if the loss of resources during the Revolution had made them even more jealous than before of safeguarding their limited funds from outsiders. This was all the more regrettable in that, although bureaux de bienfaisance had recovered from the dark days of the mid 1790s they were both fewer in number and less well-founded than their Ancien Regime counterparts. From his first appointment, the new Prefect of the Herault had set up a host of bureaux de bienfaisance throughout the length and breadth of the department. A great many of these, however, tended to be merely paper creations. A government enquiry in 1809 revealed that the 103 HS Hop Lod 36. Cf. the government circular of 21 Germinal XII (12 April 1804) in 12 X 1. On occasion, the government expected the department's hospitals to act in unison for specific relief projects: the establishment of a depot de mendicite in Montpellier in 1809, for example, (A.N., F 16 1007), and to pay for a visit by a skilled oculist in 1814 (HG II E 3 [18/9/1814]). 104 HD II E 118. 105 11 X 7; 2 X 86; HG II E 2 (14/10/1806).
226
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
proportion of communes which possessed charitable funds for distribution as home relief had fallen from about a half on the eve of the Revolution to only a sixth. 106 Even allowing for considerable under-recording in the later enquiry, it would still appear indisputable that a major decline had taken place. The nominal value of all these funds — 40,894 livres — was over 40 per cent less than the sums which the enquiry of the Comite de Mendicite had revealed within the department in 1790. 107 The geographical discrepancies in the availability of relief were still as wide as ever. The number of hospitals, which were always situated in towns or large bourgs, and which were still to be found in greater numbers in the more urbanised coastal regions, fell less drastically than the number of communities with home-relief funds, as we have seen. Their capacity increased, moreover, even as the resources at the disposal of bureaux de bienfaisance decreased. Even where bureaux de bienfaisance were relatively thickly spread - such as in the formerly under-endowed Saint-Ponais - they were of little avail against misfortune. Only a quarter could boast funds greater than 200 livres, and most possessed far less.108 Government policy was partly responsible for the perpetuation of the secular dichotomy in the provision of poor relief between town and country, coastal plain and mountainous hinterland. The octroi de bienfaisance was immensely important in rehabilitating home-relief institutions in all the major cities and large bourgs in which a municipal toll could be levied. In Montpellier for example, income from this new source allowed the Misericorde to flourish as at the height of the Ancien Regime, and the institution was even able to add to its customary services the provision of government-sponsored soupes economiques.109 In most other local urban centres too, the octroi boosted the activities of the bureaux de bienfaisance and often encouraged the re-formation of confraternities of dames de la Misericorde to supervise the distribution of charitable funds. 110 In the smaller communities, in contrast, only the pitifully few rentes which had survived the Revolutionary maelstrom, the reduced charities of the faithful and the occasional communal subsidy could give the skeletal bureaux de bienfaisance any substance or consistency. Government policy concerning bureaux de bienfaisance passed through two phases. In the first of these, in the years immediately following their 106 A.N., F 16 1007. Table 17. Cf. Appendix B and Tables 2 and 3. 107 The enquiry of the Comite de Mendicite gave the figure of 71,564 livres — which was 42.9 per cent more than in 1809. The Ancien Regime figure would, moreover, have purchased 25.4 per cent more setters of meteil than the amount in 1809. Given the heavy dependence of bureaux de bienfaisance on private almsgiving, these figures underline the falling away of charity already noted in Montpellier wills. 108 Table 17. Cf. above, page 49. 109 Fonds Mis.; 8 X 34; A.N., F 15 1422. 110 In Pezenas in Year X (1 X 64); in Sette and Beziers in Year XI (2 X 252); in Lodeve, Gignac, Cazouls-les-Beziers and Marseillan in Year XII (1 X 36, 1 X 140, 8 X 25, HS Hop Marseil 38).
From the Concordat to the Restoration
227
Table 17. Communities with funds for distribution as home relief in the department of the Herault in 1808 Amount (in livres)
District of Montpellier
District of Beziers
District of Lodeve
2
2
O(M9 50-99 100-149 150-199 200-249
6 3 2
1 2
1 1
250-499
1
2
1
500-999
1
—
—
—
1
1
1
2
14
8
8
1000-1999 2000 + TOTAL
—
District of Saint-Pons
TOTAL No. % 13 8 5 6
29.5 18.2 11.4 13.6
4
9.1
2
4.5
1
2.3
1
5
11.4
14
44
3 5 3 1 — 1 —
Source: A.N., F 16 1007
creation by the law of 7 Frimaire Year V, the government had limited its role to encouraging administrators, assisted by municipal officials, to recover those charitable resources which had been lost or which had fallen into abeyance during the Revolution. 111 The results were not, however, impressive. The second phase in government policy opened after Year VIII. The government now showed a greater relish for direct involvement in the affairs of poor-relief institutions. Prefects and sub-prefects were instructed to establish bureaux de bienfaisance in as many localities as possible. At the same time, the government toyed with the idea of making the bureaux into a network of institutions not only for the relief of poverty but also for the repression of crimes of the poor - not least the vagrancy and banditry which plagued many areas in France, including the Massif Central and the mountainous fringes of the department of the Herault. The watchword of bureaux de bienfaisance was now to be not simply 'la distribution des secours' but also 'la surveillance de la conduite des indigents de leur ressort respectif. The rationale was that if every pauper was returned to his home parish, and if every parish had sufficent funds to aid the genuinely 111 In this early period, the government encouraged mergers of small hospitals with the bureaux cle bienfaisance in their locality: e.g. Clermont (A.N., F 15 284, F 15 749); Saint-Pons (1 X 36); Saint-Chinian (ibid); Sette (L 2899); Marseillan (HS Hop Marseil 2); Caux (L 4630, 1 X 36, 8 X 5). Cf. J. Adher, Recueil de documents sur I'assistancepublique dans le district de Toulouse de 1789 a 1800,
Toulouse, 1918, 131.
228
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
needy and sufficient motivation to restrict the movements of the criminal and the work-shy, then the problem of poverty would be effectively dissolved.112 With these ideas in mind, the government set about streamlining the bureaux de bienfaisance.113 The administration of the bureaux had been particularly deficient in the many rural communes in which literate and numerate individuals were in dire shortage. Now, an element of hierarchy was introduced. Within each canton, there was to be a bureau central de bienfaisance, situated in the cantonal chef-lieu, and comprising five individuals from the canton as a whole, under the chairmanship of the maire of the chef-lieu and with all the justices of the peace and the maires of the other communes sitting ex officio. This body was to recover and to manage all the charitable patrimony which existed within the canton and to control the distribution of relief. It was to be complemented by bureaux auxiliaires de bienfaisance in every commune, composed of five individuals from the locality. The bureaux auxiliaires were allowed no control over the charitable patrimony within their communes, and were obliged to carry out the instructions of the bureau central and to make distributions as it instructed. They were, however, allowed to hold collections within the commune, the proceeds of which they could distribute at their own discretion. In practice, the new regulations led to a host of disputes which may well have impeded rather than assisted the effective reconstitution of the network of home-relief institutions. Above all, the government badly misjudged the force of communal solidarity. On the one hand, it seriously overestimated the chances of persuading bureaux de bienfaisance to act as policing agencies against begging and vagrancy. The repressive aspect of the functions ascribed to the bureaux was never taken seriously at local level. Indeed, in a large number of small rural communes, size, social structure, the deficiencies of communication and straightforward apathy combined to frustrate the formation of bureaux auxilaires — as the enquiry of 1808 revealed.114 At the other extreme, the government was also guilty of underestimating the force of local solidarity in a part of the Midi in which there were strong traditions of communal autonomy and self-government. It proved erroneous to assume that communes would willingly surrender all or part of their charitable resources to their neighbours, however equitable the ensuing distribution of funds. A series of bitter disputes seriously undermined the operations of the two-tier system of bureaux de bienfaisance. A number of bureaux centraux were loth, for example, to share their funds with other 112 1 X 36; 1 X 1. 113 1 X 35; 1 X 36. 114 See above, page 226. For detailed examples, see, for example, Saint-Martin-de-Londres, 8 X 8 ; Montferrier, 1 X 36; and Bouzigues 8 X 4 .
From the Concordat to the Restoration
229
communes.115 By far the greatest resentment was shown, however, by those communes which lost all powers of control over their own, sometimes long-established resources, to the cantonal chef-lieu. The communal officials at Montbazin and Loupian - to take one of the most acrimonious disputes were eloquent in their denunciation of the bureau central at Meze, which, they claimed, not only debarred them from recovering the charitable resources of their ancient 'hopitaux', but also neglected to do so itself. Although the maires of Montbazin and Loupian had the right to attend the meetings of the bureau central, these were often at inconvenient times. The distance factor also made them difficult to attend. In the final analysis, the maires contended, 'L'influence cantonale l'emportera toujours sur la communale par la reunion des hospices et les pauvres du chef-lieu seront secourus quand ceux des communes reunies mourront de faim.' 116 Elsewhere, religious jealousies exacerbated the bitterness of these intercommunal wrangles: although the Catholic priest sat alongside the Protestant pastor on the bureau central of Ganges, complaints were soon flowing in from the largely Catholic surrounding communes that the bureau was favouring the Protestant majority of the cantonal chef-lieu.111 All in all, the inflexibility of the new system appears to have inhibited the spread and the effectiveness of the bureaux de bienfaisance down to the end of the Empire at least. 118 In spite of the recovery of a number of bureaux de bienfaisance since the dark days of the 1790s, and notwithstanding the existence of a larger number of hospital beds in the department under the Empire than had existed on the eve of the Revolution, the general impression of the fortunes and capacities of poor-relief institutions in the locality is one of decline. The number of hospitals had fallen by at least a third since the end of the Ancien Regime. Surviving hospitals were not infrequently burdened down with sick soldiers. They were restrictive in their admissions policy. Internal conditions within them, though in most cases better than in the late 1790s, showed no marked improvement over Ancien Regime standards and in some cases may well have deteriorated. In addition, there were far fewer funds available for home relief within the department than a generation before, and the limited resources which existed were more thinly spread than previously. Finally, the traditional inferiority of the countryside, and particularly of the mountainous areas of the department, was as pronounced as ever. Reviewing the task of government in the field of poor relief in Year X, Chaptal, convinced that as a first principle 'donner a tous indistincte115 116 117 118
8 X 13 (Aniane); A.N., F 15 340 (Saint-Chinian). 8 X 5 ; and, for the rest of the dispute, 8 X 6, 2 X 99. 1 X 38. Cf. 2 X 99 (Poussan); 8 X 5 (Caux); and 1 X 7, 1 X 139 (Vias). For the situation after 1815, A.N., F 15 7 5 1 .
230
Poverty under the Revolution and the Empire
ment, ce serait doter la profession de mendiant', had set his sights on 'une severe organisatin des secours publics'. 119 The impression, in Chaptal's native Herault at least, was that this severity had been achieved under the Empire: but less as a result of studied stringency and rational economies than as a result of unremedied losses, neglect, inefficiency and lack of understanding. The grassroots response to the gross inadequacies of the network of poor-relief institutions under the Empire was the recrudescence of unofficial institutions which provided some form of mutual aid or insurance against mishap. Perhaps the most widespread and most widely supported of these were the confreries which had begun to return throughout the department even in the late 1790s. 120 Quite apart from their religious and political connotations the confreries still had a strong charitable appeal, and the majority of their members were from the labouring classes and petite bourgeoisie — artisans and shop-workers in the towns, peasants and rural artisans in the country. By 1808 there were no fewer than eight confreries in Montpellier alone, which grouped together nearly 4,000 individuals and continued their customary functions of aid to the sick and needy, free burials and spiritual care. On a smaller scale, the masonic lodges had reappeared too - there were seven in Montpellier alone. The Loge de la Parfaite Union both distributed alms to the needy in the town and also acted as a mutual-aid organisation for the medical students who made up most of their membership. 121 At a more proletarian level, the compagnonnages, which had continued their subterranean existence throughout the Revolution, re-emerged fully under the Empire: Montpellier was to become one of the most important towns on the compagnons' tour de France in the nineteenth century. 122 Artisans and labourers in Montpellier — and possibly elsewhere — began to organise primitive caisses de secours et de prevoyance—di cross between a savings-bank and a provident society - for aid for themselves or their families in case of illness, mishap or death. 123 Finally, the Protestant church re-formed after the Concordat and once again began to provide for its own poor. 124 The multiplicity of these mutual-aid enterprises testified to the felt shortcomings of the poor-relief institutions at local level. The government had, it is true, considerably changed its ways since the neglectful years of 119 Circular in Nivdse Year X. A. de Watteville, op. cit., 1843, 86. Chaptal went on to recommend a cut by half in the amount of poor-relief provision! 120 G. Cholvy, 1973, 16; G. Laurans, 1973, 109ff. Cf. F. Saurel, 1892, 1898, passim. 121 A. Germain, 1876-80*. 122 E. Coornaert, 1966. The celebrated champion on the compagnonnages in the nineteenth century, Agricol Perdiguier, was first admitted here in 1824. Ibid., 52ff. 123 A.N., F 15 3619. 124 G. Michel, Xe Pasteur Honore Michel et la reconstitution de l'Eglise reTormee de Montpellier apres la crise reVolutionnaire', Bulletin de la Societe cFHistoire du Protestantisme, 1974.
From the Concordat to the Restoration
231
the Directorial period. Yet by rejecting a thorough overhaul of the whole system of poor relief and by concentrating on the rehabilitation of traditional institutions, it could not hope to come to terms with the problem of poverty which had so obsessed reformers in the last decades of the Ancien Regime and which had been the inspiration behind the comprehensive schemes of the Comite de Mendicite and the Revolutionary Government. The Imperial government moreover tacitly acknowledged this, and endeavoured to compensate for its reduced ambitions in the field of poor relief, first, by introducing a range of auxiliary measures to tackle specific social problems; and, second — in what was perhaps the greatest indictment of the limitations of its poor-relief programme — by reintroducing repressive legislation on begging and vagrancy and by reopening the doors of the depots de mendicite.
PART IV
Conclusion
11 The government and poor relief in the early nineteenth century
Jamais l'assistance ne fut . . . plus necessaire que de 1789 a 1'Empire.1 Whoever won the Revolution [the poor] lost.2 The Enlightenment and Revolutionary critique of the charitable institutions of the Ancien Regime had been fired by a genuine concern for the fate of the poorer classes and had assumed a greater measure of state involvement in the remedying of abuses. The nature of the state's contribution to hospitals and bureaux de bienfaisance in the Consular and Imperial periods showed how much lower sights had now been set following the fiasco of poor-law reform in the 1790s. So too did the set of initiatives introduced by the central government outside the surviving framework of poor-relief institutions. Tangled, discrete and unambitiously pragmatic, they recalled the limited reform endeavours of the Ancien Regime monarchy. Indeed in several cases, pre-Revolutionary relief measures which had fallen into abeyance were revived in almost exactly their pristine form. This was the case, for example, with the practice of sending chests of medicines into outlying rural areas which was re-established after Year XIII. 3 Rather than remedying geographical imbalances in the supply of medical care, as had been one of the aims of social policy in the early 1790s, the furthest extent of the government's intentions was to offer partial compensation to such areas for their lack of trained medical personnel. The emphasis was once again, therefore, on drugs which could be easily administered by the lay person. The gradual reinstitution too of a network of villages with a duty to ferry pauvres passants malades to the big multi-purpose hospitals of the coast attested the desire to make the most of the limited resources available rather than to attempt any fundamental reform.4 1 2 3 4
G. Lefebvre, Les Paysans du Nordpendant la Revolution frangaise, Lille, 1924, 736. A. Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1971, 170. 90 M 3. Cf. above, page 138f. Very scattered evidence, from Year XIII. 1 X 7, 1 X 36, 2 X 86, 2 X 99, 2 X 102, 2 X 231, 8 X 4, 8X7,9X2.
235
236
Conclusion
A further complement to the beleaguered hospitals were the mineral water spas which the government now endeavoured to develop.5 Like many hospitals, these spas had suffered from neglect and losses in income during the Revolution. In Balaruc, abuses by 'defenseurs de la patrie couverts d'honorables blessures' had led to the wholesale destruction of furnishings and effects. From about Year XI, the government encouraged prefects to make enquiries into the health-giving properties of the various waters. They were also to discover the facilities available at each spa, to appoint doctors to them and to lay down regulations for the use and development of the larger ones. Their restoration was often held up by the fact that they had no octroi on which to rely. The Prefect of the Herault looked to small-time entrepreneurs wishing to make profits from paying customers for the re-development of the spas. Consequently, the main spas - at Balaruc, Lamalou and Avene - functioned less as refuges for the sick poor than as the watering holes of the well-to-do bourgeoisie of Montpellier and the towns of the littoral. The reconstitution of the medical profession under government supervision also bore witness to the narrowed horizons of post-Revolutionary social policy. The aim was no longer to dissolve the social and geographical inequalities which existed in the availability of medical care as the Comite de Mendicite had recommended but rather to check the abuses which charlatanism was allegedly wreaking on the health of the labouring classes. If doctors and surgeons, from the reforms of medical education in Year III onwards, were probably better trained, more competent and more numerous than previously, they were just as elitist. 6 Though many country doctors perhaps had a greater sense of an appointed civilising mission, the career aims of the profession still revolved around building up a wealthy clientele, which would most likely be found in the towns and urbanised villages of the coastal plain. A government enquiry in 1817 into the geographical distribution of medical personnel found a great many rural areas — particularly the more mountainous cantons — considerably under-provided for in comparison with the lowland regions.7 The doctor — still essentially a town-dweller — continued to be the object of both the fear and mistrust of most country-dwellers.8 From Year XI, the government also endeavoured to extend its control over midwives, a sphere of supervision which again had been interrupted by the Revolution. The opinion of the medical establishment on local 5 See in particular, for Balaruc, HGII G 1, G 2; 99 M 8; L 2891; for Avene, 99 M 23;forLamalou, 99 M 20, 99 M 21. Cf. L 1090, 99 M 25. 6 For the practice of medicine within the department, see especially 100 M 1, 100 M 2, 100 M 15, 106 M 1, 1 X 147. 7 100 M 1. Maps 7 and 8. 8 For example, 89 M 1.
The early nineteenth century
237
midwives was crushingly severe: though some had obtained a smattering of knowledge on the diocesan training courses established in the 1780s, most, in the view of the professor of obstetrics at the Faculty of Medicine were 'tres ignorantes' and 'totallement illettrees', while 'plusieurs ne comprennent pas un mot de frangais'.9 Government enquiries weeded out the most incompetent and the most vicious midwives, but the government's hand was partially stayed by its realisation that a thorough-going ban on midwifery to all the unqualified would have as its consequence the liquidation of the function of midwife! 10 Besides showing lenience to midwives who had acquired a good local reputation, the government also set its mind to improving training facilities. After 1806, for example, several women from the Herault were awarded scholarships to attend the six-month courses in midwifery in the Hospice de la Maternite in Paris. 11 Efforts were also made after 1807 to provide training within the department. These came to fruition in the opening in 1814 of an Ecole des Accouchements, or Maternite, in Montpellier's depot de mendicite. 12 In both cases, however, the numbers involved were very small. The full-scale professionalisation of midwifery would have to await a later date. As earnestly populationist as its Ancien Regime predecessors had been, Napoleon's governments set great store on improving the chances of survival of the children of the poor. Besides the encouragements which they gave to the improvement of the training of midwives, they introduced a greater degree of state regulation and supervision oienfants abandonnes in the hospitals. 13 The Emperor also gave his personal seal of approval to the Societe de Charite Maternelle, a Paris-based charity under the Ancien Regime which provided aid to mothers of infants from the poorer classes who were destitute as a result of the death or incapacity of their husbands. 14 After 1810, the society was extended to the whole of France, and female members of provincial elites were strongly encouraged to subscribe to the creation of branches of the society, with the hint that it was being groomed to become the female equivalent of the legion dhonneur. However, the scheme never really took off in the Herault at least: the charitably minded preferred to subscribe to their traditional charities, while the social and political turbulence of the years after 1810 were further inhibiting factors on the charitable institution which seemed more an exercise in the politics of prestige than in compassion. Only a couple of hundred mothers — mainly 9 5 X 8 . Cf. 100 M 1, 100 M 2, 100 M 15. 10 A.N., BB 18 367. 11 100 M 17; HG II G 77, G 78. 12 100 M 17, 2 X 23, 5 X 8, HG IIG 10. Cf. L. Dulieu, 'Les Origines de la Maternite et de la clinique obstetricale de Montpellier', Mom. Hip., 1970. This institution endured a false start in 1807. Cf. above, page 206. 13 A.N., F 15 749, 750, 751, 1422. 14 12 X 256.
Doctors O 1 0 2
8* 0 i
»
/'
30km I
»-
O
°
o
Map 7
'^
/
/
o\
{37)
I0
o.\
V
0-
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r
O
o o
"^
O°o / - ^ X 0
o o
O
O
o
^
.-i
o
(
/
(9) )
lor
Doctors in the department of the Herault, 1817 Source: 100 M 1
Surgeons or officiers de sante O 1
O3 0 i
\
1-.
—i-
30 km / 1
O
S
0 0
0
O0
0
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Map 8
Surgeons and officiers de sante in the department of the Herault, 1817
The early nineteenth century
239
concentrated in Montpellier itself — benefited from the Society's good works. A rather more effective means of extending aid to children was the government's championing of methods of combating the ravages of smallpox, more than most a children's disease. The method now preached was vaccination, perfected by the Englishman Edward Jenner in 1798 and more effective than inoculation, which the Ancien Regime monarchy had promoted. 15 Montpellier was one of the first places in France where the new method was experimented with. 16 From Pluviose Year X (January 1802) a societe de medecine pratique in the city was organising mass vaccination through a bureau gratuit de vaccination.11 By an imperial decree of 7 November 1811 a depot de conservation de vaccin was established in Montpellier's Hopital General to act as a promoting body for the spread of the new technique throughout the whole of the department. The rate of vaccination in the Herault was soon remarkably high — with the number of children benefiting, equalling and even surpassing the number of births. 18 Although there was a slight falling away in vaccination at the time of the political troubles of 1815, continued government sponsorship in this field represented a highly positive means of improvement in public health. Besides its long-term ameliorative action on public health, the government also endeavoured to sharpen and refine its response to emergency situations. From Year XIII, a medecin des epidemies was to be appointed in each arrondissement. 19 They - or doctors from Montpellier's Faculty whom the government used on occasion — were sent out to deal with outbreaks of disease in wayward areas of the department, and also acted as self-styled missionaries of hygiene, diffusing the precepts of purity, cleanliness and ventilation so dear to contemporary medical thinking. Their periodic efforts in the direction of greater hygiene may even have had some effect in limiting the incidence of some types of disease — though their almost total ignorance of the principles of infection made them of little avail against the more deadly ones, malaria not least.20 What were variously referred to as soupes a la Rumford or soupes economiques constituted a further means of government aid which was used in palliation against emergencies. These crude vegetable broths represented the contemporary nutritionist's answer to the question of how the poor could be fed both nourishingly and cheaply.21 They were accordingly highly popular 15 R.G. Dunbar, 'The introduction of the practice of vaccination into Napoleonic France', Bull. Hist. Med., 1941. 16 For vaccination in the Herault, HG II G 204; 85 M 2; and A.N., F 8 110. 17 Annales de la Societe de Medecine pratique de Montpellier, 12 vols., Montpellier, 1803-11, passim. 18 Table 18. 19 90 M 3. 20 Esp. 89 M 1. Cf. A.N., F 8 52 and F 16 1007. 21 F. Redlich, 'Science and charity: Count Rumford and his followers', I.R.S.H., 1971.
240
Conclusion Table 18. Smallpox vaccination in the Herault, Year XI-1817 Dist. Montp'r
XIII XIV
1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817
,— (frequent) 686
Dist. Beziers —
1095
4 607
1247 1591 1146 2 860
3 948 4 150 3 000 4438 1541
3 552 3 600 2 559 3 856 1782
40 116 —
—
Dist. Lodeve
Dist. Saint-Pons (3 575 since Year XI)
(more than 500)
—
—
62
298
885 —
71 111 704 380 —
1720 1766 2 125 2411
1563 1567 1498 1710
212
0
1017 1514
—
—
No.
TOTAL
births
—
—
—
— — — — — —
2 066 3 040 3 500 8 732 10 129 10 783 11083 9 173 12415 3 535
9381 10 205 9 766
9 686
10413
9 897 —
Sources: 85 M 1, 85 M 2; A.N., F 8 110
with the government, which from Year VII onwards was diffusing publicity about them throughout France and encouraging hospital commissions and bureaux de bienfaisance to experiment with them. They did not really catch on, however, until 1811 and 1812, years of very high bread prices and mass unemployment, when they came into their own. Over three million portions were distributed in the Herault in less than six months in 1812 as part of the government's strategy of assuaging the misery, popular discontent and criminal vagrancy then current throughout the Empire.22 The most far-reaching of all the government's ad /w measures in the field of poor relief, besides the rehabilitation of hospitals and bureaux de bienfaisance, was the reintroduction of depots de mendicite throughout the Empire by the law of 5 July 1808.23 The time and money which the government in the final years of the Empire devoted to the revived campaign against begging and vagrancy dwarfed in scale all its other piecemeal relief initiatives. Significantly, preparing for the law's success in the Herault considerably delayed its implementation. It was not until late in the summer of 1810 that means had been found of financing 22 A.N.,F 15 3547. Cf. 8 X 34; HDII E 74; HGII E 13;andR.C Cobb, The Police and the People. French Popular Protest, 1789-1820, Oxford, 1970, 108. 23 Historians have accorded this law very little attention. See D. Higgs, 'Le Depot de mendicity de Toulouse, 1811-1818', Ann. du Midi, 197'4; F. Dubief, La Question du vagabondage, Paris, 1911; J. Valle'e, Les Depots de mendicite: leur utilisation comme moyen d assistance, Paris, 1908.
The early nineteenth century
241
Montpellier's depot, that the necessary repairs to the buildings had been made, that local authorities had been primed in what was expected of them, and that the law began to be enforced.24 The reintroduction of a tougher approach to the problem of poverty similar to that which had been elaborated - albeit with little success - under the Ancien Regime was a reminder that the Revolution had wrought no overwhelming change in most local social and demographic structures. Indeed, in the long-term perspective, lack of adaptability in these crucial times lay at the roots of the Montpellier region's 'de-industrialisation' over the course of the nineteenth century. In Bas Languedoc, as in many regions within France, the 'social and economic Ancien Regime' subsisted long after 1789 — and, with it, customary levels of poverty, backwardness and distress. 25 For all the occasional virulence of local politics in the Revolutionary decade, the village still provided the dominant experiential framework of the majority of the population, and a primary source of affection and attachment. If the peasantry had as a class benefited from the abolition of feudalism and of tithes, sales of biens nationaux within the Herault were not nearly significant enough to effect any substantial change in landowning patterns: most peasants were rarely able to purchase, the landless even less so, and the dominance of big landed property particularly of land held by the wealthy urban elites — was reinforced. If the vine made considerable progress over the period, archaic Mediterranean polyculture was still the rule in most places. Rural industry continued to subsist. Mountain and plain went on living in relatively harmonious interdependence. The map of poverty still reproduced the broad lines of highland underdevelopment so characteristic of previous centuries. Yet the plain as well as the mountain continued to have its own problem of poverty. In particular, the spread of the vine aggravated the progressive attenuation of the subsistence base of the regional economy — a development which was all the more serious in that population grew at an even swifter rate than under the Ancien Regime. 26 More than ever, therefore, the fate of the poorer classes depended on conditions which transcended departmental frontiers: above all the condition of national and international markets of bread, of wine and of labour. This was to prove particularly significant in that, for all the apparent immobility of overall conditions, the short24 For the implementation of the law of 5 July 1808 in the Herault, see above all A.N., F 16 1007 and F 7 8763. Cf. 131 M 13, 131 M 14; HG II G 20. 25 For the history of the department in the early nineteenth century see in particular R. Dugrand, 1963; G. Cholvy, 1973; H. CreuzS de Lesser, op.cit.; and J. Vidalenc, La Societe frangaise de 1815 a 1848. I. Lepeuple des campagnes, Paris, 1973. Cf. F. Crouzet, 'Les Origines du sous-developpement economique du Sud-Ouest', Ann. du Midi, 1959; and A. Armengaud, 'A propos des origines du sous-developpement industriel dans le Sud-Ouest', Ann. du Midi, I960. 26 Annual rates of population growth were as follows: 1801—6, 1.8 per cent; 1806—21, 0.5 per cent; 1801—21, 0.9 per cent. G. Cholvy, 1973, 143. These rates were far higher than those achieved locally in the eighteenth century.
242
Conclusion
term situation was almost febrilely hyperactive from the 1790s onwards, and resulted in very extreme fluctuations in most spheres of economic activity. 27 Looking back on the Revolutionary decade from the vantage-point of Year VIII, the new Prefect of the Herault reported that Tindigence est extreme dans presque toutes les communes du departement*. He-attributed this state of affairs to three major factors — which would continue to be potent down to the end of the Empire and beyond: la stagnation du commerce . . . le relachement de l'industrie . . . le prix des denrees'. 28 Certainly the staggering price inflation and the monetary debacle of the 1790s could only have serious effects in a department like the Herault so reliant on importing its foodstuffs. Monetary stability was eventually achieved, and prices levelled off somewhat; but the general trend of food prices was in the ascendant until 1817. Although this trend was in theory to the advantage of those who produced a surplus for the market, such individuals were relatively few. During the bad harvest years of 1810, 18 11 and 1812 imports from abroad and along the Canal du Midi prevented the occurrence of mortality crises quite on the scale of those of the far-distant past but food shortages and rocketing prices were responsible for acute misery and distress. They also contributed to the problems of the department's industries, which in addition had to cope with the disruption of overseas markets and the loss of traditional sources of raw materials as a result of war. Military requisitioning, reductions in capital and in the number of entrepreneurs as a result of the economic and political policies of the 1790s, and the neglect of ports and communications by financially hard-pressed governments also increased industry's burden. Some sectors of local industry adapted very well to the changed economic atmosphere. The Lodevois woollen industry, producing military uniforms, for example, and Montpellier's tanneries, turning out army boots, flourished outstandingly. Nevertheless, towards the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century, the economic climate worsened considerably as the Continental System tightened its stranglehold on French trade and industry. The value of merchandise passing through the Beaucaire fair — still a reliable index of the state of the regional economy — slumped from 31.9 million livres in 1806 to 19.7 millions in 1811. On top of this came a further industrial crisis caused by a fall in demand for manufactured products caused by high food prices between 1810 and 1813. 29 27 Cf. A. Chabert, Essai sur les mouvements des prix et des revenus en France de 1798 a 1820, 2 vols., Paris,
1945 and 1949. 28 A.N., F 20 195. 29 Besides the works sited above, note 25, see also A.N., AFIV 1062, F 15 2752; and J. Vidalenc, 'La Vie economique des departements mediterraneans pendant l'Empire', R.H.M.C, 1954.
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Industrialists and big landowners often cited the high cost of labour as a further inhibiting factor on economic recovery in this period. Between 1791 and 1815 some 23,491 adult males from the Herault had joined the army, thus placing themselves outside the region's labour force either temporarily or in many cases definitively. This contributed to a shortage of labour which led in turn to high wages. 30 This situation was evidently favourable to wage-earners. A hypothetical family of five, headed by an agricultural day-labourer, at 1808 and 1809 price levels, spent some 56.7 per cent of his annual income on bread for his family — a clear improvement on the situation under the late Ancien Regime, when the comparable figure was 77.1 per cent. 31 Yet such a figure falls far short of representing the condition of the labour force under the Empire for the simple reason that the most distinctive feature of the period was wide fluctuations in economic activity - which had a deleterious effect on employment. Symptomatic of disruptions within the labour-market in the darkening economic atmosphere of the early years of the nineteenth century, begging and vagrancy again began to be remarked upon: 'Quelques soins que je prenne pour faire disparaitre du departement le fleau de la mendicite et malgre qu'il se fasse journellement des arrestations de mendiants [the Prefect of the Herault reported despairingly in 1806] leur nombre augmente, loin de diminuer >32
The apparent impunity of beggars and vagrants in the worsening economic climate of the early years of the nineteenth century highlighted evident deficiencies in the application of legislation relating to these offences. These deficiencies were particularly noticed by the Napoleonic government, which was acutely sensitive to questions of law and order. The state of legislation relating to begging and vagrancy, and its effective implementation, were considerably confused, from the very outbreak of the Revolution down to the law of 1808. The important law of 24 Vendemiaire Year II (15 October 1793), it is true, had stated categorically that any individual reputed to be a beggar was to be hauled before the local justices, who could sentence him to anything from banishment to his home parish for the first offence to transportation for hardened recidivism. Justices were also empowered to sentence vagrants to up to one year's imprisonment in the departmental maison de repression. This 30 H. Creuze de Lesser, op.cit., 191. Cf. A.N., F 20 196; and Nogaret, 'Le Departement de l'Herault' in Archives statistiques de la France. Messidor an Xlll, edited byA. deFerriere, vol. i, Paris, Year XIII. 31 For the basis on which these calculations are made, and for the price of meteil, see above, pages 32 and 33. The daily wage of an agricultural day-labourer on the market of Beziers in 1808 and 1809 was 1.25 francs (A.M. Beziers, HH 5). For remarks on the general well-being of the peasantry of this region, cf. M. Birkbeck, op.cit., passim. 32 A.N., F 20 196.
244
Conclusion
law remained the basis of legislation on these matters down to 1808. For most of the period, however, it must have been one of the most flagrantly under-used and misapplied of Revolutionary laws. 33 Crucial to the non-implementation of legislation relating to begging and vagrancy was the fact that the chief policing agency upon which the government depended - the newly formed gendarmerie - was little more effective than its Ancien Regime predecessor, the marechaussee.34 The gendarmes were, admittedly, more numerous: in 1793 the department possessed 21 brigades, containing 98 men, as against 11 brigades and 59 men on the eve of the Revolution. 35 Such numbers were very few, however, when set against the departmental population, which well exceeded a quarter of a million. Moreover, the outbreak of the war in 1792 had prevented the new force from acquiring any esprit de corps and traditions of service, since most fit gendarmes were instantly rushed off to the front. The recruitment problem would continue to be acute for the rest of the wars. The workload was recognised to be high, and, with the depreciation of the currency in the 1790s, the force's state-paid wages were pitifully low. The consequence was a fall in the quality of the police and a skimping attitude towards its duties. 36 In an enquiry in Year IV, a great many communes in the department confessed that they rarely if ever saw a gendarme. 37 A further enquiry in Year V revealed large numbers of men in the force who, by the admission of their superiors, were renowned for their 'immoralite', 'inconduite', and 'manque de subordination'. Others spent all their time gambling or, in one case, 'ne frequenter que les gens sans aveu' — the latter scarcely a suitable pedigree for the putative scourge of beggars and vagrants!38 Partly as a result of the poor quality of the main police forces in the department, individuals who might be classified as beggars or vagrants were likeliest to fall foul of the authorities when local administrators took the law into their own hands. During the emergency situations of 1789, for example, during the war mobilisation from 1792 to 1795 and to a lesser extent at the turn of the century when bandits and highway robbers were being pursued in many upland areas of the department, the behaviour of the outsider to the local community was scrutinised with great care, and his chancest statement might be construed by suspicious mayors or magistrates 33 Evidence on the implementation of the laws relating to begging and vagrancy is highly fragmentary and has been almost totally ignored by historians. For the text of the law of 24 Vendemiaire Year II, A. de Watteville, op.cit., 1843, 24ff. 34 Larrieu, 1933; M. Le Clere, Histoire de la police, 4th edn, Paris, 1973. 35 L 1971. For the Ancien Regime, see above, page 142. 36 L 1942, L 1944; A.N., F 7 3901 and F 9 324. 37 L 464. 38 L 1964.
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as a hint of plots and conspiracies.39 The striking fact about the harsh punishments which were frequently meted out in such circumstances, however, was that they showed no regard for legal niceties and indeed evinced an almost total ignorance of relevant legislation. The new Prefect to the department in Year VIII was to express his astonishment at the extent to which the law of 24 Vendemiaire Year II had fallen into abeyance in the region, though his consequent efforts to revive it were crowned with very little success. 40 Even in Montpellier itself, the law was flagrantly flouted. In 1806 the Ministre de Police Generate pointed out that the substantial numbers of individuals detained for begging and vagrancy in the city's maison de repression on the orders of the municipality had no right to be there: only magistrates were permitted to sentence such individuals to terms of imprisonment. 41 Governments beset since the early 1790s by war mobilisation, social, economic and financial dilemmas and political insecurity evidently had more pressing subjects on their minds than the implementation of legislation relating to begging and vagrancy. Furthermore, particularly in the early years, the repressive policies of Ancien Regime governments towards these offences were in discredit. A strong streak of idealism permeated government attitudes towards poor relief from 1789 onwards. It was generally held that equitable laws and humane poor-relief measures would somehow dissolve the whole problem of poverty. 42 Once work had been provided for the able-bodied, it was thought, and assistance for the genuinely needy, the problem must necessarily contract very dramatically. Long after the fiasco of poor-relief legislation under the Terror, moreover, governments still displayed a touching faith in the capacity of poor-relief arrangements to make begging and vagrancy things of the past. 'Le premier moyen de concourir efficacement a la reduction des mendiants,' opined a ministerial circular as late as 21 Germinal Year XII (11 April 1804) was, 'd'assurer aux etablissements d'humanite et notamment aux bureaux de bienfaisance . . . les ressources qui leur sont necessaires.' 43 The greater concern for public order as well as the alleviation of distress was inscribed into the responsibilities of the bureaux de bienfaisance, which were to keep an eye on resident beggars as well as distribute poor relief. At approximately the same time, tighter checks on geographical mobility were introduced, partly as a means of combating vagrancy. The law of 9 Frimaire 39 Very good example of this in Montpellier in Year II, recorded in A.N., D III 105. Cf. A.N., BB 18 369. 40 131 M 1. Cf. L 1044; L 2889; A.N., BB 18 364, 365 and F 7 3035. 41 A.M. Montpellier I 5/5. 42 See above, pages 159ff. Cf. the hostility shown towards prevotal justice in the cahiers: Larrieu, 1933, 236; and J. Heath, Eighteenth-Century Penal Theory, Oxford, 1963, 26ff. 43 1 X 36. Cf. 39 M 10.
246
Conclusion
Year XII (1 December 1803), for example, stated that any itinerant worker discovered without his livret ouvrier or without up-to-date travel documents was to be taken to be a vagrant, and subject as such to six months' imprisonment-. 44 The law of 5 July 1808 which reinstituted depots de mendicite thus reflected — #nd heightened — the growing concern for public order within the whole sphere of the relief of poverty. But it also bore the marks of the optimism of earlier governments concerning the likely effectiveness of governmental action. In 1809, for example, the Prefect of the Herault was unabashedly informing the Minister of the Interior that the total number of beggars in the Herault did not surpass 600 and that of these, 'la plupart mendient par faineantise et lorsqu'ils se verront poursuivis, ils abandonneront cet odieux metier pour se livrer aux travaux de l'agriculture'. 45 Yet in May 1816 his Restortion successor was concluding of the whole campaign against begging and vagrancy that 'si le gouvernement en renfermant les mendiants dans ces depdts n'a eu pour but que de detruire la mendicite, ce but na pas ete atteint dans le departement. . . Le nombre des mendiants est au moins aussi grand qu'avant l'etablissement du depot. ' 46 In the Herault — as apparently in many other departments — the history of the renewed repression of begging and vagrancy in the final years of the Empire was to be a chronicle of disappointment. Much of the blame for the failure of the renewed campaign against begging and vagrancy must attach to the government. The law of 1808 showed every sign of having been drafted in complete ignorance of the failure of similar schemes under the Ancien Regime. Besides the continued reliance on the undermanned and inefficient gendarmerie for its enforcement, the law had an unempirical, doctrinaire flavour, which lessened its likelihood of success.47 Beggars reputed to be criminal vagrants — in essence those who begged in gangs, with violence or in aggravating circumstances - were to be referred to the courts for harsh treatment. All other types of beggar, however, were now to pass through the depots de mendicite. Those who were held to be begging out of sheer necessity — the disabled, the infirm, destitute children and mothers overburdened with young children — might entreat for their admission, and were to be dealt with in a humane fashion. The able-bodied beggar in contrast was to be subjected to a punitive regime within the depots and was to remain there — normally for at least a year — until he showed himself willing and able to fend for himself in 44 J. Godechot, 1968, 668. Cf. the government enquiry of 1811 and 1812 into popular migrations, A.N.,
F 20 434, 435, commented upon in G. Mauco, Les Migrations ouvrieres en France au debut du
XIXe siecle, Paris, 1932; and R. Beteille, 'Les Migrations saisonnieres en France sous le Premier Empire. Essai de synthese', R.H.M.C., 1970. 45 A.N., F 16 1007. Cf. A.N., AF IV 1062. 46 A.N., F 16 1089. 47 For the text of this law, A. de Watteville, op.tit., 1843, 143.
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the world outside. The law of 1808 thus ascribed the depots a two-fold function — as refuge and as prison — which the law of 1724 on begging and vagrancy had ascribed, with singular lack of success, to the hospitals, and which the administrative ordinance on begging in 1767 had transferred to the ill-starred depots de mendicite. It was not to be long before the administrative dilemmas which had beset both hospitals and depots under the Ancien Regime reappeared.48 The process was accelerated by the unfortunate coincidence of the introduction of the campaign in the department of the Herault with the agricultural, industrial and commercial debacle of the years from 1810 to 1813, which enormously increased the number of individuals forced below the bread-line - and thus tempted either to request admission into the depot or to beg. This placed the Prefect, who was responsible for the implementation of the 1808 law, into something of a cleft stick over admissions policy. To open the depot to all the needy was to 'encombrer sans fruit le nouvel etablissement: les pauvres le regarderaient comme un asile et les veritables mendiants ne pourront plus y etre renfermes'.49 The Prefect was thus instructed to guard against voluntary admissions and the entry of individuals who seemingly posed no problem of public order. However, such an attempt to resist the dilution of the 'caractere de severite' which the government felt that the depot should embody could only be successful at the price of reducing the institution's capacity to respond to the very serious social needs evident in the world outside. The economic crisis also contributed to the reduction in the size of the depot's population: it had been hoped partly to finance the institution through profits derived from its workshops, but in the circumstances it proved impossible to furnish the materials necessary.50 Down to the end of the Empire, the number of individuals passing through the depot averaged about 700 each year. This meant that the depot was considerably under-used, for about 600 places were available. The numbers it sheltered comprised only a tiny proportion of the tens of thousands in distress in the region during the crisis years from 1811 to 1813. A further obstacle to the development of the punitive aspect of the Montpellier depot de mendicite was the Prefect's continued use of it as a convenient dumping ground for all those social-problem groups for whom neither the central government nor local authorities nor poor-relief institutions could make ample provision. The heterogeneity of the inmate population emerges clearly from a study of the motives behind the admission of all individuals who entered the depot in the course of 1813. 51 If we assume that besides beggars (18.4 per cent) those committed to the 48 See above, Chapter 7. 49 A.N., F 16 1007; A.M. Montpellier I 5/5. 50 HG II G 13, G 20. Cf. D. Higgs, 1974. 51 Table 19.
248
Conclusion
Table 19. Categories of individuals admitted to Montpellier's 'depot de mendicite' in 1813 TOTAL Men
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Insane Skin diseases Venereal disease Pregnant mothers Children born in depot Children (no motive of entry given; often accompanying parents) Prostitutes Beggars Passport offences and similar Other
8 82
45 — 18
Women 3 77
33 18 11
35
No. 11 159 78 18 29
40 — 68 15 10
50 60 11 11
75 50 128 26 21
286
309
595
% 1.6
22.6 11.2 2.6
4.2 10.8 7.9
18.4 3.8 3.0
Source: H G II G 13, G 20
depot under the provisions of the law of 1808 included those arrested for passport offences (3.8 per cent) and adults and children for whom no clear motive is given (3.0, 10.8 per cent), it would still appear that about two-thirds of the individuals admitted in 1813 fell outside the provisions of the law. Most of the other categories of individuals admitted to the depot had been allowed entry long before the passing of the law of 1808, in the period when the depot had served as the local maison de repression for those sentenced to imprisonment or detention under the municipal or criminal codes. Since the late 1790s, for example, the numbers of epileptics and lunatics within the depot had risen on account of the inability of the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi to house extra inmates in its increasingly overcrowded loges. By the time of the Restoration there were to be between a dozen and a score of such individuals. 52 Other illnesses too had long been treated in the depot. The depot's Ancien Regime specialities — scabies, scrofula, itch, and venereal disease — were those which the hotel-Dieu had always been loth to admit; in addition, the payment which sufferers from these diseases made helped boost the depot's finances.53 Abandoned children suffering from these diseases were especially likely to find their way into the depot, and some stayed a number of years before either being admitted to the Hopital 52 L 2972. Cf. 1 X 2; HG II G 49; A.N., F 15 751 and F 16 1007. 53 39 M 1; HG II E 1.
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General or else adjudged old enough to fend for themselves in the world outside. 54 Besides the individuals presenting themselves voluntarily for treatment, the depot had also long admitted the hordes of prostitutes whom the Montpellier police authorities periodically rounded up and sent for either treatment or detention. 55 Pregnant prostitutes might also be sent there to give birth to their child, and even before the opening of courses in practical midwifery in 1814, the institution had served as lying-in hospital for indigent women who needed a convenient spot for their deliveries. In the varied tasks which it had assumed, the depot de mendicite catered particularly directly for the city of Montpellier. Although designed for the confinement of the sturdy beggar and wandering vagrant of the Herault as a whole, the depot was in 1813 clearly functioning as a multi-purpose institution for the human flotsam and jetsam who abounded above all in the departmental chef-lieu. Although the Prefect had to give his authorisation for every admission, in 28.4 per cent of all cases this was given as a result of a request by Montpellier's maire, following what appear to have been raids on the city's strongholds of vice and petty crime. 56 In addition, over a quarter of entrants in 1813 were natives of the city — a proportion which was even more pronounced in the case of individuals admitted for treatment of illnesses. Significantly too, the entrants were drawn from the catchment area which the city's hospitals traditionally serviced.57 Where they were accredited with a trade, moreover, entrants to the depot came predominantly from those professions - agricultural day-labouring, domestic service, semi-skilled artisanal work, above all in the manufacturing of textiles — which were most affected by fluctuations in the economic climate and which provided the most numerous clients for hospital aid and home relief.58 Finally, far from all inmates were even at an age at which they might be accounted able-bodied: about half of entrants in 1813 were either infants or juveniles below the age of fifteen or else over fifty years old — and the figure was even higher in the case of entrants recorded as beggars or who had been arrested for passport offences or similar. 59 Given the varied composition of the inmate population of the depot de mendicite, the extrinsic reasons for which many individuals had been admitted and the relative paucity of entrants at a time of considerable social and economic dislocation, it is hardly surprising that the institution should be accounted a failure. Much the same was true on the national level. The 54 55 56 57
1 1 X 7 . Cf. L 2976; HG II E 2, E 3, G 113; A.N., BB 18 367 and F 16 812. 39 M 9; A.M. Montpellier I 5/5. The other entrants were interned on the orders of the Prefect. 27.4 per cent of all entrants were from Montpellier. The departments supplying the largest contingents of outsiders were: Herault (apart from Montpellier), 47.2 per cent; Gard, 10.4; Aveyron, 6.7; Lozere, 6.2; Aude, 3.0; Var, Vaucluse and Basses-Alpes, 2.0 each. 58 Table 20. 59 Table 21.
250
Conclusion
Table 20. Occupations ofindividuals admitted to Montpellier's 'depot de mendicite9 in 1813 1. 2. 3. 4.
Middle and upper classes Military Trade and commerce Skilled and semi-skilled workers -construction -leather —textiles -other
0.7 1-3 3.6 1 •9 1-0 ^..5 2.6 24.0
5. Unskilled workers —domestic service —labouring trades —transport mother
5.6 2.7 0.4 0.7
6. Agricultural workers 7. Other professions
9A
20.9 0.2
8. No profession, or no indication
39.8
Source and presentation: H G II G 13, G 20. All figures are percentages
Table 2 1 . Age of individuals admitted to Montpellier's 'depot de mendicite9 in 1813
Under 1 year old 1 to 4 5 to 9 10 to 14 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
to to to to to to to
19 24 29 34 39 44 49
50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85
to to to to to to to to
54 59 64 69 74 79 84 89
Source and presentation: As above
Male
Female
5.9 4.7
5.3 4.5
12.2 13.1 6.2
7.8 7.5
13.4
4.5 4.5 5.3
12.8 11.5
5.9
4.7
5.9 3.6 5.0 3.3
3.1 3.1 2.5 2.0 2.0 0.3 0.6 0.3
7.7 7.1
2.1 1.8 0.9 0.3
5.9 7.8 5.0
TOTAL 5.7
4.6 9.9
10.2
30.4
9.9
8.8 8.1 5.7 7.7 6.0
5.3
51.5
4.5 3.3
3.7 2.6 2.0 1.0 0.7 0.3
18.1
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number of dep6ts was gradually run down over the next decades. Fifty-nine in number in 1815, there remained only four by 1838. 60 In spite of being a scathing critic of the depots as scourges of begging and vagrancy, the new Prefect of the Herault in 1816 did not hold that the institutions were devoid of social utility. On the contrary, he maintained that the Montpellier depot had become essential. Its closure would throw onto the streets groups of needy individuals for whom neither the state nor the local network of poor-relief institutions made alternative provision. In practice, the depot acted partially to offset the government's abandonment of earlier plans to provide specialised institutions (a lying-in hospital, a hospital for the treatment of venereal disease),61 and the incapacity of local institutions resulting from the Revolution. Though diverted from its initial mission, the depot had thus come to serve as a sort of stopgap in the overall fabric of poor-relief. The remarks of the Prefect of the Herault on the Montpellier depot de mendicite make an apposite concluding statement on the evolution of the structures of poor-relief over the last half-century of the Ancien Regime and down to the end of the Empire. They highlighted, first, the failure of the renewed campaign against begging and vagrancy to come to terms with these perennial features of the traditional economy. Beggars and wandering paupers, spiced with elements of criminality and delinquent vagrancy, were endemic in what was still a pre-industrial society, characterised by low agricultural yields, a vulnerability to climatic fluctuation and in which human displacement was usually easier than the transportation of food.62 In addition, the unwillingness of governments — during the Empire as under the Ancien Regime — to adapt their social control measures to the realities of the Midi, where the migrant pauper was an accepted and tolerated figure in the social landscape, also doomed their campaigns to failure. The Prefect's remarks also bore witness to changes which had occurred in the manner in which poor relief was conducted. The return to many of the precepts and practices of the Ancien Regime had obscured the extent to which the government now accepted responsibility for a range of social ills to which, half a century before the Revolution, it had expected hospitals to minister. Many of the moorings which had formerly attached poor-relief institutions to the church had been severed during the Revolution, moreover, which also helped to bring them far more directly under the control of the central government than they had ever been. The way in which, for example, the Prefect transferred inmates from the depot to the Hopital General when he saw fit, without the hospital board turning a hair, would have been unthinkable under the Ancien Regime. 63 Hospital 60 F. Dubief, 1911, 257. 61 Cf. above, page 133. 62 Cf. M.R. Santucci, 1974, 256, for some interesting comments on this point. 63 HG II F 23.
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Conclusion
administrators now meekly accepted the dictates of the state on issues which prior to 1789 had been major bones of contention and over which their predecessors had successfully resisted the reforming intentions of government. Permission was now sought, for example, to initiate new building projects, or to contract the rentes viageres which had so irked Ancien Regime bureaucrats. Despite a few storms in teacups, moreover, the subaltern medical role of nursing sisters was now generally accepted both by administrators and by nursing sisters themselves who were much chastened as a result of the experiences which their orders had had to endure during the Revolutionary decade. 64 The fact that municipal commissions rather than institutional boards now conducted the affairs of poor-relief bodies may have contributed to the dilution of the old jealously corporatist mentality. Probably most important, however, was the greater financial role which the government - through the octroi and other rights and privileges - had assumed in their financial well-being. The state could increasingly call the tune. The reinforcement of the state's real and potential powers in the field of assistance masked, however, a considerable reduction in the scale of its ambitions. Poor relief inevitably continued to take a back seat while the government was waging war. But the state was also deterred from assuming more than a tutelary and subsidiary role in poor relief by the fiasco of social policy in the mid 1790s. It had then become apparent that the 'welfare state' which had been the generous aspiration of both the Comite de Mendicite and the Revolutionary Government would necessarily involve financial commitment by the government on a massive scale. From Year V, governments turned their backs on this. In the type of bourgeois society which was emerging from the Revolution, the concept of social security was at once depasse and ahead of its time. 65 The opponents of the idea of social security - only too forgetful of the glaring deficiencies of traditional Catholic charity to which the bienfaisance of the Enlightenment had been the response — were to claim that in the Revolutionary decade, the 'welfare state' had been tried and found wanting. It is true, as we have seen, that the doctrinaire and insufficiently flexible nature of Revolutionary schemes of poor-relief did suggest the need for greater application and reflection in the formulation of government legislation. Yet — in the Herault at least, and in spite of the appallingly unpropitious circumstances in which it was implemented — the poor-relief experimentation of the period of the Terror was far from a total failure and indeed met many of the agreed objections to the traditional structures of the 64 Contrast the Ancien Regime disputes discussed above, page 69 and page 126. A.N., F 15 226. 65 Cf. H . Hatzfeld, Du Pauperisme a la securite sociale: essai sur les origines de la securite sociale en France,
1850-1940. Paris, 1971.
The early nineteenth century
253
provision of aid. It would thus be more accurate to say that, far from having been tried and found wanting, the idea of social security had never been properly tried. From the point of view of social welfare, the 1790s were Janus-faced: but, paradoxically, it was the first half of the decade which looked forward; while the legislative timidity and the insouciance of the Thermidorean and Directorial regimes trained the gaze back to the charitable priorities and practices of the long-distant past. This reversal was all the more tragic in that, as the greater state involvement in matters of social welfare demonstrated, the charitable mainspring of traditional forms of assistance was clearly and irremediably damaged. The falling away in charitable performance was clearly registered in Montpellier in the period under review. In the early eighteenth century, the city had been renowned for its traditions of open-handed generosity. By the time of the Restoration, however, the inhabitants of Montpellier were reputed misers, and all the artfulness of public officials was required to make them loosen their purse-strings to help the needy. The Restoration police commissioner in the city, writing in 1818, was highly critical of Tegoisme et la lesine naturelles a ce pays' and commented sourly on local charitable efforts during the social crisis of 1816 and 1817. Ces actes genereux [he maintained] ne trouvent pas tous leur origine dans un sentiment d'abnegation et de bienfaisance. L'amour-propre, adroitement mis en avant par M. (le Prefet), aides de quelques ames vraiment sensibles, est le mobile premier de tout ce qui a ete fait de plus favorable pour l'infortune. De l'aveu des indigents de bonne foi il n'est pas de ville ou Ton soit aussi egoiste et aussi inhospitalier que dans celle-ci . . . M. le Prefet et d'autres personnes estimables et dignes de tout mon respect ont su faire tourner au profit de la misere l'orgueil et la jalousie de celui qui quoique tres riche n'aurait donne ni prete s'il n'avait pas su que tel qu'il considere comme bien audessous de lui n'avait deja fait des avances ou des sacrifices. Bien vite il a verse une forte somme avec fracas pour tacher d'aneantir le souvenir du bien tente par celui qu'il ne voit qu'avec dedain. Combien est louable la Ruse philanthropique mise en avant par M. le Premier Magistrat de ce departement.66 As a result of the long-term decline in charitable giving and of the diminished ambition of government social policy, the recovery of poor-relief bodies in nineteenth-century France had to take place very largely within inherited institutional structures which, even in happier times, had been the butt of acerbic criticism. The hospital remained the foundation of relief endeavours. Yet it had lost none of its unpopularity among its putative clients. In the Mysteres de Paris, the popular novelist of 66 A.N., F 7 9663. For the 'politics of charity', cf. similar attempts to enlist support for the Societe de Charite Maternelle by promises of distinctions and favours for the generous giver. A.N.,F 15 3959.
254
Conclusion
the July Monarchy, Eugene Sue, has one of his working class heroines pathetically define her idea of a happy life: 'Ma liberte, vivre a la campagne et etre sure de ne pas mourir a l'hopital . . . Oh! cela surtout!. . . ne pas mourir la!'67 Entry to a hospital thus still both frightened and shamed: the phrase prendre le chemin de I'hopital, denoting behaviour likely to lead to death, ruin and disgrace, still retained all its force among the poor. The early nineteenth-century hospital had lost much of its appeal to would-be benefactors too. Only a small trickle of new foundations — none of them, incidentally, in the Herault — developed in France under the Restoration and the July Monarchy and this only swelled into more substantial proportions under the Second Empire. On the eve of the Third Republic, four-fifths of France's hospitals could still trace their origins back to beyond 1789. 68 Inevitably, the legacy of the past weighed heavily on the pattern of and response to relief activities. What this meant at grassroots level is clear in the Herault, which was far from representing, it should be noted, one of the worst-off areas for charitable provision. The Revolutionary trauma and its aftermath had depleted the number of the department's hospitals in about the same proportions as the nation's: the Herault contained 25 hospitals in 1847 as against 43 in 1789 - a fall of 41.1 per cent - while France as a whole had experienced a reduction from 2,188 to 1,270 institutions, a fall of 41.9 per cent. 69 Many other regions were far worse hit. Indeed, at mid century, the Herault could lay claim to having one of the highest number of hospitals of any French department. 70 The number and prosperity of its bureaux de bienfaisance too were well above the national average: one-third of the Herault's communes contained a home-relief organisation, as against the national figure of about a quarter. 71 In addition, the charitable donors of the department, though less bountiful than their ancestors, proved among the most generous in the whole of France in the post-Revolutionary period: its poor-relief bodies received in excess of two million francs in bequests in the first half of the nineteenth century, the lion's share of which went to local hospitals. 72 In spite of all this, however, the general picture of poor-relief facilities in the department of the Herault in the middle of the nineteenth century 67 E. Sue, Mysteres de Paris, re-edition, Paris, 1963, 49. 68 Situation administrative et financiere des hopitaux de I'Empire, Paris, 1869, p. xi. 69 A. de Watteville, Statistique des etablissements de bienfaisance. Rapport aM. le Ministre de I'lnterieur sur I'administration des hopitaux et hospices, Paris, 1851, 5. For the pre-Revolutionary period, C. Bloch and A. Tuetey (eds.), op.cit.; and, for the Herault, Appendix B. 70 A. de Watteville, Essai statistique sur les etablissements de bienfaisance, 2nd edn, Paris, 1847, 53ff. 71 A. de Watteville, Statistique des etablissements de bienfaisance. Rapport a Son Excellence le Ministre de I'lnterieur sur I'administration des bureaux de bienfaisance et sur la situation dupauperisme en France, Paris,
1854, 19ff. 72 A.N., F 15 3959.
The early nineteenth century
255
faithfully reproduced many of the shortcomings and deficiencies so excoriated in the pre-Revolutionary and early Revolutionary periods. 73 Hospitals and bureaux de bienfaisance were still highly unevenly spread within the department, with the most poverty-stricken regions remaining, grosso modo, those with the least charitable resources. The majority of institutions were still small establishments, often run on a shoestring and providing aid for very small numbers of people. On the national level, for example, one bureau de bienfaisance in ten had no regular income at all, and a further 20 per cent had income of less than a hundred francs.74 Large institutions were all confined to the major conurbations. Montpellier still dominated the region's charitable provision: its Misericorde was the wealthiest home-relief body within the Herault; and over half the hospital beds in the department were located here, with well over half the Herault's total number of hospital admissions being to the city's institutions. 75 The number of hospital beds in the Herault as a whole had expanded since the eighteenth century: from 1,477 beds on the eve of the Revolution, to 2,203 under the First Empire, to 2,761 in 1847. 76 Population, however, had also grown: whereas there had been one hospital bed for every 187.8 head of population in 1789 and one for every 136.1 under the First Empire, the comparable figure at mid century was only one per 141.0. 77 These were single beds, moreover, rather than the old multi-place beds which had been prevalent down to the Revolutionary era and even beyond. Furthermore, the proportion of beds given over to sick soldiers rather than local indigents had probably risen since the late eighteenth century: in 1847, a quarter of the department's hospital beds were reserved for the troops and a half of all entrants were soldiers. 78 These figures were twice and three times respectively the national norms: 79 evidently, the 'militarisation' of the region's hospitals during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period had proved to be a long-term phenomenon. The availability of local hospital facilities was also affected by the tendency of most relief institutions to restrict their aid to local inhabitants and by the continued practice of excluding many categories of the sick and needy. Although most institutions had adapted somewhat since the days when Turgot had railed in the Encyclopedie against the narrow and anti-social nature of religious foundations, 80 it still remained the case that, for example, individuals with contagious diseases and syphilis, as well as pregnant women and unmarried 73 The works of the Baron de Watteville are an invaluable guide to the structure of poor relief in the mid nineteenth century. 74 A. de Watteville, op.at., 1854, 9. 75 A. de Watteville, op.cit., 1851, 230f., 272f. 76 Appendix B. 77 Population figures in G. Cholvy, 1973, 143: 299,882 for 1806, and 389,286 for 1851. 78 A. de Watteville, op.cit., 1851, 23Of., 272f. 79 Ibid., 258f., 300f. 80 See above, page 2f.
256
Conclusion
mothers might still, out of respect for institutional traditions and for the wishes of founders and benefactors, be refused admission to a very large number of hospitals. 81 Many of the general complaints made by the central government's hospital inspectors in the middle decades of the nineteenth century also doubtless found their echo in the Herault. The time-worn administrative routines were still much adhered to, with the result that standards of management were pitifully low, especially in small out-of-the-way institutions, whose book-keeping left a great deal to be desired.82 The number of nursing sisters, servants and employees, dictated more by custom than by cost-benefit analysis, was high — far too high according to the inspectors, who cited cases of hospitals where they almost outnumbered the inmates. 83 The ratio of doctors to inmates was, in contrast, pretty universally low, and medical costs still only a tiny proportion of total expenditure: both nationally and in the department of the Herault in particular, about 3.5 per cent of annual expenditure went on drugs and medicines. 84 For all the sterling progress made in a small number of large urban hospitals, the average mid-nineteenth-century hospital was far from a clinical institution. The nursing sister still bulked large in the internal running of the establishments. A disproportionately high percentage of hospital inmates were not sick but were aged and infirm individuals who would be, government inspectors opined, better and more economically cared for in their homes. 85 Death-rates had fallen since the Ancien Regime, but not by much, and in some localities they were inexplicably high, particularly in the case of enfants trouves 8Q All in all, medical and sanitary conditions of many establishments were not outstanding, and hospitals inspector the Baron de Watteville cited large numbers of country hospitals which, he maintained, 'manquent la plus part du temps des instruments et appareils necessaires, tels qu'une sonde, une lancette, une baignoire, et les pauvres malades n'y regoivent pas tous les soins que reclame leur situation'. 87 Given that the extent of state intervention, both within and outside existing poor-relief institutions, was still very circumscribed and usually on an ad hoc basis, France evidently possessed not so much a system of poor relief 81 A. de Watteville, 1851, op.cit., 23f., 65ff.; Situation administrative et financiere des hopitaux de I'Empire, 1869, p.xxi. 82 A. de Watteville, op.cit., 1851, passim; Rapport au Roi sur les hopitaux, les hospices et les services de bienfaisance, Paris, 1837, 27ff. 83 A. de Watteville, op.cit., 1851, 32. 84 Ibid., 32ff., 172f., 15f. 85 Ibid., 21. 86 A, de Watteville, Statistique des etablissements et services de bienfaisance. Rapport a M. le Ministre de I'lnterieur sur la situation administrative, morale etfinancieredu service des enfants trouves et abandonnes en France, Paris, 1841, passim. 87 A. de Watteville, op.cit., 1851, 15.
The early nineteenth century
257
as a tangled congeries of relief initiatives of varying scope and significance. Its failings in the face of the needs of the poor were patently obvious. The supremely well-informed de Watteville was clear in his mind of the facts: 'une reorganisation complete dans la distribution des secours est la premiere des conditions pour l'amelioration du sort des pauvres'. 88 To the student of the Enlightenment and Revolutionary cult of bienfaisance, such a comment has the inescapably strong flavour of the deja vu. For all the sincerity and the seriousness of efforts in the late eighteenth century to recast France's poor laws on humane and comprehensive lines and in spite of the continued erosion of the charitable impulse, the move towards more modern organisation of assistance had been cut brutally short and many of the perdurable features of the Ancien Regime charitable et hospitalier lived on well after 1789. 88 A. de Watteville, op.cit., 1854, 19.
Appendices
Appendix A Inmate population of Montpellier's hospitals, 1700-1815
•= data unknown 15
(i) Setier of meteil, Beziers market
10 5 0
500
(ii) Annual movement of inmate population
400 300
8 | 200 d 300 100
(i i i) Composition o f inmate popula tion
200 100 1700
J.M.-
mfim
1750 I Men I Women Insane Soldiers I Beggars from Dep6t de Mendicite Indeterminate
Graph A Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi 261
1800
zz
262
Appendix A 15
$
10
^
5
(i) Setter of meteil, Beziers market
0
• data unknown
(ii) Annual movement of inmate population
700 600
500 § 400 d
300
(iii) Composition of inmate population
600 500 400 300
1750
1700
1800
I Men Women I Small children I Indeterminate in CeVennes ••••• Children with wet-nurses
Graph B
Hopital General
Sources and presentation: Each day, the duty administrators of each hospital signed a register containing the estimated current population within the institutions. This is the basis of what follows. GRAPH A. Montpellier Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi. HD I F 15 - F 33; HD II F 14, F 15. Each annual figure is based on twenty-four readings, one at the beginning and one in the middle of each month. GRAPH B. Montpellier Hdpital General HG I F 8 - F 17, HG II F 17. The turnover of the inmate population of the hdpital was far less rapid than was the case with the hdtel-Dieu. Only two annual readings have therefore been thought necessary, one on 1 January and the other on 1 September, when numbers were at or near their annual peak.
Appendix B Hospitals and home-reliefinstitutions from the Ancien Regime to the Empire
Sources and presentation: LOCALITY
The information is presented by Ancien Regime dioceses. All localities within the future department of the Herault have been included. The letters in brackets designate the district within which each locality was situated after 1800. HOSPITALS AND H OME-RELIEF FUNDS AND INSTITUTIONS ATTHE END OF THE ANCIEN REGIME
The information provided is the result of patient reconstitution and comparison of data from a wide variety of sources. Most derives from the great regional enquiries into poor relief which were instituted over the last half-century of the Ancien Regime. No single enquiry provides a comprehensive list. Only comparison of the replies to enquiries allows lacunae to be filled. Even then there are gaps which have been filled by recourse to a wide variety of other sources too numerous to be listed here. The list below is likely to be accurate in regard to the number and types of institution present in the region. A good degree of scepticism is justified, however, in regard to the precise values of the other data: (a) Hospital capacity Some replies to enquiries give hospital capacity, others the number of existing inmates. There is occasional contradiction from one enquiry to the next. Nofiguresexist for some hospitals, notably those in the Biterrois. Taking my cue from a reference to the small size of country hospitals in this locality (C 561), I have attributed such hospitals six beds. This hypothetical figure appears within brackets. Comparison with the capacity of the same institutions early in the nineteenth century and with the size of similar countryside hospitals elsewhere in the department suggests that this figure is not far from reality, though perhaps a little inflated. (b) Form of home-relief institution Where information exists on the way in which these funds were administered, it confirms the suspicion that no hard and fast distinction existed between Charites and Misericordes on one hand and bureaux de 263
264
Appendix B
charite on the other. Although the former would nearly always include charitable ladies in some way, this was often the case with bureaux de charite too. Similarly, the administration of many village fonds was on occasion identical to the manner in which bureaux de charite were administered. (c) Value of income of home-relief institutions Figures here vary wildly from enquiry to enquiry and should be treated with the greatest caution. I have in general preferred the figure given in what seem the most accurate enquiries, except where the evidence seems obviously false. The figures are of inferior worth to those provided in the department's reply to the enquiry of the Comite de Mendicite in 1790. They do show, however, the frequent exiguity of charitable funds below the cantonal level. The regional enquiries utilised are as follows: 1. C.S. Bernard de Ballainvilliers, 'Memoires sur les hopitaux', manuscript, 1788, B.M., Montpellier. The most thorough and accurate of all enquiries. Especially valuable in giving figures for hospital capacity. Its main drawback is that it includes no information at all on the diocese of Beziers. Although it gives some information on bureaux de charite, it neglects most minor institutions and fonds. 2. Enquiry instituted by Turgot, 1774—5. Tables of information under the general heading Etat general de tous les Etablissements, Fondations, Revenusetc. de charite dans le diocese de . . .
C 561 (dioceses of Agde, Lodeve and Saint-Pons, as well as those of Nimes and Narbonne); C 562 (diocese of Beziers); C 5957 (diocese of Montpellier). The most comprehensive of the Ancien Regime enquiries. Especially valuable for minor institutions and village fonds. 3. Enquiry instituted by Terray, 1770. Tables of information under the general heading Etat general des Fondations, revenuspour les pauvres et des aumones publiques qui se distribuent aux portes des monasteres, cures et couvents de filles dans les differentes communautes de Languedoc.
C 563 (dioceses of Agde, Beziers, Lodeve, Montpellier and Saint-Pons). Of some value, but very patchy and incomplete. 4. Enquiry of 1754—5. Information tabled under the general heading Etat des hopitaux, hotels-Dieu, hospices ou autres faits en faveur des pauvres.
C 567 (diocese of Beziers only). 5. Enquiry of the Comite de Mendicite, 1790-1. In the course of its enquiries, the Comite sent to the departmental administration of the Herault a Tableau de tous les etablissements et toutes les especes de revenus qui existent dans votre department dont la fondation a pour objet de servir au secours de ceux qui sont dans le besoin. L 2 9 0 2 .
This list was drawn up on the basis of returns concerning charitable institutions which the Comite had already received, and where this was lacking on the returns
Appendix B
265
of the locality to a regional enquiry in 1764, all other evidence of which has vanished. The information this document contains is extremely patchy and has a number of outright errors. 6. List drawn up in 1792 of expropriated or to-be-expropriated rentes, under the general heading Etat des rentes dont les universites, colleges, hbpitaux, maisons de chariteet autres etablissements d instruction publique et de charite provisoirement conserves, jouissaient sur le domaine, les revenus publics, le clerge, les Pays dEtat, dioceses et sur les autres corps, communautes et corporations meme darts et metiers supprimmes, des droits doctroi et dimes supprimmees et dont le Remplacement doit itre acquit te par les Receveurs des districts. L 1400.
Especially valuable for tithe-alms, and for the existence of charitable funds within the diocese of Saint-Pons, whose replies to other enquiries are often far from complete. HOSPITAL CAPACITY UNDER THE EMPIRE
Most details from an enquiry made in 1812 in A.N., F 15 750. Supplemented by A.N., F 15 2561 (hospitals of Beziers); 2 X 73 (Lodeve); HG II F 17 (Montpellier). Where no evidence on hospital capacity has been found, but where other evidence shows the existence of a hospital in the first decade of the nineteenth century, an 'x' has been placed in the appropriate column. HOSPITAL CAPACITY IN 1824
These figures, which are drawn from H. Creuze de Lesser, Statistique du departement de I'Herault, Montpellier, 1824, 429, are of considerable comparative value, especially for those cases in which no evidence on capacity under the Empire is available. 'BB' in" this column designates a locality which the author includes imthe list of hospitals, but which he claims are acting solely as bureaux de bienfaisance. HOME-RELIEF FUNDS UNDER THE EMPIRE
Enquiry of 1808 and 1809. Extracted from an Etat du nombre des pauvres et des ressources affectees a leur service dans les differentes communes du departement de I'Herault.
A.N., F 16 1007. It seems more than likely that a considerable amount of under-recording vitiates the exact value of this document. It is the only such enquiry, however, prior to the ressuscitation of charity during the religious revival of the Restoration and the July Monarchy, and has some positive value.
Hospitals and home-relief institutions from the Ancien Regime to the Empire
Locality
Hospitals and hospital capacity End of Under Ancien Regime Empire
Home-relief funds and institutions In 1824
End of Ancien Regime
Under Empire
(i) Ancien Regime diocese of Agde
ON ON
Agde (B) Bessan (B) Bouzigues (M) Florensac (B) Loupian (M) Marseillan (B) Meze (M) Montagnac (B) Pezenas (B) Pinet (B) Pomerols (B) Saint-Pons-de-Mauchiens (B) Saint-Thibery (B) Sette (M) Valmagne (B) Vias (B)
42 8
50 10
11
X
(6)
—
12 17
15
45 9 —
18
10 200
11 — — 106
4
—
—
3 40
X
3
115
118
6
9 12-176
9-400
9 8-309
227
659
287
X
Charite-5 000 liv. B. des pauvres—58 liv. Charite-200 liv. Charite-600 liv. Charite-60 liv. Miscde-1624 liv. Fonds—'aumones' Charite-200 liv. B. charite-103 liv. Charite-100 liv. Miscde-2 269 liv. Fonds—'aumones' Charite-200 liv. 13 localities-10 414 liv.
(ii) Ancien Regime diocese of Beziers
Beziers (B) Abeillan (B) Adissan (B)
8 700 f.
8
Miscde-2 685 liv. 'Bureau'—30 liv. 'Bureau'-88 liv.
274 f. 170 f.
150 f. 4 localities-9 294 f.
Alignan (B) Aspiran (L) Autignac (B) Bedarieux (B) Boujan (B) Boussagues (B) Cabrieres (B) Causses (B) Caux(B) Cazouls-d'Herault (B) Cazouls-les-Beziers (B) Cers (B) Corneilhan (B) Dio/Valquieres (L) Fontes (B) ON Gignac (L) 1 Jaussels (B) Laurans (B) Lespignan (B) Lezignan (B) Magalas (B) Montblanc (B) Murviel (B) Pailhes (B) Paulhan (L) Peret (B) Pezennes (B) Portirargues (B) Le Pouget (L) Le Poujol (B) Pouzolles (B)
B. charite-50 liv. 129 f.
(6) Miscde—3 liv. 5
20 Fonds—6 liv. Fonds—72 liv. Fonds—25 liv. Fonds—50 liv.
(6)
30
(6) (6)
(6)
BB Fonds-4 liv. Miscde—? liv. Fonds-39 liv. Miscde—65 liv. Fonds—24 liv. Fonds-^45 liv. Miscde—? liv. Fonds-200 liv. Fonds-104 liv. Miscde-160 liv. Fonds—72 liv. Miscde-40 liv. Miscde—25 liv. B. charite-80 liv. Fonds—36 liv. Charite—135 liv. 'Hopital'—? liv. Fonds—c. 30 liv. 'Hopital'-? liv. Miscde—65 liv. B. charite-10 liv. Fonds—36 liv.
14 f. 1 200 f.
24 f. 150 f. 140 f.
400 f.
175 f.
Hospitals and home-relief institutions from the Ancien Regime to the Empire {cont.)
Locality
ON
00
Hospitals and hospital capacity End of Ancien Under Regime Empire
Puimisson (B) Puissalicon (B) Roquebrun (St P) Roujan (B) Saint-Bauzille (B) Saint-Genies (B) Saint-Pargoire (L) Serignan (B) Servian (B) Thezari (B) Tressan (L) Vendres (B) Villeneuve (B)
(6) (6) (6)
Home-relief funds and institutions In 1824
End of Ancien Regime Charite—'tres petit' Fonds—82 liv. Miscde-140 liv. Charite-4 liv. Charite—? liv. 'Hopital'—? liv. B. charite-70 liv.
X — —
(6) 14-324
8-681
45
86
X
3 — — 4 7-315
Under Empire
490 f.
Charite-600 liv. Fonds—25 liv. 'H6pital'-8 liv. Miscde-200 liv. 42 localities-5 286 liv.
9 localities-2 722 f.
(iii) Ancien Regime diocese of Lodeve
Lodeve (L) Belarga (L) Canet (L) Le Caylar (L) Ceyras (L) Clermont (L) Joncels (L)
21
57
91
35
Miscde—3 566 liv. Miscde-50 liv. 'H6pital'-224 liv. 'H6pital'-245 liv. Miscde-2 000 liv. B. des pauvres—185 liv.
4 286 f. 10 f.
2 360 f.
Montpeyroux (L) Nebian (L) Saint-Andre-de-Sangonis (L) Saint-Felix (L) Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert (M) Saint-Jean-de-Blaquiere (L) Saint-Jean-de-Fos (L) Saint-Jean-de-Pleaux (L) Soubes (L) Villecun (L)
6
x
8
Miscde-165 liv. Fonds-42 liv. B. des pauvres—236 liv. Fonds—7 liv. Fonds-103 liv. B. charite-200 liv. 'Hopital-131 liv. Fonds—39 liv. Fonds—13 liv. B. des pauvres—50 liv.
3-72
3-143
3-134
16 localities-7 256 liv.
799
878
1156
Miscde-25 674 liv. B. charite-24 liv. B. charite-220 liv. Miscde—25 liv. B. charite-60 liv. Fonds—2 liv. Fonds—'un peu' Fonds—10 liv. B. charite-37 liv. B. charite— ? liv. Fonds—15 liv. B. charite-80 liv. B. charite-40 liv. Fonds—32 liv. B. charite-58 liv. B. charite-15 liv. Fonds-44 liv.
(iv) Ancien Regime diocese of Montpellier
Montpellier Agones (M) Aniane (M) Argelliers (M) Baillargues (M) Balaruc (M) Beaulieu (M) Boisseron (M) La Boissiere (M) Brissac (M) Campagne (M) Candillargues (M) Castelnau (M) Castries (M) Causse de la Selle (M) Cazillac (M) Clapiers (M) Claret (M)
150 f.
25 f.
5 localities-6831 f. 16000 f. 10 f.
58 f. 32 f. 15 f. 20 f. 50 f.
Hospitals and home-relief institutions from the Ancien Regime to the Empire (cont.)
Locality Combailloux (M) Cournonsec (M) Cournonterral (M) Fabregues (M) Frontignan (M) Galargues (M) Ganges (M) Gigean (M) Grabels (M) Lansargues (M) Laverune (M) Lunel (M) Lunel-Viel (M) Les Matelles (M) Mauguio (M) Mirevals (M) Montarnaud (M) Montaud/Montlaur (M) Montbazin (M) Mudaison (M) Murviel (M) N . D . de Londres (M) Pegairolles (M)
Hospitals and hospital capacity End of Ancien Under Regime Empire
12
x
2
—
Home-relief funds and institutions In 1824
End of Ancien Regime Fonds-50 liv. Fonds-100 liv. Fonds—50 liv. Fonds-98 liv. B. charite-90 liv. Miscde—2 liv.
Under Empire
350 f.
B. charite-178 liv. Fonds—20 liv. B. charite-316 liv. Fonds—30 liv. 7
50
700 f.
BB B. charite-78 liv. Fonds—12 liv. B. charite-96 liv. Fonds—36 liv. B. charite--40 liv. Fonds—9 liv. B. charite-161 liv. Fonds—20 liv. Fonds—2 liv. B. des pauvres—25 liv. Fonds—10 liv.
30 f.
Perols (M) Pignan (M) Poussan (M) Prades (M) Restinclieres (M) La Roque (M) Rouet (M) Saint-Bauzille-de-Montmel (M) Saint-Bauzille-de-Putois (M) Saint-Bres (M) Saint-Clement (M) Sait-Drezery (M) Saint-Gely (M) Saint-Genies (M) Saint-Georges-d'Orques (M) Saint Hilaire (M) Saint-Jean-de-Bueges (M) Saint-Just (M) Saint-Martin-de-Londres (M) Saint-Nazaire (M) Sainte-Croix (M) Saturargues (M) Saussan (M) Saussines (M) Soubeuras (M) Sussargues (M) Teyran (M) Valergues (M) Vendargues Verargues (M) Vic (M)
B. charite-30 liv. Charite-178 liv. Fonds—12 liv. Fonds-90 liv. 'H6pital'-68 liv. B. charite-20 liv. B. charite-32 liv. B. charite-144 liv. B. charite-33 liv. Fonds-50 liv. B. charite-182 liv. B. charite-40 liv. Fonds—5 liv. Fonds—28 liv. Fonds-100 liv. B. charite-10 liv. B. charite-340 liv. B. charite-48 liv. Fonds—20 liv. Fonds^4l liv. B. charite-78 liv. Fonds—18 liv. B. charite-58 liv. B. charite-45 liv. B. chadte—32 liv. Fonds—2 liv. Fonds-100 liv. B. charite-65 liv. Fonds—5 liv. Fonds—50 liv.
96 f.
Hospitals and home-relief institutions from the Ancien Regime to the Empire {cont.)
Locality
Hospitals and hospital capacity End of Ancien Under Regime Empire
Home-relief funds and institutions In
1824
Villeneuve-les-Maguelone (M) Villetelle (M) Viols-le-Fort (M) 7-826
5-928
4-1 168
28
15
28
End of Ancien Regime Fonds—66 liv. Fonds—16 liv. Miscde—36 liv. 71 localities-29861 liv.
Under Empire
6f. 12 localities-17 367 f.
(v) Ancien Regime diocese of Saint-Pons
Saint-Pons (St-P) Aigne (St-P) Aigues-Vives (St-P) Azillanet (St-P) Beaufort (St-P) Cassagnolles (St-P) La Caunette (St-P) Cebazan (St-P) Cessenon (St-P) Cesseras (St-P) Fraisse (St-P) La Liviniere (St-P) Minerve (St-P) Mons (St-P) N.D. de la Serre (St-P) Olargues (St-P) Olonzac (St-P)
Miscde-2 400 liv. B. des pauvres—360 liv. Fonds—36 liv. Fonds-664 liv. Fonds-90 liv. Fonds-100 liv. Fonds-44 liv. Fonds-324 liv. Fonds-500 liv. Fonds-286 liv. Fonds—30 liv.
3
—
—
Fonds—60 liv. B. .des pauvres—283 liv.
150 f.
134 f. 60 f. 140 f. 55 t. 70f. 136 f.
Premian (St-P) Saint-Chinian (St-P) Saint-Martin (St-P) La Salvetat (St-P) Siran (St-P) Le Soulie (St-P) Velieux/Boisset (St-P) Vieussan (St-P)
20
28
12
4-63
23 12
3-51
3-63
Fonds-20 liv. Miscde-3 200 liv. Fonds—15 liv. Miscde-859 liv. Fonds—30 liv. Fonds-225 liv. 19 localities-9 526 liv.
31 f. 60 f. 626 f. 60 f. 49 f.
12 localities-1571 f.
(vi) Other 'Herault' dioceses
Capestang (Narbonne-B) Nissan (Narbonne—B) Puisserguier (Narbonne—B) Quarante (Narbonne—B) Marsillargues (Nimes—M) Sauteyrargues (Nimes—M) Vacquieres (Nimes—M) Recapitulation
Agde Beziers Lodeve Montpellier Saint-Pons Other
(6)
—
1
BB
3-16
-?
12- 176 14- 324 3 - 72 7 - 826
9- 400
1-7
B. charite-723 (includes hospital income) B. charite-200 liv. B. charite-68 liv. B. charite-815 liv. B. charite-? liv. B. charite-150 liv. 6 localities—1956 liv.
Nil
by diocese
4 - 63 3 - 16 43- 1477
8 - 681 3 - 143 5- 928 3 - 51 ? 1-
8- 309 7 - 315 3 - 134 4-1168 3 - 63 17
29-2 203
26-1996
13 Iocalities-10 4l4 1iv. 42 localities- 5 286 liv. 16 localities— 7 256 liv. 71 localities-29 861 liv. 19 localities- 9 526 liv. 6 localities— 1956 liv. 167 localities-64 299 liv.
4 localities- 9 294 f. 9 localities- 2 722 f. 5 localities- 6831 f. 12 localities-17 367 f. 12 localities- 1571 f. Nil 42 localities-37 785 f.
Bibliography
A. I.
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
ARCHIVES DEPARTEMENTALES DE L'HERAULT
1.
Series C. Intendance and Estates of Languedoc
(a) Fonds de I'lntendance
C 28, C 29, C 38, C 46, C 47 Memoirs, enquiries into Languedoc dioceses, eighteenth century C 111-C 117, C 141-C 144 Leitresde cachet (prostitutes, depot de me ndicite etc.) C 145 Hospital of Saint-Chinian, 1780 C 492 - C 495, C 500, C 504, C 510, C 5 12 Religious and charitable institutions, late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries C 524, C 525, C 529 - 531 Medical personnel etc., 1724-^9 C 550 — C 567 Hospitals, charitable institutions etc. C 568 — C 573 Begging, public assistance C 574 - C 588 Hospitals, depots de mendicite C 697 — C 700 Languedoc marechaussee C 1114, C 1117 Diocesan enquiries, mid eighteenth century C 1564 Depots de mendicite C 1902, C 2183 - C 2186, C 2227 Social and economic affairs C 2776, C 2796, C 2816 Medical personnel C 2833, C 2840, C 2846, C 2850 Agriculture C 2866 Marechaussee, 1788
C 2949, C 2951, C 2957, C 2958, C 2966, C 2978, C 2979, C 2987 Diocesan enquiries into hospitals, late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries C 4674, C 4675, C 4677, C 4678, C 4679, C 4680 Languedoc economy C 4688, C 4689 Begging, lettres de cachet C 4719 Religious orders C 4756, C 4789, C 4834 Relations between communes and hospitals C 4923 — C 4926 Enquiry on prices and wages, early eighteenth century C 5626 Medical personnel, 1737 C 5954 Boites de remedes, 1760-90
C 5955 Enquiry into poverty and begging, diocese of Montpellier, 1790 C 5956 Hospitals, 1750-75 C 5957 Enquiries into poverty, 1774 274
B ibliography
275
C 6549, C 6554, C 6679 General enquiries and observations, dioceses of Beziers, Lodeve and Saint-Pons (b) Fonds des Etats de Languedoc
C 7559 (1760), C 7564 (1770), C 7570 (1771), C 7574 (1772), C 7578 (1773), C 7586 (1775), C 7591 (1776), C 7644 (1787) Deliberations of the Estates (for the years given) concerning begging and vagrancy C 7916, C 8138, C 8256 Depots de mendicite, prisons, 1771-89 B 8481, C 8482 Marechaussee 2.
Series I E. Private archives
I E 41, I E 42 Lunaret papers: sermons of abbe Lunaret I E 159 Germain papers: Livre de raison, 1696—1751 I E 168 Germain papers: gifts to charities, etc. (Unclassified): Livre de raison of F. Boissier de Sauvages, mid eighteenth century 3.
Series II E. Notarial archives
I consulted all registers and bundles of documents of Montpellier notaries which offered the possibility of providing wills made by residents of the city in the years 1740, 1741, 1785, 1786, 1808, 1809. (For other wills used, see note under 11. Unclassified series. Presidial and Senechaussee of Montpellier.) Cotes utilised were as follows: For the period 1740-1: IIE 55 242, 252, 253, 291; IIE 56 522, 542, 543, 559; II E 57 429, 430, 435, 619, 620;HE 58 112 113;HE 5967;II E60 124, 125; II E 61 92; II E 62 198, 207 For the period 1785-6: II E 55 306, 307; II E 56 579, 580; II E 57 665, 666; II E 58 139; IIE 59 85, 86; IIE 60 140; IIE 61 107, 108; II E 62 267, 268, 273, 275 For the period 1808-9: II E 55 345, 346, 354; II E 56 684; II E 57 696 697; II E 58 203; II E 59 104, 105, 106; II E 60 142; II E 61 117; II E 62 298, 299 4.
Series E Sup. Communal archives
Consulted unsystematically, but where there seemed a likelihood of finding information relating to poor relief. E Sup. Ganges GG 29 (Register of deliberations of bureau de charite, 1760—an IV), 37, 46 E Sup. Gignac GG 23 Dames religieuses, 1790 E Sup. Marsillargues BB 10—BB 15 (communal deliberations, eighteenth century), BB 20, FF 87, GG 29 E Sup. Montaud GG 4 Public assistance E Sup. Montpeyroux II 1 Confrerie de la Misericorde E Sup. Moules-et-Baucels GG 2, GG 3 (deliberations of bureau de charite, eighteenth century)
276
Bibliography 5.
Series 8 F. 'Depot de I'Eveche de Montpellier'
8 F 24 Bedarieux hospital and the abbey of Villemagne, 1755—68 8 F 112 Agde Charite: register of deliberations, 1724-89 6.
Series G. Secular clergy
G 511 Hopital Mage of Beziers, 1759 G 1143 - G 1144, G 1295 - G 1301 Ordinances of the bishop of Montpellier, eighteenth century G 1351, G 1352, G 1353 Charitable institutions, diocese of Montpellier, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries G 1408, G 1417 Poor of the diocese of Montpellier G 1443 Montpellier Refuge, 1707 G 1516, G 1577, G 1636, G 2117, G 2133, G 2184, G 2185 Poor, charity and charitable institutions, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 7.
Series HS. Hospital archives 7A Montpellier hospitals
(i) Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi. I. Archives anterieures a 1790 (= HD I)
HD I A 1 Letters patent, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries HD I B 149 - B 152 Rentes viageres, fonds perdus etc.
HD I C 1 Chaplains HD I C 2 Questions of precedence, 1737-73 HD I C 3 Cemetery, 1739 HD I E 1 - E 13 Registers of deliberations, 1693-1789 HD I E 14 Index of deliberations, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries HD I E 17 - E 20 Hospital regulations, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries HD I E 21 Relations with the Hopital General HD I E 22 Legislation relating to hospitals HD I E 24 - E 27 Correspondence, 1755-an II HD I E 29 Beggars admitted, 1768-86 HD I E 30 - E 32 Income from charity, collections etc. 1733-1827 HD I E 33 Accounts, replies to enquiries etc. HD I E 78 - E 129 Annual accounts, 1739-90 HD I E 140, E 141 Buildings and repairs, 1733-83 HD E 143 Inventories HD E 144 Fonds perdus, 1743-1807 HD F 2 — F 11 Registers of admissions HD F 12 Relations with the Hopital General, 1760-81 HD F 15 - F 33 Daily record of inmate population, 1698-1789 HD F 34 Filles de la Charite HD F 35, F 36 Insane, 1713-1821 HD F 38 Medical service (ii) Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi. 11. Archives posterieures a 1790 ( = H D II)
HD II B 2, B 7 Property owned by the hospital, an Il-an VII HD II B 10, B 11 Legacies and foundations, an X-1812
Bibliography
277
HD II B 12 - B 15, B 17 Wills and legacies, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries HD II B 25 - B 27 Rentes and other income, 1790-1833 HD II B 71, B 73 Droit sur les spectacles, an Il-an VII
HD II B 74 Collections, an VIII-1817 HD II C 1, C 3, C 4, C 6 - C 8 Religious service, 1793-1847 HD II E 1 - E 3 Registers of deliberations, 1789-1823 HD II E 13 - E 15 Administration, 1791-1840 HD II E 17 Military hospital regulations, an Il-an IV HD II E 18, E 26 Internal administration, an III-1827 HD II E 28 Financial situation, 1790-1792 HD II E 29 Accounts, an IV-an XIII HD II E 49 Finances, 1808 HD II E 53, E 54, E 61 Inmates, provisions, 1791-1818 HD II E 65 Inventories, an Il-an IX HD II E 70, E 72 Internal regime, an XIII-1811 HD II E 74 Rumford soups, an VIII-1812 HD II E 86-E 92 Buildings and repairs, an VIII-1809 HD II E 99 Internal regime, 1792-1848 HD II E 103 Administration, 1806 HD HE 104-E 127 Annual accounts, 1791-1815 (including the accounts of the H6pital General) HD II E 139 - E 141 Quarterly accounts (incomplete) of the h6tel-Dieu, the Hdpital General and the Misericorde, an VI-1809 HD II F 1, F 2, F 7, F 10, F 12 Admissions, an IV-1848 HD II F 14, F 15, F 17, F 18 Inmates, 1789-1839 HD II F 19 Soldiers, an VIII-1820 HD II F 22, F 23 Statistics, 1793-1860 HD II F 24, F 25 Filles de la Charite, 1792-1809 HD II F 26, F 28 Internal service, 1808-16 HD II F 40 - F 44, F 49 Medical service HD II F 50, F 51 Dissection of corpses, 1806-20 HD IIG 1, G 2 Comite de surveillance d'administration des hbpitaux militaires, an Il-an IV HD II G 8, G 9 Insane, 1792-1824 HD II G 10 Midwifery courses, 1807 HD II G 11 Care of children, an IX HD II G 13 Smallpox vaccination, an IX (iii) Hdpital General. I. Archives anterieures a 1790 (=HG I) HG A 1 Foundation, seventeenth century HG B 14 Seigneurial rights, 1759-91 HG B 22, B 26 Legacies and donations, 1712-1856 HG B 585 Thefts within the hospital, 1737-87 HG B 592 Foundlings, midwives, 1744—7 HG C 1 — C 3 , C 5 — C 7 , C 9 Burials, religious service, eighteenth century HG C 10 Deaths of inmates, 1780-1802 HG I E 17 - E 31 Registers of deliberations, 1735-90
278 HG HG HG HG HG HG HG HG
Bibliography I E 32 Index of deliberations, 1777-an III I E 35 Appointment of administrators I E 36 Hospital legislation I E 38, E 39 Hospital regulations I E 40 — E 152 Annual accounts, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries I E 155 Abstracts of annual accounts, 1725-60 I E 156 Treasurers, 1729-89 I E 289 Wages and salaries, 1760-an III
HG I E 314 Bureau typographique, 1755-88
HG HG HG HG HG HG HG HG HG HG HG HG
I I I I I I I I I I I I
E 342 Manufacture of cotton fabrics, 1745-82 E 349 — E 356 Attendance of inmates at funerals, 1691—an III E 359 Burials in cemetery, 1777-an II E 361 - E 367 Income from charity, 1700-an V E 387 — E 389 Correspondence, replies to enquiries etc., 1731—an III E 405 Provisions, 1764-79 E 439 - E 444 Buildings and repairs, 1739-87 F 19 Community of nursing sisters, 1767 F 20 Pharmacy F 22 Incurables, 1710-86 G 1 — G 3 Baths and hospital at Balaruc G 4 — G 11 Distribution of bread to pauvres honteux, 1702-61
HG I G 12 Pauvres honteux, 1737-57
HG HG HG HG
I G 13 — G 17 Beggars, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries I G 20, G 21, G 24 Inmate children I G 28, G 29, G 33, G 34, G 36 Wet-nurses I G 41, G 42, G 44, G 46, G 47,G 53, G 55, G 56, G 58, G 60, G 61, Marriages and apprenticeships HG I G 74 Inoculation against smallpox, 1786 HG I H 1 — H 5 Personal papers belonging to paupers deceased within the hospital, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
(iv) Hopital General. II. Archives posterieures a 1790 ( =HG II)
HG HG HG HG HG
II B 10 Income, 1790-an V II B 14 - B 21 Legacies, 1712-1848 II C 1, C 3, C 5, C 25 Religious service, 1791-1858 II C 44 - C 46 Registers of deaths, an V-1824 HE 1 — E 3 Registers of deliberations of the commission administrative des hospices civils, an V-1820 HG II E 12 - E 13 Registers of deliberations, Hopital General, 1790-an V HG II E 23 Administrators, 1791-1859 HG II E 24 Dames charitables, an V
HG II E 33, E 37, E 39, E 56 General situation of the hospital, correspondence etc., 1790-1853 HG II E 57 Fines and confiscations, an VIII-1814 HG II E 58, E 61, E 64 - E 66 Burials, attendance at funerals, an XI-1831 HG II E 68, E 70, E 75 Work of inmates, an V-1820 HG II E 109 - E 110 Repairs and constructions, an IV-1861
Bibliography
279
HG HG HG HG HG HG HG HG HG HG
HE 118 Inventory, an V II F 1, F 2, F 15 Admissions, 1790-1861 II F 17 Daily record of inmate population, 1791—1816 II F 53 Inmate statistics, an X—1860 II F 54 Community of nursing sisters, 1803—59 II F 55 Internal service, 1809-60 II F 56 Medical service, an V-1850 II F 60 Correspondence, an IV-1860 II Gl - G 4 Baths and hospital of Balaruc, an IV-1860 II G 9, G 10 Bon Pasteur of Montpellier, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. HG II G 12 - G 14, G 20, G 22, G 24 Registers of admissions to the depot de mendicite, an XII-1815 HG II G 49 Insane, 1812-36 HG II G 64 Correspondence relating to the depot de mendicite, 1810-51 HG II G 77 - G 79 Maternite, 1807-39 HG II G 110, G 113, G 119, G 122 Children in care HG II G 131 Register of legitimate children with wet-nurses, 1793—1819 HG II G 141 — G 143 Registers of illegitimate children with wet-nurses, an XI-1815 HG II G 166, G 168 Wet-nurses, an IV-1826 HG II G 171 - G 174 Children in care inside the hopital HG II G 175 Pupilles de la garde imperial
1811-14
HG IIG 177, G 190, G 191 Children's work, Boyer-Fonfrede experiment etc., an VI-1821 HG II G 204 Vaccinations against smallpox, an IX—1837 (v) Fonds de la Misericorde (Fonds Mis.)
Unclassified papers of the Oeuvre de la Misericorde of Montpellier, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Contains a number of important bundles of documents, including annual accounts for most of the latter part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. No extant registers of deliberations. (vi) Fonds du Bon Pasteur
Unclassified. Throws interesting light on its mother institution, the Misericorde. (vii) Fonds de la Propagation de la Foi
Unclassified. A very little of direct relevance. IB.
Hospitals outside Montpellier
(i) Hospices de Beziers ( = HS Hop Bez)
When consulted, this series was unclassified. An inventory has since been formed. Wherever possible, the documents used have been assigned their present reference.
280
Bibliography
HS Hop Bez I F 5, F 6 Hopital Mage: medical service, 1725-63 HS Hop Bez II B 9 Hopital Saint-Joseph: rentes, 1755-8 HS Hop Bez II E 6 - E 13 Id: registers of deliberations, 1729-93 HS Hop Bez IIE 14 Id: deliberations of the 'commission des mardi', which handled all important business, 18th century HS Hop Bez II E 15 Id: deliberations relating to manufacturing within the hospital, 1724-67 HS Hop Bez II F Id: Soeurs de la charite
This fonds also includes documents relating to the Beziers Bon Pasteur and to the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods. (u) Hopital-hospice de Clermont ( = HS Hop Cler)
The remarks made above concerning the archives of the Beziers hospitals apply here too. JUS Hop Cler I A 1 Merger of leper-house revenue with hospital, 1697 HS Hop Cler I A 2 Merger of Propagation de la Foi with hospital, 1749-59 HS Hop Cler I A 3 Establishment of Soeurs de la charite de Nevers, 1749 HS Hop Cler I B 9, B 11, B 13 - B 28 Property, income etc. HS Hop Cler I E 1, E 2 Deliberations, 1661-1793 HS Hop Cler I E 3, E 4 Accounts, 1754-92 HS Hop Cler I E 6 Correspondence, 1751-75 (formerly = B 26) HS Hop Cler I F 1 Nursing sisters, 1753-4 HS Hop Cler II A 3, B 1 Propagation de la Foi: administration, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries HS Hop Cler III A 1, B 1, E 1 Orphelinat Rouziere, 1774-1803 HS Hop Cler IV A 1 Misericorde: privileges, 1734 HS Hop Cler M 6 Hospital accounts, 1810-17 (iii) Hopital de Frontignan ( = HS Hop Front) Unclassified. A few stray documents only. (iv) Hopital de Lodeve ( = HS Hop Lod)
HS Hop Lod 2,4, 5, 22-24 Income and expenditure, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries HS H6p Lod 29 Accounts, 1598-1842 (incomplete) HS Hop Lod 32 Inventories, 1747-an VIII HS Hop Lod 33, 34 Admissions, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries HS Hop Lod 36 Abandoned children, 1792-1811 (v) Hopital de Marseillan ( = HS Hop Marseil)
HS Hop HS Hop HS Hop HS Hop HS Hop HS Hop HS Hop HS Hop
Marseil Marseil Marseil Marseil Marseil Marseil Marseil Marseil
1 History of the hospital, early nineteenth century 2-5, 8, 13, 17, 18, 25 Income and expenditure 27 Accounts of the bureau de charite, eighteenth century 28, 32 Hospital accounts, 1755-an IV 37, 38 Registers of deliberations, 1772-1810 41 Administration, an IX—an XIV 42 Building and repairs 43 Inventories
Bibliography
281
HS Hop Marseil 45 Admissions, 1772-1827 HS Hop Marseil 47 Medical service HS Hop Marseil 48, 49 Home relief, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (including information on the hospitals of Vias and Bessan) HS Hop Marseil 51 Rentes, nineteenth century HS Hop Marseil 53 Correspondence, nineteenth century (vi) Hopital de Nissan ( = HS Hop Nissan)
Unclassified. Deliberations, accounts and other useful materials from the hdpital and confrerie de charite of Nissan, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 8.
Series L. Revolutionary period
(i) Department of the Herault
L 65 Montpellier hospitals, 1790 L 461 - L 488 Quarterly reports and other information on the department, 1791-an VIII. (Classified by districts; includes material on charitable institutions.) L 876, L 877 Lettres de cachet, 1790-1
L 1044, L 1052 Begging, vagrancy, an IV—an V L 1084, L 1087 - L 1090 Medical personnel, 1792-an VIII L 1101 Population census returns, 1793 L 1130 Formation of the department, 1789-90 L 1141 - L 1144 Assistance in grain, 1792-3 L 1214 — L 1218 Application of the Maximum, an II L 1227, L 1228, L 1231, L 1232, L 1259, L 1260 Economy L 1400 Hospitals and charitable institutions: rentes, 1791—2 L 1942 - L 1944, L 1949, L 1954, L 1971 Gendarmerie, 1791-an VIII L 2092 - L 2094 Medical personnel in the army, 1791-an VII L 2095 - L 2102 Military hospitals, 1792-an V L 2260 - L 2264 Ateliers de charite, 1790-2
L 2498 Montpellier H6tel-Dieu Saint-Eloi, 1793 L 2499 Montpellier's ecole de sante, an IV L 2877 Assistance, 1792-an III L 2878 - L 2880 Xivre de Bienfaisance', an Il-an VIII L 2881 Indigence, an Ill-an VII L 2882, L 2883 Orphans, unmarried mothers, an Ill-an VIII L 2884 Assistance, 1790-an VIII L 2886-L 2894, L 2897, L 2899-L 2912, L 2927 - L 2929, L 2931 - L 2933 Hospitals, 1791-an X L 2935 - L 2937, L 2939 - L 2941 Prisons, depot de mendicite, 1790-an V L 2972 Replies to enquiry of the Comite de Mendicite\ 1790-1. Prisons, an IV L 2973 - L 2977 De>6t de mendicite, 1792-an VII L 3284, L 3285, L 3305 Economy L 3434 Rentes possessed by hospitals, 1790-2 L 3770 - 3774, L 3777 Military hospitals, 1792-an III L 3797 Ateliers de charite
282
Bibliography
(ii) District of Montpellier
L 3943 Foundlings, 1791-3 L 3944 Comite des secours publics, 1793-an III
L 3945 The blind, 1793-an II L 3946 Application of the law of 13 Ventose an II L 3946 — L 3951 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', an II—an III L 3952 Deaf mutes, an III L 3953 The blind, an IV L 3954 — L 3957 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', an III L 3958, L 3959 Indigents, refugees, an Ill-an IV L 3961 - L 3966 Hospitals, 1791-an II L 3968 - L 3969 Montpellier Hotel-Dieu: the insane, 1791-3 L 3970 - L 3978 Prisons, depot de mendicite etc., 1785-an V (iii) District of Beziers
L 4209, L 4265 Economy L 4497 - L 4499 Military hospitals, 1792-an III L 4526, L 4527 Ateliers de charite, 1790-2 L 4603 — L 4617 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', an III L 4619 Medical service, an III L 4620 — L 4624 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', an III L 4625 - L 4640 Hospitals, 1781-an VII L 4641, L 4643 Prisons, 1791-an IV (iv) District of Lodeve
L 4930, L 4931 Military hospitals, 1791-an III L 4961, L 4962 Assistance, deaf mutes, begging etc., 1791—an III L 4963 - L 4970 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', an III L 4972 Prisons, an Il-an III (v) District of Saint-Pons
L 5066, L 5311 Comite de Mendicite, 1790-1 L 5312 Orphans, 1793 L 5313, L 5314 Secours des dix millions, an II
L L L L L
5315 Foundlings, indigents, an III 5316 Deaf mutes, the blind, an III—an IV 5317 — L 5327 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', an III 5328 Saint-Pons Misericorde, 1759-94 5329, L 5330 Assistance etc., an III
(vi) Other
L L L L
5576 Montpellier societe populaire, an II 5590 Military hospitals, an II 5596 Montpellier hospitals, depot de mendicite, 1793-an II 5597, L 5613, L 5771 Indigence etc., 1793-an II
Bibliography 9.
283
Series M. General administration (Post 1800)
39 M 9, M 10 Police reports on the department, an X-1810 39 M 11, 48 M 19 Prisons, depot de mendicite, an XI-1812 58 M 1 Confreries, an XIII 58 M 14 Religious and other associations, 1811 71 M 29 Burials, cemeteries, an XII-1812 85 M 1, M 2, M 8 Smallpox vaccinations, an IX-1816 89 M 1 Epidemics, an IX-1822 90 M 1, M 2 Quarantine etc., an IX-an XIII 90 M 3 Bottes de remedes, an XIII-1815
90 M 4 Contagious diseases, 1810-15 99 M 8, M 9, M 20, M 21, M 23, M 25 Mineral spas, an XI-1812 100 M 1 - M 4, M 13 - M 17 Medical personnel, an XI-1860 106 M 1 Secret remedies, medical charlatans, an XII—1843 110 M 1, M 2; 113 M 1, M 2, M 6 Population, 1770-1814 131 M 1 — M 18; 132 M 1 — M 3 Statistics and reports on the department, VIII-1814 177 M 1 Emigration of workers, an IX—1812 10.
Series X. (Etablissements de bienfaisance'
1 X 1 , X 2 , X 7 , X 1 5 Laws, ministerial circulars, correspondence relating to hospitals, an VIII-1856 1 X 16, X 17, X 25 Income, property etc., an IX-1825 1 X 26 Filles de la Charite, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries 1 X 35 — X 38 Organisation of commissions administratives des hospices civils, an
IX-1813 1 X 64 Situation of the hospitals, an X—1806 1 X 139, X 140 Commissions administratives des etablissements charitables, an
VIII-1814 I X 141 — X 147 Administrative and financial situation of the hospitals, an IX-1822 2 X = Hospitals, nineteenth century: 1 (Agde, an IX—1834); 13 (Bedarieux, an IX-1848); 21 (Bessan, an IX-1875); 23 (Beziers, an IX-1814); 55 (Cazouls-les-Beziers, an IX-1838); 66 (Frontignan, an XII-1870); 72 (Gignac, an XIII-1871); 73 (Lodeve, an IX-1837); 99 (Meze, an IX-1910); 102, 121 (Montpellier, an IX-1873); 231 (Pezenas, an IX-1841); 239 (Saint-Chinian, an IX-1876); 242 (Saint-Pons, an IX-1833); 252 Sette (an IX-1830); 284 (Vias, an XII-1860); 285 (Villeneuve-les-Beziers, an IX-1896) 5 X 86 Training for midwives, 1810-24 7 X 2, X 3 Monts-de-piete (Agde, Montpellier), 1808-96 8 X = Bureaux de bienfaisance, eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries: 1 (general); 4 (Bouzigues, an IX—1858); 5 (Castries, Caux, Gigean, Loupian, an IX—1875); 6 (Montbazin, Montpeyroux, Olonzac, an IX-1877); 7 (Poussan, an IX-1858); 8 (Saint-Martin-de-Londres, an IX-1806); 9 (Servian, anIX-1901); 10(Thezan, 1818-1914); 13 (Aniane, anXI-1942);
284
Bibliography
15 (Beziers, an XI-1835); 25 (Cazouls-les-Beziers, an XII-1936); 29 (Ganges, an XIII-1942); 34 (Montpellier, an IX-1845); 53 (Pezenas, 1806-1945) 9 X = Hospital accounts, early nineteenth century: 2, 3 (Bessan, Florensac, Saint-Chinian, Vias, 1813-17); 250, 251 (Beziers, an VIII-1827); 253 (Clermont, an VIII-1868); 265 (Lodeve, an VIII-1830); 272, 273, 277 (Montpellier, an VIII-1826); 280 (Pezenas, an VIII-1832); 291 (Sette, an X-1831) 1 1 X 7 Public assistance, an IX-1815 12 X 1, X 3 Correspondence regarding children in the care of hospitals, an IX-1813 12 X 4 Apprenticeships, wet-nurses, an IX—1819 12 X 2 5 6 Societe de charite maternelle, 1 8 1 1 - 1 6 11.
Unclassified series
Archives of the Presidial and Senechaussee of Montpellier. I consulted the registers of wills insinuated before this tribunal in order to check for wills made by residents of Montpellier in the years 1740, 1741, 1785 and 1786 which did not appear in the registers of Montpellier's notaries. Only a couple of such wills were discovered. II. COMMUNAL ARCHIVES 1.
Archives Municipals
de Montpellier
Largely unclassified. (i) Ancien Regime
BB Communal administration (BB Reg. = registers of the deliberations of the Conseil de Ville, 1700-90) FF Police (FF Reg. = registers of the ordinances and judgements issued by the Bureau de Police, 1700-90) GG Death registers of the Montpellier hospitals, 1700—92; also materials relating to public assistance (hospitals, repression of begging, almsgiving, confreries etc.) HH Agriculture, trade and industry II 46 Plan of the Hopital General II 486 Plan of the buildings owned by the Misericorde (ii) Post 1790 D General administration (including registers of deliberations of the municipality) I Police, prisons, depot de mendicite 2.
Archives Municipales de Beziers
GG 182 — GG 184 Beziers Hopital Mage: deaths register, eighteenth century HH 4, HH 5 Mercuriale, 1673-1821
Bibliography
285
III. ARCHIVES NATIONALES
AF IV 1042 National crime statistics, 1809-11 AF IV 1062 Trade, industry, 1811 AF IV 1067 Dep6ts de mendicite\ Rumford soups, 1812 BB 3 26 Vagrancy, 1806-7 BB 18 364—372 Herault: banditry, vagrancy, crime, prisons, religion etc., an IV-1814 D III 103—106 Herault: religion, crime, Maximum etc., an II—an IV F 7 3035, 3901, 8560—8563 Herault: crime, begging, vagrancy, police etc., an IX-1812 F 7 9663 Situation of Montpellier, 1818 F 8 110 Herault: smallpox vaccinations, 1801-17 F 15 172 Montpellier hospital finances, an XIII-1806 F 15 226 Languedoc hospitals, 1785-6 F 15 284, 313, 340, 373, 385 Herault: hospitals, an IV-an IX F 15 433 Herault: foundlings, depot de mendicite etc., 1792-an XIII F 15 444, 448 Id: hospitals, assistance, 1790-1818 F 15 748—751 Id: legacies to hospitals and other charitable institutions, an IX-1816 F 15 1423 Olonzac: bureau de bienfaisance, early nineteenth century F 15 2295 Herault: hospital accounts, an IV-1814 F 15 2561 Id: religious personnel in hospitals, an IV—1812 F 15 2742, 2752, 2791, 3516, 3530, 3539, 3547, 3590, 3619 Id: assistance, vagrancy, indigence etc., 1780—1820 F 15 3959 'Memoire sur la charite legale', 1845 F 15 3964, 4261 Begging, foundlings etc., 1752-1867 F 16 518, 812, 937 Herault: prisons, depot de mendicite etc., an III—1812 F 16 1007 Montpellier depot de mendicite, 1808—17; departmental enquiry into poverty and assistance, 1809 F 16 1089 Montpellier depdt de mendicite F 20 116 Herault: population enquiries, late 1790s F 20 195, 196 Herault: reports and statistics, an IX-an XIV F 20 334 Herault: active citizens, 1790 F 20 434, 435 Enquiry on migrations, 1811-12 H 556, 927, 939 Begging, depots de mendicite in Languedoc, 1780s H 1 1021, 748292 Montpellier: reports, eighteenth century S 6160, 6161, 6163, 6169,617r 1, 6173 Contracts of service and other documents relating to the service of thefillesde la charitewith charitable institutions in the following localities: Agde, Beziers, Cazouls-les-Beziers, Lodeve, Lunel, Montpellier, Saint-Pons, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Z lc 475, 476 Languedoc marechaussee, 1780s IV. BIBLIOTHfeQUE NATIONALE
Fonds frangais 6801 'Etablissements charitables', 1714-90 Fonds frangais 7511-7514 Documents from the archives of the Due de Castries, Governor of Montpellier, relating to the city in the late eighteenth century
286
Bibliography
Fondsfrangais 8129, 8130 Royal social policy and legislation, eighteenth century Collection de Languedoc ( Benedictins) 11, (Agde), 12 (Beziers), 18 (Montpellier) 'Description g£ographique et historique des paroisses'. Replies to diocesan enquiry, 1759 V. BIBLIOTHEQUE MUNICIPALE DE MONTPELLIER
Ms. 48 C.S. Bernard de Ballainvilliers, 'Memoires sur le Languedoc, divises par dioceses et sub-delegations' (1788) Ms. 48 bis. Id., 'Memoires sur les hopitaux' (1788) Ms. 261 P J . Amoreux, 'Memoire sur la topographie medicale de Montpellier et de son territoire' (1779) Ms. 286 Id., 'Topographie historique physique et medicale de la cote maritime du diocese de Montpellier' (1787) Ms. 561 bis. Id., 'Memoire sur les abus qui s'opposent aux progres de l'agriculture aux environs de Montpellier' (1789)
VI. OTHER ARCHIVE SOURCES CONSULTED 1.
Archives consistoriales de Montpellier
Located in building adjoining Protestant church, Rue Maguelone. Unclassified documents relating to the re-establishment of Protestant worship in the 1760s and then again under the Consulate and Empire. Also a substantial 'Recueil de pieces concernant l'hospice de charite etabli a Montpellier en 1785'. 2.
Archives de I'Oeuvre du Fret Gratuit
Located in the premises of the Oeuvre, Rue de 1'Eveche. Unclassified. Little that was not put to use in the thorough work of L. Mandon (Mandon, 1892) who, however, refrains from any statistical treatment of the data. 3.
Archives hospitalieres de Saint-Pons
Property of the hospital. Classified early in the twentieth century by J. Sahuc (Sahuc, 1910), the archives have not been properly kept, and some appear to have been lost. I consulted the following: E 1 Deliberations, 1666-1752; E 2 Id., 1754-83; and G 2 Bureau des pauvres, 1761-72 4.
Archives departementales du Gard
Unclassified archives of the hotel-Dieu of Nimes: registers of admissions, eighteenth century.
Bibliography B.
PRINTED
287
SOURCES
I. PRIMARY SOURCES
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Index
Place-names within the department of the H£rault are given with the name of the district to which they were assigned in 1790 (B = B6ziers; L = Lodeve; M = Montpellier; St P = Saint-Pons); other French localities are given with the name of their department. For poor-relief institutions in individual localities, see under 'home-relief institutions' and 'hospitals' rather than under place-names. Agadensis, 23 Agadois, 224. See also Agde, Ancien Regime diocese of Agde(B), 11, 20 Ancien Regime diocese of, 7, 23: poor-relief provision in, 46; medical provision in, 116-17, 118n aged, the, 4, 61, 62, 66, 97, 103, 121, 140, 154, 160, 178, 182, 191 'agrarian individualism', 31 Aigues-Mortes (Gard), 35 Albi(Tarn), 19, 118 Ancien Regime diocese of, 15 Albigensian crusade, 23 Ales (Gard), Ancien Regime diocese of, 15 alms, 50, 56, 57, 64, 67, 91-3, 95, 166, 168, 208, 213, 225. See also alms-giving, charity, 'mutualism' alms-giving, 1-2, 4, 39-42, 45, 50, 74-5, 76-9, 91, 166 Amoreux, 97, 113, 114, 119, 121 Amsterdam, 20 anti-clericalism, 1, 5, 39, 84, 166, 196, 201, 211 archers des pauvres, 61. See also chasse-gueux
Areconici, 23 Argenson, Marquis d', 24 Arm£e des Pyr£n6es Orientales, 172 artificial respiration, 136 assignat, 162-4, 170, 179, 187, 194 ateliers de charite, 133n, 135, 136, 165 ateliers de secours, 160 aumdne, see alms
Avene (L), 236
Ballainvilliers, C. S. Bernard de, 141, 142, 264 banditry, 138, I48n, 227, 244, 245 Barere, 166, 176, 180, 197 'baroque piety', 82, 84, 85, 201, 210 Bartelemy, Etienne, 195 BasLanguedoc,7,25,26,27,45,70, 117, 126, 146 agriculture, 11, 16-17, 31-2, 34, 148, 241, 251 climate, I4n, 27, 34, 35, 251 communications, 11, 14, 19, 32, 242, 251 economic development, 30—4, 162, 241—3, 247, 249 migrations, 14-17, 35-6, 96, 148, 251 towns and cities, 15, 96, 236. See also under individual cities
trade and industry, 12, 17-18, 30-2, 34, 147, 162, 184, 241-3, 246 Baumes, 204 Beaucaire (Gard), 20, 30; 242 Beauce, 147 begging, 15, 22, 41-2, 61, 77, 95-6, 245 as expression of social tension, 23, 37, 243 polemics concerning, 3, 5, 29, 132, 166 repression of, 50, 111, 133, 134, 135, 230 see also poor; government, campaigns against begging and vagrancy; vagrancy Beziers, 32, 33, 114, 164, 209 Ancien Regime diocese of, 7, 16, 23, 31: poor-relief provision in, 45, 46, 72, 224; medical provision in, 118n sub-delegate of, 72, 189 bienfaisance, IS passim, 75, 91, 98, 128, 130, 154, 176, 183, 185, 186, 252, 257 central government and, 5, 160—1
307
308
Index
bienfaisance — cont.
and charitable giving, 75, 87, 92, 93, 166, 212-13 historiography concerning, 5—7 see also alms; alms-giving; charity; poor-relief institutions biens nationaux, 161, 162, 174, 241 Biterrensis, 23 Biterrois, see Beziers, Ancien Regime diocese of Boisset, 196 Boissier de Sauvages, 121 boites cCHelvetius, see boites de remedes boites de remedes, 117, 1 3 7 - 8 , 235
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 76, 201. See also Empire Bonnier de la Mosson, 91—2 Bon Pasteur, of Be"ziers, 175; of Montpellier, 79, 88, 89, 168 Bordeaux (Gironde), 118 Bouillet, 114 bourgs, 24, 71, 196, 224, 226 Boussagues (B), 46 Boyer-Fonfrede, 223, 224 brigandage, see banditry Broussonet, Victor, 205, 207 Bureau de Mendicite, 138, 150, 154, 159 bureau gratuit de vaccination, 239 bureaux ctaumones, 138—9
bureaux de bienfaisance, 213, 219, 240, 245 administration of, 196, 217-18, 225 geographical distribution of, 225—9, 254—5 legislation instituting, 195 see also bureaux de charite"; home-relief institutions bureauxdecharite,49, 111, 132, 135, 139, 160, 182 administration of, 50, 71, 98 effects of Revolution on, 168, 169 geographical distribution of, 48, 136, 263—4 see also home-relief institutions burial sites, 64, 81, 83, 84-5, 97, 170, 210, 211. See also cemeteries Burke and Hare, 125 Cadiz, 20 causes de secours et de prevoyance, 230
Cambaceres, Abbe, 76 Cambon, Joseph, 168 camp-followers, 152 Canal de Lunel, 30 Canal du Midi, 11, 30, 32, 242 Carcassonne (Aude), Ancien Regime diocese of, 17; Lieutenance (marecbaussee), 146 Catholic Reformation, see religious revival, in seventeenth century Causses, 17 cemeteries, 97, 136, 170, 208, 210. See also burial sites Cessenon (St P), 46, 179
Cevennes, 12, 17, 104, 193, 194, 224 Chalons-sur-Marne (Marne), Academy of, 5 Chaptal, 31, 200, 203, 229-30 Charigny, 117 charitable donors, 79, 87-8, 93-4, 95, 130, 131-2, 209n, 211, 254. See also alms-giving; charity; testamentary charity; wills Charites, 49, 263-4 chari.ty, 1-8 passim, 23, 67, 75, 237, 252 in collection boxes, 78, 79, 207-8, 219 in collections, 64, 78-9, 86, 168, 174, 208, 2l6n, 219 critique of, 2-5, 7, 131-3, 159-61 geographical availability of, 24, 45, 178 poor-relief administration, as an act of, 51, 53, 56, 202-3, 225 popular attitudes towards, 6—7, 95—112 passim
religious motivation behind, 2, 76—7, 166, 169 trends in: decline in Ancien Regime, 74—5, 79, 107, 131; decline in early 1790s, 162, 164, 166, 172, 188; revival in late 1790s and 1800s, 207-12; long-term decline, 212-13, 253, 257 see also alms; alms-giving; bienfaisance;
charitable donors; clergy; foundations; 'mutualism'; seigneurs; testamentary charity charity pawnshops, 99- See also Pret Gratuit charivaris, 20, 25 charlatans, 22, 117-18, 137, 236 chasse-gueux, 61, 111, 134, 141 Chaurand, 49 chestnuts, 14, 106, 126 child abandonment, 103, 192. See also enfants trouves; hospitals, children within; illegitimacy; orphans church lands, see biens nationaux citoyennes, 197—8
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 164, 168, 197, 199, 202, 209 clergy, 5, 37, 62, 66, 61, 115, 210, 212, 251-2 bishops, 23-4, 136, 201, 209; and poor relief, 24, 50-1, 71, 73, 90, 99, 108, 219, 224 constitutional clergy, 197 cures, 22,39, 116, 170: and poor relief, 50, 71, 72, 76, 82, 98, 106, 108, 137, 166, 168, 211 monastic clergy, and poor relief, 3, 40—2, 75, 98, 167-8 non-jurors, 198, 209 Clermont(L), 16, 17, 34, 117 Clermont (Puy-de-D6me), Ancien Regime diocese of, 15 Code Civil, 219
coitus interruptus, 211
309
Index Colbert, 38, 77, 82-3, 91-2 Collot d'Herbois, 186 Colombier, Jean, 69, 112, 127, 134 Comite de Mendicity, 8, I4n, 46, 133n, 159-61, 166, 169, 174, 175, 178-9, 180, 183, 185, 217, 226, 231, 236, 252, 264 comite de salut public, 186 comite des secours publics, 186 comites de surveillance, 173 commission des secours publics, 186
communes, see communities; municipalities; village community communities, 24, 73, 171, 177, 213, 226 compagnonnages, 77, 94n, 230 compoix, 25
Concordat, 199, 200, 209n, 210, 230 confreries, 82, 85
des penitents, 92-3, 99, 168, 211, 219, 230 du saint-sacrement, 92
constitutions, of 1791, 160; of Year III, 182 Consulate, 201, 213, 219. See also Empire Continental System, 242 Cosne, Alexandre, 118 counter-revolution, 172 Cournonsec (M), 98 crime, 3, 22, 23, 29, 37, 77, 132, 133, 138, 148, 151, 152, 249, 251. See also begging; vagrancy criminal vagrants, see vagabonds customs officials, 221 'dead season, 18, 33n, 135, 147 decadi, 197, 198 'dechristianisation', see anti-clericalism
dissections, 124-5, 205-7 districts, 177, 178-9, 182 drailles, 16-17 Dreyfus, Ferdinand, 173 droit sur les spectacles, 213n
economic independence, 26—7, 95—6 Edict of Blois (1560), 50 Edict of Nantes, Revocation of (1685) 20, 84, 90 education, 8, 24, 26, 100 emigration, 164, 174 Empire, 209, 211, 213, 216, 219, 220, 229, 230, 241, 246, 247, 251. See also Bonaparte, Napoleon employment, 2, 101, 113, 133, 135, 153, 161, 243 Encyclopedie, 2, 52, 94, 120, 204, 255 enfants trouves, 62-3, 66, 96, 103-8, 160, 192-4, 223-4, 256 adoptions of, 105, 106n diet, 104 messageres, 105, 194
mortality, 104, 105, 106-7, 192, 223 rise in numbers, 103, 107, 193 wet-nurses, 63, 104-5, 106, 193-4 England, 1, 31, 34 poor laws in, 1, 45, 138, 159 Enlightenment, 3, 5, 21 epidemics, 29, 35, 36, 57, 102-3, 114-15, 126, 172, 178. See also disease; illnesses epileptics, 248 esprit de clocher, 23. See also localism
family, 17-18, 22, 32-4, 62, 114, 132, 140, 176, 177, 179 Delpech, 207 and kin, 24, 71, 95-6, 97, 98 depdt de mendicite: at Le Puy, 140, 146-7; at famine, 29, 32 Montpellier, 68, 140, 153; at Toulouse, Farel, 188 140, 146-7 fermage, 27 depdts de mendicite Fete-Dieu, 84 admissions and discharges, 140, 151, 152, Fete du Malheur, 178, 183 153—4, 163, 247 'feudalism', 37-40, 161, 167, 185, 241 Ecole des Accouchements, see Maternite Filles de la Charite, 50, 53, 56, 97, 123, 197, establishment in 1768, 140 198n. See also nursing sisters internal regime, 140, 152-3, 247-9 medical facilities within, 60, 146, 152, 248 filles de la charite de Saint Augustin, 199 Fizes, 120 reopening in 1808, 231, 240-1 Fleury (Aude), 40 temporary closure in 1775, 140—1, I48n Fleury, Abbe, 17 types of inmates, 151-2, 154, 247-9 folkloric medicine, 115-16, 120 unpopularity, 141, 154-5, 251 fondsperdus, 5 7 - 9 , 60, 66, 68, 69. See also rentes see also government, campaigns against viageres begging and vagrancy foundations, charitable, 54, 62, 64, 76,98, 168, desertion, 141, 191 diet in, therapy, 116, 125—6 218-19, 254 Directory, 184, 201, 230-1. See also critique of, 2-3, 52, 93-4, 255 foundlings, see enfants trouves Revolutionary assemblies disease, 35, 96, 99, 102-3, 173-4, 239. Seealso Fouquet, Henri, 204 Fournier, bishop of Montpellier, 201, 212 epidemics; illnesses defenseurs de la patrie, 176—7, 236
310
Index
Fournier, Pierre, 113 Franchiman, 25
freemasonry, 21, 91-3, 230 funerals, 82-3, 85-6, 93, 187, 210, 230 attendance of hospital inmates at, 82,85, 170, 197, 202, 208, 210 Gaillac (Tarn), 118 galleys, 140, 150-1 Ganges (M), 15, 17, 34 Gard, department of, 223 garrigues, 11, 17, 18
Gascony, 34 gavach, 25
gendarmerie, 244, 246 Geneva, 20 government aid: to agriculture and industry, 135; to military hospitals, 173; to poor-relief institutions, 1, 57,66,68-9, 167, 186-8, 189, 194, 217-18, 222-3 campaigns against begging and vagrancy: prior to 1764, 34,61-2,133-4, 138, 247; 1764 to 1790, 138-55 passim, 247; 1790 to 1808, 176-7, 243; 1808 to 1815, 231, 240-1, 243, 246-52 passim. See also begging; dlpdts de mendicite"; vagrancy legislation: on cemeteries (1776), 64, 85; on congregations (1792), 168; on hospital administration (1698), 50; on land reclamation (1771), 32; on local government (Ancien Regime), 26; on medicine (Revolution), 173, 203, 204; on mortmain (1749), 41, 75; on religious vows (1789), 199 reform of poor relief by: under Ancien Regime, 5, 50, 74, 133, 175; under Revolution, 7-8, 159-61, 166, 174-5, 176, 177, 183, 184, 185, 188, 217, 227; under Napoleon, 213-30 passim tutelage over poor-relief institutions, 57, 69, 71, 133, 218-19, 251-2 'Grand Livre de Bienfaisance Nationale', 176-83, 188 grand renfermement des pauvres, 4, 98, 134
Granier, 197 grave-digging, 85, 125 Grenada, 75 Guevarre, 49 guilds, 77 healers, 115-16 health propaganda, 135—8 Hfrault department of, 7, 12, 17, 23, 46, 164, 193, 201, 227, 230, 237, 240, 246, 252, 254, 256: population of, 142, 244, 255 river, 23
home-relief institutions (general) administration, 71-5, 168, 195 advocated by reformers of poor laws: under Ancien Regime, 4-5, 89n, 132, 139, 154, 155; under Revolution, 166, 169, 176 charitable income, 50, 226, 227 effects of Revolution on, 169, 188 geographical distribution of, 46—50, 136, 225-7, 229, 263-73 government enquiries into, 46—9, 225—6, 263-5 history of, 49-50 policing functions, 50, 54-5, 227-8 preference for, shown by charitable donors, 74, 89, 132 tendency towards secretiveness, 71, 98, 169, 201 vetting of poor by, 98 home-relief institutions (individual localities) Baucels, 169 Briers (Misericorde), 169 Corneilhan, 72 Ganges, 49n Loupian, 229 Meze, 229 Montbazin, 229 Montpellier(Misencorde), 49-52, 53-6, 61, 63, 64, 70, 163, 226, 254: chambre de travail, 54, 89, 171; charitable income, 54-6, 78-9, 80, 88, 165, 211, 213-16; clientele, 52, 54, 55—6; denominational and moralistic character, 54—6; dispensary, 54, 56, 213; effects of Revolution, 169; finances, 55, 56, 214-15, 218; medical personnel attached to, 54; nursing sisters, 56, 198, 199-200; primary schooling given by, 54; service to local poor, 52-3, 54-6; soupes economiques, 226
Montpellier (Protestant bureau de charite"), 90-1 Saint-Bauzille-de-Putois, 196 'hopital', 49, 176 'hopitaux de transport', 96 hopitaux g&ieraux, 3, 35n, 45, 49, 61, 77, 86, 96-7, 108, 111, 131-2, 133, 135. Seealso hospitals 'hospice', 49, 176, 197 hospitals (general) administration, 50-1, 70-5, 109, 111, 132-4, 160, 185-8, 194-200, 217-18, 224-6, 240, 252, 256 admissions, 52, 53, 74, 121, 171, 225, 229, 255 blackmarket in goods, 110, 171 buildings and construction, 73-4, 100, 171, 218, 252 calendar of entries, 35, 96, 101 chapels, 97, 108, 160, 201
Index hospitals (general) — cont. chaplains, 99, 108, 201 charitable income, 74-5, 108, 207-13, 2l6n children within, 104-8, 191, 223-4, 237. See
311
work within, 4, 61, 107, 109, 110n, 134 hospitals (individual localities) Agde, 42, 191, 198, 217, 221 Balaruc, 63, 122-3, 236 also enfants troupes, orphans Bedarieux, 190 closures under Revolution, 169, 170, 188-9, Beziers, 73, 92, 217: Hdpital Mage, 47, 97n, 224, 229, 254 99, 102, 107, 191, 199, 221, 222n; conditions of inmates, 73-5, 100, 102-3, Hotel-Dieu Saint-Joseph, 47, 167, 175 171, 190, 216-17, 220-2, 229 Cazouls-les-Beziers, 102, 175, 198 converted into bureaux de bienfaisance, 49n, Clermont, 73, 75, 172, 191, 198 224 Frontignan, 73, 190, 222 'dechristianisation' under Terror, 196-7, 198 Ganges, 188 diet within, 109, 125-7, 171, 190, 206 Gignac, 208 discipline within, 108, 110-11 La Salvetat, 190 effect of Revolution on, 170—2 Lodeve, 72, 73, 97n, 172, 192, 199, 216, entry into, 95-6, 98, 99, 108 218, 220 fee-paying inmates, 74, 97 Lunel, 221 financial problems, 4, 70-5, 101, 103, 107, Marseillan, 35n, 36, 73, 96, 102, 208, 216, 218 126, 129-30, 169-70 founders and benefactors, 51, 52—3, 63—4, Meze, 73, 172, 192 Montagnac, 167, 188, 190 108, 254, 256 geographical distribution of, 4, 45—8, 226, Montpellier, 20, 23, 92, 93, 162-3, 165, 170-1, 188: administration of, 51-2, 54, 254, 263-73 72, 73, 186-8, 195, 225-6; effects of and government campaigns against begging Revolution on, 170-1, 188, 202; service to and vagrancy, see government, campaigns local poor, 52-3, 61, 69-70, 164-6, 249 against begging and vagrancy —, Hopital General, 20, 38, 78, 86, 93, 108, hygiene within, 4, 99-101, 123, 129, 160, 118, 162, 251: administration, 50-1, 52, 190-1, 221, 256 62-9, 88, 109; admissions, 52, 63, 64, inspectors of, 134, 216, 217, 256-7. See also 67-9, 99, 126, 171, 224-5, 262; Colombier, Jean apprenticeships and dowries, 63, 67, 171, internal regime, 108-10 223; bankruptcy, 67—9; borrowing, 63—9, isolation from outside world, 109-10, 203 187; building and construction, 63—4, letters patent, 50, 57, 73, 74 66-7, 68, 69, 100; capacity, 47, 63, 67, medical aspects, 52, 96, 97, 101, 121-9, 68, 69; chapel, 64, 67, 85, 196, 197, 208; 131-2, 190, 199, 222, 256 chaplain, 108; charitable income, 64—9, medical personnel, 99, 110, 121-9, 203 78-9, 80, 88, 165, 208, 211, 213, 216; 'militarisation', 172-4, 188, 191-2, 219, children within, 62-3, 66, 96-7, 107-8, 220-2, 255 187, 192-4, 197, 248-9; condition of mortality within, 60, 101—3, 207, 221-2, inmates, 68, 99, 102-3, 108-10, 220; 256 control over Balaruc spa, 63, 123; 'municipalisation' in 1790s, 194, 195 'dechristianisation' within, 196—7; depot de nationalisation of hospital property, 174-5 conservation de vaccin, 239; diet of inmates, number of beds, 173, 219-20, 229, 255 126, 171, 190; discipline within, 62, outdoor relief given by, 49, 52, 74, 132, 189 111-12, 198; finances, 51, 63-9, 79n, property-holding of, 70, 72, 167, 174-5, 106, 186-8, 214-15, 218; history, 61; 185, 218 home relief supplied by, 62, 63, 67, 69, 70; receveurs, 218 hygiene within, 100—3, 125; inmates of, 'rechristianisation', 207—9 61—3, 69, 70, 82, 262; letters patent, 61, regulations, 110, 111 62, 69; medical aspect, 104, 204; mortality religion within, 108-10, 201, 206-7, 208-9 within, 103; nursing sisters, 51, 53, sites, 99-100, 108 111-12, 123, 197-8, 200; passade given staff, 110-11, 189, 191-2, 193, 222, 256 by, 62, 67, 69; policing and moralising as traps for disease and death, 100—2, 108, functions, 61—2; property losses, 175; range 130, 132 of services, 61—3; regulations, 69, 108, types of inmates, 74, 97, 110-11, 121 111—12; religious atmosphere, 61-2; uniform within, 99, 109, 111-12 seigneurial rights, 67-8; staff, 68, 111-12, unpopularity with poor, 97, 98, 99, 103, 128, 198; surgery for ailments, 62—3; treasurer, 132, 176, 206, 253-4
312
Index
hospitals (individual) — cont. 51, 68; work within, 65-6, 68, 69, 110, 112, 170, 203 —, Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi, 20, 62, 64, 66, 97, 109, 220: administration, 52, 57-61, 124-30; admissions, 15, 16, 35n, 36, 52, 56-7, 60-1, 121, 129, 222, 261; beggars fromdepotdemendicite,60,6l, 129, 153, 162; blesses, 129; borrowing, 57-9, 60; building and reconstruction, 57, 59, 60, 61, 100, 129n, 222; capacity, 47, 56, 61, 101, 221-2; chaplain, 53, 124; charitable income, 57-8, 78-9, 80, 88, 129, 165, 206, 208, 211-12, 213-16; clinical teaching within, 127-8, 204-7; 'dechristianisation' within, 196—7; diet of inmates, 126—7, 171, 206; dissections within, 124-5, 205-7; fear of entry, 97, 101; fee-paying inmates, 58—61, 70; fievreux, 129; finances, 57-61, 187, 214-15, 218; hygiene within, 56-7, 100-3, 127, 222; inmates, 56-60, 70, 261 {see also insane; soldiers); medical aspect, 52, 97, 124-9; medical personnel, 101, 110; mortality within, 60, 101, 103, 221-2; nursing sisters, 53, 123, 127, 199, 206-7; operating theatre, 129, 197; property losses, 175, 184—5; segregation of inmates, 129; seigneurial income, 167; treasurer, 188 — , Hopital Saint-Louis (military hospital), 122 — , military hospitals (Revolutionary era), 172-4 — , Protestant hospital, 47, 91, 128 Nimes, 103, 104, 126 Olargues, 188, 190 Paris, 107: Hospice de la Maternite, 237 Pezenas, 97n, 190, 191, 198, 216, 221: Grange-des-Pres (military hospital), 191 Saint-Chinian, 100, 102, 217 Saint-Pons, 73, 97n, 99-100, 102, 125, 189, 190, 192, 199, 217 Serignan, 196 Servian, 189 Sette, 72, 73, 125, 167, 172, 192, 216-17 Thezan, 189 Toulouse, 147, 223 Valros, 196 hotels-dieu, 4, 96, 214 houses of correction, 160, 176 Hufton, Olwen, 42 illegitimacy, 62, 96, 103, 104, 170, 171. Seealso en/ants trouves
illnesses, and medical conditions asthma, 112 blindness, 224
chest disease, 103 contagious disease, 255 dysentery, 191 eye troubles, 118 fevers, 114, 191, 194 fievre maligne, 115
gallstones, 63, 67 gangrene, 102, 126-7, 129 'gaol fever' see typhus gastric complaints, 191 halitosis, 118 hernia, 112, 113, 117, 182 'hospital fever', 102 hypothermia, 103 itch, 248 malaria, 35, 137, 239 nervous disease, 123 plague, 29, 114 pneumonia, 103 rheumatism, 63, 123 ringworm, 63, 67, 121 scabies, 102, 121, 248 scarlet fever, 35 scrofula, 121, 194, 248 skin diseases, 35, 52, 136, 191, 224, 230 smallpox, 35, 52, 136, 137, 191, 204, 224, 230, 239 stomach ailments, 118 syphilis, 115, 118, 121, 129, 255 tinea, 102 typhoid fever, 35, 191 typhus, 35, 102, 191 venereal disease, 52, 105, 122, 133, 146, 172, 194, 248, 251 see also disease; epidemics; insane infanticide, 62 infirm, 4, 61, 66, 97, 121, 139, 140, 160, 176, 178, 191, 192, 246 inflation, 70, 73, 79, 106, 131, 162, 242 insane, 136, 152, 154, 160, 176, 248 treatment in the Montpellier Hotel-Dieu, 56, 58-9, 70, 129, 203, 221, 248 Intendants, 138, 152 Interior, Minister of, 187, 193, 198, 199, 200, 203, 204, 205, 207, 225, 246 Invau, Controleur-general d', 143 Italy, 12 itinerant workers, 15, 63, 96, 121 Jansenism, 82, 84, 111 Jenner, Edward, 239 journees militaires, 59, 188, 221
July Monarchy, 253-4 justices of the peace, 228 Lamalou, 236 land-ownership, 20, 27-8, 31-2, 37, 40, 162, 241
Index Languedoc, 22, 34, 37, 139, 142, 165 dioceses of, 23, 137, 164, 168 Estates of, 11, 15, 18-19, 22, 23-4, 25, 73, 116-17, 135, 136, 164: and poor relief, 24, 139; and campaigns against begging and vagrancy, 141-2, 148, 150-1, 152-3
313
maires, 225, 228, 229, 244 Maison des Orphelines (Clermont), 75 'Malthusian' checks, 29 marechaussee, 134, 244
economic position, 143—6 functions, 140, 141-2 gouverneur, 19, 54 'militarisation', 149—50 Intendantof, 19, 24, 54, 60, 117, 137, 140, numbers, 142, 146, 244 142, 148, 149, 152, 166. See also reforms, 142, 146, 149-50 Ballainvilliers; Saint-Priest role in campaign against begging and population, 142, 154 vagrancy, 141—54 passim prevot des marechaussees, 19, 141, 143. See also unpopularity, 146 Marseilles, 20, 114 marechaussee Marx, 161 Royal Inspector of military hospitals, 126 Larochefoucauld-Liancourt, Due de, 159, masques armes, 37, I48n 175-6 masses, for the repose of the soul, 81, 83, 86, La Tapie, Raymond de, 117 210 Launac, 191 Massif Central, 7, 15, 16, 227. See also mountain L'Averdy, de, 138, 142, 153 areas Law, John, 57, 63, 70, 134, 162-3 Maternite (Montpellier), 237 law-courts, 61, 141, 245, 246 Maundy Thursday, 78-9, 80, 86, 2l6n Laws of Ventose, 177, 183 Mende (Lozere), Ancien Regime diocese of, 15 legacies, 51, 56, 68, 74, 80-90 passim. See also medecins des epidemies, 239 charitable donors, testamentary charity; medical institutions wills faculties of medicine, 117, 203. See also legion d'honneur, 237 Montpellier, Medical Faculty leper-houses, 45 guilds of apothecaries, 117, 123, 203 Le Pouget (L), 45 guilds of surgeons, 117, 203. See also LePuy, (Haute Loire), Lieutenance (marechaussee), Montpellier, College of Surgery 146 medical personnel, 53, 92, 113—30 passim, letters patent, 78, 134, 166. See also hospitals 236-9 lettres de cachet, 152 doctors, 26, 35, 101, 103, 104, 110, 113-14, Levant, 17, 30, 34 115, 116-18, 119-21 life expectancy, 57 students, 85, 124, 125, 127, 129, 205, 207, literacy, 71, 149, 196, 228 230 livret ouvrier, 246 surgeons, 26, 99, 114, 116, 118-19, 124 localism, 23-8, 225, 228-9 see also charlatans; home-relief institutions; Lodeve, 14, 17, 77, 117, 242 hospitals; midwives 'medical revolution', 7, 116, 124 Ancien Regime diocese of, 7, 23: poor-relief medical statistics, 124 provision in, 46; medical provision in, medicine 116-17, 118n bishop, 72, 73 geographical availability of, 118n, 119—20, district of, 182 137, 178, 235, 239 municipality, 72, 199 popular attitudes towards, 113—30, passim, sub-delegate, 116—17 236 Lomenie de Brienne, 23-4, 135, 141 reform of, during Revolution, 203—4 London, 20 mendicity, see begging longue duree, 7, 23, 209n
metayage, 27
Louis XVI, 24 Loupian (M), 229 Low Countries, 31 Lunaret, Abbe, 213 lunatics, see insane Lutovensis, 23 lying-in facilities, 133, 249, 251
meteil, 14, 32-3, 88, 212n, 226n, 243n, 261 midwives, 62, 116-17, 136 technical education of, 116—17, 137, 204, 206, 236-7, 249 migrants, 15, 96, 121, 147-9, 251. SeealsoBas Languedoc, migrations military hospitals under Ancien Regime, 122 after 1789, 172-4, 187, 191-2, 220 military medicine, 172, 203-4, 220
mafias, 26, 146 Magalonensis, 23
314
Index
military welfare policies, 172—4, 176—7 Millin, 205 mineral spas, 115, 122-3, 236 Misericordes, 49-50, 71, 98, 168, 169, 180, 201, 226, 263-4. See also home-relief institutions mixture, see meteil Moliere, 120 monetary crisis, 162-4, 166, 172, 184, 242 Montagnac (B), 16 Montbazin (M), 229 Montblanc (B), 45 Mont-Carmel and Saint-Lazare, military order of, 45 Montpellier (city), 11-12, 18-23, 25, 27, 38, 77,113,118,120,122, 132-3, 154,165, 178, 188, 191, 209, 210, 213, 216, 230, 236, 244, 249, 253 administrative functions of, 18—20, 164 Association Patriotique, 166 bishop, 19, 49-50, 53, 59, 64, 90, 164, 209 Bourse des Marchands, 19 Bureau de Police, 23, 78 bureau de sante, 173, 207n Bureau des Finances, 19, 50 cathedral chapter, 19, 39, 50, 164 charitable giving in, see alms-giving; charity, testamentary giving climate, 12-14 College of Surgery, 118 comite de surveillance, 173, 207n Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances, 19, 20, 50, 54, 78, 164 cures, 22, 86, 89 d£p6t de mendicite", see d6p6t de mendicity Ecole de Sante\ 173, 204 labouring classes, 21, 230, 249 masonic lodges, see freemasonry Medical Faculty, 19-20, 119, 120, 121, 125, 127-8, 204, 237, 239 military garrison, 128, 164 monasteries, 85, 93, 164 municipal authorities, 57, 59, 64, 69, 166, 187, 195, 248 patois, 21 poor, 21, 22, 53, 59-61, 63, 68, 78, 86, 88, 89, 111, 211, 249 Pr&idial, 19, 50, 78 procureur du roi, 84 prostitutes, 22, 62,89, 123, 168, 249. Seealso prostitutes reputation for charitableness, 77, 87, 253 S6n6chaussee, 19 social elite, 19-21, 22, 51, 53-4, 85-6, 91, 93-4, 99, 166, 212 societe de mededne pratique, 239 Soci6t6 des Amis de la Constitution, 166 societipopulaire, 204
Societe Royale des Sciences, 21 theatre, 21, 22 topography, 12, 21—2 trade and industry, 12, 20, 31, 242 University, 19-20, 119, 164 Montpellier, Ancien Regime diocese of, 7, 23, 27, 31, 37, 59, 64, 77 poor-relief provision in: 38, 39, 46—50, 52—3 medical provision in, 116—17, 118n, 119n Montpellier, district of, 46, 179 Montpellier region, see Bas Languedoc; Montpellier, Ancien Regime diocese of mortality crises, 29, 96, 126, 242 mountain areas, 7, 12, 14-18, 35-6, 45-6, 137, 226, 227, 229, 236, 241 municipalities, 173, 185, 194-5, 196, 206, 217, 227. See also communities; village community municipal tolls, 55, 57-8, 64-6, 167, 213. See also octroi
'mutualism', 91-4, 132, 230-1 Narbonne (Aude), 19, 118 archbishop of, 19, 24, 150 sub-delegate of, 117 Necker, 153 Madame Necker, 91, 132 Nimes, 17, 34 sub-delegate of, 119 notaries, 26, 80, 83, 219 nursing sisters, 50, 53,99, 108, 110, 196-200, 202, 208-9, 223, 256 disputes with doctors, 123-30, 206-7, 252 see also Filles de la Charite"; hospitals octroi, 213-18, 222, 224, 225, 236, 252. Seealso municipal tolls Oeuvre des Prisonniers (Montpellier), 54, 89, 171 Oeuvre des Prisons (Montpellier), 21 In, 213n, 219 offtders de sante, 173, 178, 179, 182 opium, 104 Orl6anais, 147 orphans, 62, 75, 96, 103, 160, 192, 223 Paris, 21, 37, 132, 138, 143, 147, 187, 236 Acade"mie des Sciences, 21, 114 Ecole de Sante, 173 Parlement, 138-9 passade, 62, 67, 69, 96 passants, 96, 220, 235 patent medicines, 137 pauperisation, 30—1, 136, 162 pauvres honteux, 56, 62, 90, 95, 160, 201 pays de grande culture, \Al Perols (M), 120 Petite Eglise, 210
Index Peyre, Louis, 77
pregnant women, 52, 121, 255
philosophes, 2, 131
preseance, 19, 5 1 , 66, 9 3 , 109
pilgrims, 96, 121, 208 placebo effect', 115-16 Platter, Thomas, 122-3 poaching, 141 Police G£ne"rale, Ministre de, 245 political instability, 164, 184, 195, 201, 239, 245 Ponteils (Gard), 104 poor, 3,4,6, 15,22-3,27,31,41,46,76, 176, 180, 219, 241, 247. See also Montpellier, poor Catholic attitude towards, 1, 76 deserving and undeserving, 3, 5, 98 diet, 32-5, 136 invalides, 4, 61, 62, 134 and self-respect, 95-6, 97, 98-9, 111, 183.
315
Pret Gratuit (Montpellier), 79, 88, 89, 90, 99, 162-3, 168, 208, 211 'price revolution', 38 prices, 20, 32, 33-4, 37,41,46, 63, 69, 74, 79, 88, 101, 143, 148, 149, 162, 185, 186, 212n, 213, 240, 242 prisons, 128, 146, 191, 243, 245 prisoners-of-war, 191 Propagande or Propagation de la Foi (Montpellier), 90, 168 Propagation de la Foi (Lodeve), 73 prostitutes, 116, 146, 152, 175, 192. See also Montpellier, prostitutes Protestants, 19, 20, 23, 54, 66, 84, 90-1, 116, 166, 198, 202, 229 and charity, 45, 77, 90-1, 93, 211, 230 See also pauvres honteux Providence (Montpellier), 90, 168 purgatory, doctrine of, 76 valides, 4 poor relief, see bienfaisance; charity; home-relief Purs, 210 institutions; hospitals; poor-relief quinquina, 137 institutions poor-relief institutions Refuge (Montpellier), 89n administration, 71-3, 95, 131, 202 religious revival archives, 6—7 attitude of poor towards, 6-7, 94, 95-112 in the seventeenth century, 49, 76, 108 passim in the early nineteenth century, 201, 209 rentes constitutes, 56, 60, 63, 64-5, 163-4, 170, attitude towards clients, 53—4, 202—3 171-2, 174, 175, 185,213,218,224,226 charitable income, 50, 79-80, 83 rentes viageres, 170, 218, 252. See also fondsperdus critique of, 2-7, 131-3, 160-1, 235 representants en mission, 111 demand on resources, 52, 56, 61, 63, 68, Restoration, 207, 246, 248, 253, 254 69-75, 161-3, 171, 177, 184, 249 Revolutionary assemblies, 203 effects of Revolution, 170-2 Constituent Assembly, 8, 159, 161—2 finances, 51, 55-6, 64, 70-5, 77-90passim, Legislative Assembly, 166 131 Convention, 166, 168, 175, 176, 178, geographical distribution of, 3, 7, 45—50, 182-3, 185, 186, 197 132, 159-60, 179, 183, 263-73 Directorial period, 200, 253 government enquiries into, 41, 71, 132, 159, Revolutionary Government, 175, 183, 184, 263-5 188, 231, 252 'municipalisation', 168, 169, 170, 194 Rhone, river, 20, 146 quasi-ecclesiastical character, 51, 52—3, 135 rice, 54, 104 reform of: in seventeenth century, 3, 45, 49, Rights of Man, 196, 198 77, 131, 133; in eighteenth century, 5-6, robbery, 141 95, 138-9; under Revolution, 5-6, 8, Robespierre, 174 175-83 passim, 235, 257 Rodez (Aveyron), Ancien Regime diocese of, Pope, 201 popular disorders, 36-7, 138, 240 15 popular festivities, 20, 22, 98, 118 Rollet, 201 population growth, 1, 30-1, 69, 131, 241 Roman Law, 37 poverty, 30, 35, 241, 245 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 22 analysis of, 1-2, 29, 154-5 Rouziere, Jean, 75 problem of, 1, 29-42passim, 131-5, 154-5, royalism, 174, 211 rural industry, 17-18, 27, 32, 34, 135, 241 162-3, 180, 228, 231 prayers, 87, 109, 115. See also masses sailors, treatment of sick in hospitals, 74, 221 prefects, 217, 227, 236 Saint-Andre-de-Sangonis (L), 46 of theH6rault, 220, 225, 242, 243, 245, 246, Saint-Clement (M), 12 247, 251
316
Index
Saint-Flour (Cantal), Ancien Regime diocese of, 15 Saint-Just, 177, 183 Saint-Papoul (Aude), 117 Saint-Pierre, Abbe de, 2 Saint-Ponais, see Saint-Pons, Ancien Regime diocese of; district of Saint-Pons, 177 Ancien Regime diocese of, 7, 17, 46: poor-relief provision in, 46; medical provision in, 116—17, 118n district of, 178, 226 Saint-Priest, 24, 41, 45, 107, 136, 141, 142, 147, 148, 149 Saint-Thibery (B), 41-2 Santiago de Compostela, 96 Santo Domingo, 75 scientific farming, 31 Second Empire, 254 seigneurs, 37-9, 72, 75 charity of, 37-40, 40-2, 98 Sette, 20 Seven Years War, 30 sick, in hospitals, 3, 52, 56, 96, 139, 176, 192, 230 Singla, Jean, 75 smallpox, 35, 52 inoculation against, 136, 137, 239 vaccination against, 204, 224, 239 Smollett, Tobias, 113, 120, 126 social and economic development, 1—2, 3,8, 19, 20, 26, 28, 29-34, 42, 45, 75, 161-2, 166, 184, 193, 241-3, 247, 251 social medicine, 135-8, 204, 237-40 social security, 252, 253 Societe de Charite Maternelle, 237-9 s octetis populaires, 173
soldiers, treatment of sick in hospitals, 59, 74, 172, 191-2, 220-2, 229, 255: in the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi, Montpellier, 59-61, 70, 74, 97, 172-4, 187-8, 191-2, 203, 213, 220-2, 255 in mineral spas, 63, 123 in regimental infirmaries, 60, 172 see also military hospitals sorcerers, 115—16 soupes a la Rumford, see soupes economiques soupes economiques, 226, 239—40
Spain, 12, 34, 196, 220, 221 Spanish America, 34 Strasbourg, Ecole de Sante, 173 sub-prefects, 217, 218, 227 subsistence crises, 14, 32, 126 Sue, Eugene, 254 suspects, 174 syndic des pauvres, 71
Tectosages, 23
Terray, 152, 264 Terror, 162, 172, 176, 182, 186, 207, 208, 245, 252 testamentary charity, 74, 80n, 85—90, 208-13 Thermidor, 177, 182, 186 Thermidoreans, 184, 200, 253 Thezan (B), 45 Thibault, 213 Third Republic, 6, 254 tithes, 20, 39-40, 75, 241 tithe-alms, 39-40, 98, 168 Toulon (Var), 197, 223 Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), 19, 32, 154 archbishop, 19, 150 Lieutenance (marechaussee), 146 Parlement, 31, 39 travailleurs de terre, 27, 32-4, 147, 243 trees of liberty, 196 tresoriers des pauvres, 11
Turgot, 2-3, 52, 94, 140-1, 154, 255, 264 unemployment, 34, 133, 147, 176, 240 unmarried mothers, 116, 176, 182, 255—6. See also illegitimacy unwanted children, see enfants trouves;
illegitimacy; orphans 'urbanised villages', 24, 26, 45, 236 Uzes (Gard), Ancien Regime diocese of, 15 vagabonds, 133, 134n, 140, 147, 148, 150, 151, 240, 246, 251 vagrancy, 77, 227; 240, 243, 245. See also begging; government, campaigns against begging and vagrancy vaine pature, 98
Verdanson, river, 100, 125 Vidourle, river, 27 Vieussens, 124—5 Vigaroux, 204 village community, 24—7, 38, 241 administration of poor-relief institutions, 71-2, 224-5 caritadiers, 98
customary rights, 26, 31, 38-9, 98 disputes and tensions, 26—8, 72 outsiders to, 25, 26, 95, 244-5 self-government, 24, 25-6, 38, 45, 71, 73, 98, 224, 228 see also communities; maires; municipalities Vincent de Paul, 50, 53 viticulture, 11, 31, 32, 34, 96, 241 Viviers, (Ardeche), 15 Voltaire, 2 wages, 32-4, 106, 107, 162, 243 war, 162, 172-4, 184, 220, 241, 242, 244, 252 Ministry of, 59, 74, 149, 188
Index Wars of Religion, 23 Watteville, Baron de, 256-7 'welfare state', 8, 161, 175, 182, 184, 252 widows, 3, 56, 74, 117, 178, 182 wills, 6, 38, 79-90, 97, 108, 208-12 preambles to, 81, 83, 85, 86, 210, 211 religious bequests in, 81, 83, 85, 86, 210, 212 'religious dimorphism' in, 211
317
religious inspiration, 6, 80—3, 209 'secularisation', 83-4, 209-10 see also alms-giving; bienfaisance; charitable donors; foundations; testamentary charity wise women, see healers, midwives work schemes, 3, 135, 138, 150, 160, 165-6, 176, 245 Young, Arthur, 11—12, 18, 27
