Peasantry

“ The belief of the peasantry did not long confine the apparition to the sea-coast; it was seen sometimes late at night far inland, and following Gilbert the fisherman, like a human shadow—like a pure light—like a white garment—and often in the shape, and with the attributes, in which it disturbed the carousal of the smugglers. ”

“ It was recommended in the first centuries of our era by the abject misery in which men and women lived. The cities and provinces burdened with debt; the nobles suspected at court, and tracked by informers; the peasantry mostly slaves at the mercy of their lord and of every government official; barbarians rushing in to destroy, or pestilence ravaging; it seemed as if the very perfection of mechanism in the central government made it all the more an inexorable fatality, crushing out hope and self-respect. ”

“ List that the nobility of the Middle Ages, in obeying the selfish calculation which led to the oppression of the peasantry, engaged in as bad a speculation as a manufacturer of our day would who should feed his steam-engine with nothing but saw-dust or scraps of old paper. The cities of the middle ages had a much more undoubted economic interest in the emancipation of the peasantry as a class than the nobles or the clergy.591.Such exceptions there certainly are, even if it were not true “that the most godly cannot rest in peace unless he is acceptable to his ungodly neighbor.” ”

“ If our peasants are, intellectually regarded, simply savages, could the peasantry of ancient Greece and Rome have been any better? And if we moderns have lived so long in ignorance of the mass of savagery lying at our doors, may not the literary classes of antiquity have been equally blind to the mental savagery of the peasants whom they saw at work in the fields or jostled in the streets? ”

“ Thus, viewing us sometimes as their equals, sometimes as mysteriously superior to them, the peasantry unconsciously exhibited many of their most characteristic peculiarities without reserve. We looked at the spectacle of their social life from the most searching point of view, for we looked at it from behind the scenes. ”

“ Every farmer was good-humoured, well-informed, modest, and sedate. So far from being a land of paupers, there was, properly speaking, no class like that to which the French have applied the degrading appellation of Peasantry. All were living in peace and prosperity, and to crown all, they enjoyed what England did not—freedom of representation, and freedom of the press. ”

“ Many persons, frightened and scandalized at this spectacle, have declared the peasantry as irreclaimably perverse. This is at the same time an injustice, and a very false appreciation of their character. The peasants regard us almost as their enemies. They comprehend nothing of our civilization, contribute nothing to it of their own accord, and they think themselves authorized to profit by its disasters, whenever they can. ”

“ Between these two descriptions of peasantry there is another, which partakes of the characteristics of both classes, but in a slighter degree, except as regards their fear and hatred of the rural aristocracy. In the districts where paupers and game abound, it would be difficult to find many labourers not coming under one of these descriptions. By courtesy, the entire body is called the bold peasantry of England. But is nothing done by the 'nobility, clergy, and gentry,' to conciliate the affection of the pauper mass, by whose toil all their own wealth is produced? ”

“ At the head of all is the worst of all, the king himself, who sets an example of sin and iniquity, which is followed by all the nation. The peasantry are slaves, trodden in the dust, without hope and without spirit. The nobles are obsequious time-servers and place-hunters. The old sentiment of chivalry is dead. I will never go to such a country. Here, in this land, where I have lived the best part of my life, I intend to remain, to labor among these simple Acadians, and these children of the forest, and to die among them.
"As for you, my son, France is no place for you. ”

“ Curiously enough, in all the three great bourgeois risings, the peasantry furnishes the army that has to do the fighting; and the peasantry is just the class that, the victory once gained, is most surely ruined by the economic consequences of that victory. ”

“ The poor peasants on their route fled from their homes, and shrunk equally from French and English, for they well knew that either would equally deprive them of the little they possessed. The sufferings of the peasantry were truly terrible. In the third day of our march, a scene occurred which I shall never forget. ”

“ Amidst all the storms and struggles through which Russia has passed, the peasantry have ever clung with marvellous tenacity to their land and to their ancient communal institutions; and all attempts to rob them of the one or the other have been met and frustrated by that dogged passive resistance which the Russian peasant possesses in such a pre-eminent degree. ”

“ The monarch, once master of the whole Peninsula, now beheld his empire contracted to a few barren, inhospitable rocks. The noble, instead of the broad lands and thronged halls of his ancestors, saw himself at best but the chief of some wandering horde, seeking a doubtful subsistence, like himself, by rapine. The peasantry, indeed, may be said to have gained by the exchange; and, in a situation, in which all factitious distinctions were of less worth than individual prowess and efficiency, they rose in political consequence. ”

“ If it be so, however, and if this virtuous and honourable race, which has contributed to raise and uphold the character of the British peasantry in the eyes of all Europe, are thus fallen, and so suddenly fallen, how great and powerful must be the cause, and how heavy the responsibility of its authors? ”

“ In regard to the lower orders of the peasantry, it is amongst them alone that we can yet distinctly discern the last traces of the ancient French character. They are certainly, from the sale of the great landed estates at the revolution, (which, divided into small farms, were bought by the lower orders,) for the most part comparatively in a rich and independent situation; and poverty is far more generally felt by the higher classes of the nation, than by the regular peasantry of the country. ”

“ You will not blame me for insisting on so doing, because you know from experience that the thoughts and emotions of a peasant cannot be rendered in our own style of language without making them unnatural and giving them a tone of even shocking affectation.
You also know by experience, that the peasantry guess or comprehend much more than we believe them capable of understanding; and you have often been struck with their sudden insight, which, even in matters of art, has an appearance of revelation. ”

“ The peasantry, too, were a superior people, who enjoyed much freedom, and who exhibited their bravery whenever there was call for its exhibition,—facts which show that they must have been well governed, and which tend to elevate our conception of the merits of their rulers. ”

“ Obtaining a glimpse of these facts, we can no longer wonder at the submission of the French peasantry to a thinning of their families by military conscription; at the eager thirst for office which afflicts the whole nation ”

“ Their depredations drove the peasantry to such despair that protective associations composed of the peasantry and nobles were formed to resist their aggressions, and these fell upon stragglers whenever they found a little group of them, and cut their throats. Gradually, however, these despoilers were drawn off out of the land, being accompanied to the frontier by the French infantry under the command of the prince de Porcien, who was then at Metz, where he had been stationed to foil any effort the Emperor might make for its recovery. ”

“ The peasantry, in ignorant but honest zeal, insisted upon defending the place, and they were supported by certain of his officers, who were actuated some by mere presumption, others by the intention of ingratiating themselves with the enemy, whom they thus should serve. ”

“ When the nobles were lured from their rural homes to court, for the purpose of weakening their feudal power, the peasantry, divided from their natural protectors, robbed of the encouragement and support of almost princely establishments in every part of the country, sank into a degraded class; whilst the mighty lords themselves became mere intriguing courtiers, rapacious for money, in order to rival each other in splendour, and tyrants of those dependent peasants to whom their ancestors were as fathers. In this state, the vital spirit that should have reacted against every disaster was no more ”

“ Even in those early days this son of humble peasant folk revealed a power of lifelike characterization that did not pass unnoticed by these shrewd, clear-eyed peasantry whose sole criterion in matters of art was whether or not the counterfeit presentment looked like the original. ”

“ The nobility and the Church, those who held the bulk of the wealth of the community, were relieved of all taxation, the whole burden of which fell upon the mercantile and laboring classes—an unfair exaction that threatened to crush industry out of existence. And to picture the condition of the peasantry, the tyranny of the feudal customs, it will serve to repeat the oft-told tale of the peasants who, after their day’s hard labor in the fields, were forced to beat the ponds all night long in order to silence the croaking of the frogs that disturbed some noble lady’s slumbers. ”

“ Can it then be considered that the peasantry should see their own interest in maintaining the revolutionary order of things? The more unjust their tenure, the more cause have they to fear; and unenlightened as many of them are, their fears once raised, will not easily be controlled. ”

“ The most striking example of this spirit is found in the neglect of the basis of all society: the land. The loss of a peasantry—an irreplaceable loss in the strength of a nation—is passed over as a minor detail. ”

“ It is of course a gross error to assume that the French peasants were more oppressed than those of other continental lands. Their lot was more favoured than that of the peasantry of Spain, South Italy, Prussia, and most parts of Germany, to say nothing of the brutish condition of the serfs of Poland and Russia.881 Those of France were more prosperous than Arthur Young believed them to be. ”

“ One must not think primarily of a French Peasant; any more than of a German Measle. The plural of the word is its proper form; you cannot have a Peasant till you have a peasantry. The essence of the Peasant ideal is equality; and you cannot be equal all by yourself. ”

“ Whatever may have been their natural feelings of indignation raised by the perfidious cry of their caste being on the brink of destruction, these faithful peasantry remained steadfast in their allegiance to the Government that had brought them within the pale of civilisation. ”

“ The discontent of the peasantry in Germany, as in other countries of Europe, had been a painfully obvious fact for more than a generation, and since 1490 it had broken out in revolts in Elsass, in the Netherlands, in Württemberg, at Kempten, at Bruchsal, and in Hungary. ”

“ Amidst all their misfortunes, the French people, and more especially the peasantry, have contrived to preserve their characteristic gaiety. They are still, without, doubt, the most cheerful people in Europe, the least liable to any thing like continued depression, and the most easily amused by trifles. If we except the peasantry, whose situation is comparatively comfortable, they are subject to continual deprivations. They are wretchedly poor, and driven by this poverty to meannesses which they would in other situations despise. ”

“ The example of these peasant republics, strong in the protection which their mountains gave them, fired the imagination of the German peasantry of the south and the south-west of the Empire, and the leaders of lost popular causes found a refuge in the Alpine valleys while they meditated on fresh schemes to emancipate their followers. ”

“ The peasantry continued to brave all risks—of exile, the galleys, the rack, and the gibbet—and persevered in their assemblies, until the very ferocity of their persecutors became wearied. The people would not be converted either by the dragoons or the priests who were stationed amongst them. In the dead of the night they would sally forth to their meetings in the hills; though their mountains were not too steep, their valleys not too secluded, their denies not too impenetrable to protect them from pursuit and attack, for they were liable at any moment to be fallen upon and put to the sword. ”

“ If the peasantry were asked, they would say there was plenty of truth to be found everywhere except among a few scoundrels, who, to curry favour with the Government officers, betrayed their trust, and told the value of their neighbours' fields. ”

“ By the last quarter of the fifteenth century, however, peasant risings had become increasingly numerous and their avowed aims much more definite and far-reaching than, as a rule, were those of an earlier date. In saying this we are referring to those revolts which were directly initiated by the peasantry, the serfs, and the villeins of the time, and which had as their main object the direct amelioration of the peasant's lot. ”