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Updated: June 14, 2025
A few farmers-general and others who have made themselves obnoxious to the mob have been killed, but what is that! There should at least be no hostility to our order. Many of the nobles have been foremost in demanding reforms. All have cheerfully resigned their privileges. There is no longer the slightest reason for hostility against us."
It is certain that the old gentleman, who had lived in days gone by with that feminine nation now as much forgotten as many other great things, like the Jesuits, the Buccaneers, the Abbes, and the Farmers-General, had acquired an irresistible good-humor, a kindly ease, a laisser-aller devoid of egotism, the self-effacement of Jupiter with Alcmene, of the king intending to be duped, who casts his thunderbolts to the devil, wants his Olympus full of follies, little suppers, feminine profusions but with Juno out of the way, be it understood.
Those men in red robes, as pale and stern and implacable as the Council of Ten at Venice; those ghosts of women decked with flowers, who, by the dim light of the tapers, looked like mere reflections of life hovering in the galleries above the priests of death; the muskets of the guard glittering in the gloom in the back of the court; the heart-broken attitude of my poor sergeant, who had fallen at my feet; the silent but vast delight of the Trappist, still standing unwearied near the bar; the mournful note of some convent bell in the neighbourhood beginning to ring for matins amid the silence of the assembly was not all this enough to touch the nerves of the wives of the farmers-general and to send a thrill through the brawny breasts of the tanners in the body of the court?
One represents an observatory; another, a chapel; some have the appearance of rusticated buildings; others, that of temples. Under the old regime too, the farmers-general had inclosed Paris with a high wall, the extent of which has been estimated at upwards of 10,000 toises. This wall displeased the eye of the Parisians, and, when they were out of humour, induced them to murmur loudly.
Almost all who held office or had been in the service, were of this number, either ambassadors, general officers or former ministers, from Marshal de Brogue down to Machaut and Malesherbes; resident bishops, like Monseigneur de Durfort, at Besancon; vicars-general and canons who really governed their dioceses on the spot; prelates, like those in Provence, Languedoc and Brittany, who, by right, had seats in the provincial "Etats", agents and representatives of the clergy at Paris; heads of Orders and Congregations; the chief and lieutenant commandants of the seventeen military departments, intendants of each generalite head-clerks of each ministry, magistrates of each parliament, farmers-general, collectors-general, and, more particularly in each province, the dignitaries and local proprietors of the two first orders, and all leading manufacturers, merchants, ship-owners, bankers and prominent bourgeois; in short, that elite of the nobles, clergy, and Third Estate, which, from 1778 to 1789, constituted the twenty-one provincial assemblies, and which certainly formed in France the great social staff.
The people concerned in the finances, the farmers-general, the receivers of the taxes which are not in farm, the court-bankers, etc. make the greater part of those who advance their money in all public exigencies. Such people are commonly men of mean birth, but of great wealth, and frequently of great pride. They are too proud to marry their equals, and women of quality disdain to marry them.
"You must not conceal from yourself," continued Colbert quietly, "that attacking the farmers-general is attacking the superintendence. The two unfortunate guilty men in question are the particular friends of a powerful personage, and the punishment, which otherwise might be comfortably confined to the Chatlet, will doubtless be a signal for disturbances!"
But the principal picture, within the town, is that of the vast curving quays, bordered with houses that look like the hôtels of farmers-general of the last century, and of the wide, tawny river, crowded with shipping and spanned by the largest of bridges.
The first noblemen of the court, knights of the different orders, farmers-general, all aspired to the honor of ruining themselves for her. She had already satisfied the ruinous propensities of at least a dozen of lovers, when the duc de Chaulnes entered the lists, and was fortunate enough to eclipse all his rivals.
Besides this monstrous failure, in consequence of a miserable exaction by which more was attempted to be forced from the country than it was capable of yielding, and this by way of experiment, when your Lordships come to inquire who the farmers-general of the revenue were, you would naturally expect to find them to be the men in the several countries who had the most interest, the greatest wealth, the best knowledge of the revenue and resources of the country in which they lived.
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