The Midi in Revolution: A Study of Regional Political Diversity, 1789-1793

by Hubert C. Johnson

Overview

Hubert Johnson examines eight departments in southeastern France from the outbreak of the French Revolution through the Federalist Revolt in 1793. This study of the Midi clarifies the ways in which the revolt embodied the political, social, and economic contradictions of the region.

Originally published in 1986.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691611075
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #91
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

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The Midi in Revolution

A Study of Regional Political Diversity, 1789-1793

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By Hubert C. Johnson

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1986 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05458-2

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CHAPTER 1

The Economics of Political Instability

Naturally people resort to revolution as the result of a number of pressures and influences, and it would be simpleminded to claim that they are always motivated by deprivation of food or some other material cause. It would be equally wrong to ignore the presence of some economic causation, and therefore it is important to gain an understanding of the economic life of the Midi. It is not possible to say that the eight chosen departments (Isère, Drôme, Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, Gard, Hérault, Aude, and Haute-Garonne) possessed the same culture; they did not even share the same language, nor did their parent provinces become part of France at the same time. But they all were connected by trade routes through roads and rivers, and wine, wheat, and many other commodities were shipped between them. Economically the Midi existed as an entity.

The original provinces provided the foundation for the Midi during the Old Regime. Dauphiné, Provence, and Languedoc differed from one another in many ways; each included regions of great diversity as well. Languedoc was incorporated into France in 12x9 and was closely tied to the destiny of the crown from the time of the Albigensian Crusade. But Languedoc really comprised two radically different parts: Upper Languedoc which looked to Toulouse, and Lower Languedoc, which looked to Montpellier. The Parlement sat in Toulouse and the intendant in Montpellier. Dauphiné had been incorporated into France in 1349, and its life centered around the remote city of Grenoble. The province was bounded by the Rhône River on one side and by mountain ranges on the other sides. Until 1789, poverty and isolation kept Dauphiné a backwater of France without much in the way of a strong local tradition or a separate language. The bequest of Provence to the king of France by the last Provengal monarch, Rene, made it one of the most recent additions to the crown in 1481. In common with Lower Languedoc, Provence was distinguished by a long and colorful history of independent culture and a unique language. Because of widespread illiteracy and primitive living conditions in rural areas, the population of Lower Languedoc and of Provence especially remained quite different from the population of most of the rest of France by the start of the Revolution.

Despite such signs of the persistence of local culture and languages, there had been relatively recent indications that the cultural weight of central France was steadily becoming dominant throughout the Midi. The bureaucrats and military officers of Louis XIV had dispersed throughout the region, beginning the process of supplanting local political rights with a political mandate from Versailles. The mayor of Marseilles and his councilmen were henceforth nominated by the king. The provincial Estates found many of their powers stolen by the intendants. Louis XIV and the indefatigable Colbert ordered the construction of roads, the excavation of canals, the abolition of local river and road tolls and tariffs, and the construction of public buildings; engaged in massive town planning in Marseilles, Toulon, Toulouse, and Grenoble; and, in general, tried to tie these peripheral provinces tightly together and to the rest of the country. A large standing army absorbed and later discharged the youth of the Midi, inculcating them with French culture in the process. Finally, a phenomenal growth of French manufacturing and commerce during the eighteenth century created a class of businessmen and professionals, and a class of urban artisans who worked for a national, or even an international, market and readily absorbed French language and culture, discarding their native language or dialects in due course. By 1789 it was possible to travel to practically any village in the Midi and find some persons who spoke, wrote, and read French. Over 50 percent of men in Marseilles, Aix, and Avignon could sign their names by 1789. De Tocqueville's brilliant, if somewhat exaggerated, portrayal of the decline of localism and the triumph of centrism has much truth in it.

Economic Diversity

The key to much of the Midi is the Rhône River, as an enterprising traveller named Bérenger exclaimed in 1787. He had left "the beautiful Comtat" three times to go to the "arid plains of Dauphiné" and progressed to the intimidating pre-Alps until he had reached the town of Orange (he evidently took a long way around, but returned to follow the Rhône). From the Roman ruins of that city he could contemplate the "vast and magnificent plains of the Comtat ... that adjoined Languedoc and the passages to Dauphiné." Passing south along the river he encountered Avignon, Pont Saint-Esprit, and the region of Venasques, which he described as immensely fertile "fields covered with vegetables" neatly separated by fruit trees and delimited by rows of mulberry trees. Proceeding to Carpentras he encountered herds of livestock and fields covered with lavender and thyme. Wheat was becoming more evident and even potato crops were visible in a region which possessed "all the advantages of soil and climate." He noted that the ancient Roman city of Aries had lost its former glory and was only a "city of the second order," characterized by poverty and pestilence from the swamps of the Marais, and only noteworthy for some recent agricultural cultivation. Aries was not quite the same as other cities in Provence, lacking the "petulance" of Marseilles or the "brusque vivacity" of Toulon; it had the "customs of Languedoc more than the customs of Provence." But the inhabitants, particularly the women, still dressed in traditional clothing which resembled that of the Avignonese. All appeared different in Marseilles where Bérenger counted 550 merchant ships in the harbour. Local négociants(export merchants) assured him that normal gross value of monthly trade was about twelve million livres, but such trade could occasionally amount to twenty million livres. A walk through the port area revealed myriads of brokers, merchants, agents of one sort or another, and an immense variety of wares: "the production of the four parts of the world." A city of commerce and manufacturing, Marseilles was not a great cultural center and its leading citizens exemplified the bourgeois virtues of thrift and modesty — or miserliness and prudery as Bérenger also suggested. Adding to this somber note, Bérenger wrote: "In general, the youth of this place are not only debauched, but even depraved, more so than in all the other maritime cities." The peasants in the neighborhoods of Aix, Marseilles, and Toulon "are a race of excessively brutal and hard men" laughing at travellers who have lost their way. But Aix, seat of Parlement and of the intendant, was the most attractive city of Provence, possessing theatre, literary societies, and even a number of youths characterized by "imagination and sensibilité." Bérenger's mixture of hyperbole and fact at least provides a general insight into the tourist's view of this part of the Midi.

Other, more mundane evidence confirms that Bérenger was right in ascribing great prosperity to Marseilles and a sort of piquant obsolescence to much of the rest of southeastern France. The fluvial basin of the Rhône was beginning to produce important vinyards and olive groves. It was bordered by the Mediterranean, which served as the vehicle for an extensive coastal and international trade. The Massif Central, the Alps, and the Jura served to separate this Midi heartland from the rest of France and even from Toulouse and Grenoble.

In the Midi heartland the economy was diversified. Baehrel has recently written a description of Lower Provence that probably applies to most of the province: "During the eighteenth century the Provengal sheep population neither grew nor declined, and it is probable that the importations of foreign wool grew at the same time as those of wheat. It was the development of viniculture which, in reducing the pasturage, provoked the decline of cultivation, and, consequently, the recourse to wool and to non-Provengal meat." It seems certain that the production of wheat declined throughout the eighteenth century but that the production of olive oil and wine increased. The exports of Marseilles to the Levant increased three times between 1700 and 1789: of these textile goods were the main commodities, reflecting the rise of production centers such as Nimes and even Grenoble, as well as Lyon. Imports came from the colonies and consisted of coffee, sugar, spices, indigo, etc. During the last quarter of the century wheat was imported regularly from Africa. Within Provence impoverishment of the soil probably helped to reduce wheat production, making the region even more dependent upon imports. Additionally, the population increased. Inexorably, the economy of the interior of Provence seems to have been tied to the market of Marseilles. Small village fairs declined as large urban ones grew, particularly that of Marseilles. The lucrative Provengal products of wine and olive oil were shipped down the Rhône and were also exported.

The development of Marseilles as a great port and manufacturing center was paralleled by considerable rural stagnation during the century before 1789. Villages and towns north of the Durance River lost population because of the shift of regional markets to larger centers such as Aix, Aubagne, Draguignan, and Marseilles. Also, the decline in wheat production and the stagnation of the livestock production meant trouble for the villages of Upper Provence: they could not substitute vines and olive trees for wheat because of the soil and climate. Because of the efforts of Labrousse, Georges Freche, and others it is now possible to survey prices of wheat for some localities in the Midi. This region tended to have significantly higher prices for wheat between 1756 and 1790 than other regions of France. Also, within the Midi, Provence usually had higher average prices than either Dauphiné or Languedoc. Labrousse commented that the Midi was the one region where "prices — across the high and low cycles — continued to climb or to maintain themselves without notable retreat." Price series for Aries, Toulouse, Aix-en-Provence, and Draguignan give further insights into certain Midi peculiarities. According to Figure 1.1, the price levels for the first two cities were consistently much lower than for the last two, despite the fact that Aries is a relatively short distance from Aix. There was a general, overall price increase in each locality, culminating in 1789. While the more densely populated Marseilles and Aix had generally higher prices than other regions of the Midi, there existed enormous variation not only in prices, but in definitions of units of measurement, making comparative study very difficult. But such information makes clear that places like Aix and Draguignan had a high wheat cost and, probably, an expensive and insecure access to wheat by 1789.

Wine production in the Midi occurred in three major zones in Languedoc: western Lower Languedoc, eastern Lower Languedoc, and Upper Languedoc. The first, including such localities as Gignac, Béziers, and Narbonne, had consistently very cheap local prices for vin ordinaire. Western Lower Languedoc, including Ales in the Cévennes and Pont Saint-Esprit on the Rhône River, had consistently much higher prices for the same type of wine. There was, on the average, a 2.5.9-percent price differential between Gignac and Narbonne even within the "cheap" region. Upper Languedoc fell between the extremes. In short, the average price of similar wine in Pont Saint-Esprit was 112.04 percent higher than in Gignac. Wine prices in Languedoc rose as did those of wheat after 1770, but not at the same rate. Between 1771 and 1789 in Beziers, wine prices increased 12.77 percent, while wheat prices increased 68.3 percent. Wine prices increased 28.16 percent and wheat prices 51.68 percent in Pont Saint-Esprit. A comparison of price series for wine and wheat for Languedoc between 1690 and 1790 indicates quite similar fluctuations between the two until about 1776, when wheat prices continued to remain high, while wine prices dropped, with partial recovery, until 1786, when they demonstrated a remarkable increase, surpassing the rate of wheat increases by 1789. In Provence wine prices fluctuated very considerably, much more than those of wheat. In both cases there was a long-term rise in prices. The most significant conclusion: prices of both wheat and wine tended to be highest within the Midi in the region of Aix-Marseilles.

With the price of homegrown wheat so high in Marseilles, it became profitable to import an increasing amount of wheat from the Levant and the Barbary Coast. The price of such wheat averaged about 2.5 livres per Marseilles charge (1.547 hectoliters) up to 1786, increased to 2.6.4 livres in 1787, 37.3 livres in 1788, and 39 livres in 1789. The highest previous price had been 30 livres in 1747. By January 1789 the state-supported Compagnie Royale d'Afrique was importing wheat valued at 46,941 livres and 15 sols a month. On the eve of the Revolution, wheat was becoming particularly costly in the great port. But the prevalence of local markets serving small neighboring regions throughout the Midi indicates that prices could change very drastically within a short distance. The Midi, and France, had a long way to go before a national market could develop.

The chief cities in 1789 included Marseilles as the largest (100,000), followed by Toulouse (60,000), Nîmes (45,000), Montpellier and Toulon (about 35,000 each), and Aix, Aries, and Grenoble (approximately 25,000 each). Estimates of population were unreliable until the first national census was undertaken in 1794. Marseilles was the commercial and industrial leader, but a substantial part of the economies of Nîmes, Toulouse, and Grenoble was based upon textile production. Aix and Aries were old cities with a decadent economic basis; they had declined as Marseilles had risen in the eighteenth century. Toulon was primarily a great naval port and arsenal. Of these eight cities, four (Marseilles, Aix, Aries, and Nîmes) were very closely connected to one another by the Rhône River. The rest were chiefly regional administrative and market centers. Toulouse enjoyed certain advantages because it had been connected to Cette on the Mediterranean by means of a canal since 1695. It also possessed easy access to Bordeaux. Montpellier, close to Cette, was connected to this canal trade. Because of the road-building efforts of Colbert and of his successors there were first-class land routes connecting all these cities to the heartland of France. But aside from these Royal Routes, the local roads were poor, especially in the mountainous regions of Dauphiné and Upper Provence. The eighteenth century had been an era of tremendous urban growth, accompanied by an ever-flourishing commerce and a strong textile industry.

The Crises of 1789

In common with most of France, the Midi was the scene of a pervasive economic crisis in the early months of 1789. A general and widespread grain shortage brought about high food prices and undoubtedly contributed to massive unrest in some regions. There was, in addition, a long-term crisis which had been developing since 1786 and had resulted in decline of employment, for example, in the textile trade. The short- and long-term crises were more acute in some areas of the Midi than in others; most affected was Provence.

Upper Languedoc, in which Toulouse was the most important city, suffered in 1788 from stagnation of industry, insufficient harvests, and a rigorous winter. By August 1788, the urban employment total was down, and the primitive welfare system was feeling new strains. Between July 2, 1788 and June 30, 1789 some 402 indigents were admitted to the poor house of Toulouse: this was close to the usual annual number. After July 1, 1789 the indigent total would swell to 721 by June 16, 1790, reflecting the aftermath of poor economic conditions in 1788 and 1789. Clearly, in the city of Toulouse the full impact of the employment crisis was probably felt late in 1789. But earlier, in 1788, rural poverty was sufficient to convince the parish clergy of Toulouse to ask for help from the authorities for the nearby suburban parishes. Less than 23 percent of land in this region belonged to peasants, and 23 out of 57 rural parishes had no charitable system. The entire rural and urban region of Toulouse ordinarily provided 165,000 setiers of wheat, but the harvest of 1788 produced only 55,000. In the city itself, officials estimated that 18,000 setiers were on hand. The urban price of bread went from an already high point of 17.4 sous in January 1789 to 20 sous in March 1789. Added to this picture of desperate rural economic conditions near Toulouse was the long-time stagnation of the wages of artisans in the city: by the spring of 1789, most of the 60,000 inhabitants of Toulouse were caught in an ugly inflationary squeeze.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Midi in Revolution by Hubert C. Johnson. Copyright © 1986 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• CONTENTS, pg. v
• LIST OF TABLES. LIST OF FIGURES, pg. vii
• LIST OF MAPS, pg. viii
• PREFACE, pg. ix
• INTRODUCTION. Comparative History and Revolution Statistical Component of the Study, pg. 1
• CHAPTER ONE. The Economics of Political Instability, pg. 18
• CHAPTER TWO. Rhetoric, Symbolism, and Ceremonies, pg. 56
• CHAPTER THREE. The Men of 1789, pg. 82
• CHAPTER FOUR. Power Claimants: Counterrevolutionaries, 1790-1792, pg. 120
• CHAPTER FIVE. Rise and Decline of the Popular Revolution, pg. 145
• CHAPTER SIX. The Radical Revolution of 1792, pg. 174
• CHAPTER SEVEN. The Spread of Federalism in the Midi: May-June 1793, pg. 222
• CHAPTER EIGHT. The Midi in Revolution, pg. 250
• APPENDIX I. Quantitative Methodology, pg. 267
• APPENDIX II. General Cahiers of the Third Estates of Midi Cities, pg. 276
• BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 281
• INDEX, pg. 293