Anderson J.M. Daily Life during the French Revolution
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230 Daily Life during the French Revolution
cells. The threat of disease was always present. As usual, prisoners with
money were treated especially well.
Under the Terror, conditions grew worse because of the overcrowding.
The old-regime prison, the Conciergerie, on the Ile de la Cité appears to
have been one of the worst. Smelling of ordure and disease, plagued by
rats, it was an appalling place where residents slept on the fl oor in the
same spot where they had to relieve themselves. Those who could afford
the outrageous prices for a bed were more comfortable, and the money
was a source of revenue for the Revolutionary Tribunal, which supplied
the beds. Perhaps as bad as anything was the trauma of waiting each
day for the roll call of those destined to see the public prosecutor, with
small chance of being found innocent, or of those already destined for the
guillotine.
There were about 50 prisons in Paris during the Terror, many of which
were converted monasteries, convents, schools, or former poorhouse prisons
such as Salpêtrière and Bicêtre. Some held only a score or so of inmates, but
others, such as the Conciergerie, held about 600 in 1793.
9
The former monasteries of Paris that had been transformed into jails
lacked the security found in other institutions built for the purpose of
housing prisoners. The inmates were relatively free to wander around
and socialize with each other. They lacked beds but were allowed to bring
their own. Some brought in entire bedroom suites. Windows without bars
and doors without locks made incarceration more tolerable. Mail and
packages were not censored or even opened, and food could be sent in
to be cooked on portable stoves placed in the corridors for the purpose.
Games such as chess and cards were organized, and there were ballgames
in the courtyard. Poets wrote, painters sketched and applied their brushes.
It was not unknown for children to share a cell with their parents and to
keep pets. The previous home of the Ursine nuns housed the actors of
the Comédie Française who had been confi ned for playing emperors, kings,
queens, marquises, and other members of the aristocracy on stage. The
duke of Orléans, while confi ned in the prison of the Abbaye, was able to
order in oysters and white wine for his fi nal meal. On one occasion, the
fanatical gatekeeper at Les Recollets prison insisted that the crowns on the
heads of the kings and queens in a chess set be broken off before he would
allow the pieces into the prison area.
10
In some places, men and women were not strictly segregated, and sexual
liaisons were not unusual. If a woman was or became pregnant, she was
allowed, at least, a stay of execution. The Conciergerie prison was the stag-
ing ground for those on their way to meet the prosecutor, as well as the
depository for those already convicted. It was here that the condemned
awaited the tumbrels to take them on their last journey, and it was here
that Marie-Antoinette awaited her appointment with the Revolutionary
Tribunal. The hatred of the high nobility knew no limits. On the same day
Law and Order 231
that the queen entered the prison, the Commune sent her eight-year-old
son a toy guillotine.
11
VAGABONDS
Many honest citizens believed that jobs were available and that vaga-
bondage was the result of an unwillingness to work. Some thought that
beggars, rural or urban, had neither morals nor religion and were all
potentially thieves and assassins. This belief was tot always unfounded.
If handouts were not forthcoming in a village, derelicts passing through
might try extortion by threatening arson.
Initiatives were put in place in 1768 in which the maréchausée were issued
new orders to arrest those who had not worked for six months in a profes-
sion or trade and who had no property or position to help them subsist
and no one worthy of trust to vouch for their respectability. Individuals
caught in these circumstances received three years at hard labor or in the
royal galleys, which meant, in effect, imprisonment in a royal naval base,
since men were no longer chained to the oar.
A network of state-controlled institutions, Dépots de Mendicité, was
established to house the indigent in each of the 32 prerevolutionary admin-
istrative districts. Throughout the years heading into the revolution, the
police continued their policy of detaining socially marginal people.
Vagabondage often led to brigandage. The Great Fear was inspired by
the threat of hundreds of beggars who banded together in gangs to raid,
loot, and ravish communities. Later, the Revolutionary Army, sent out
from Paris to police the gathering of food for Parisians, gave brigands an
opportunity. The basin around Paris had been the home of robber bands
throughout the eighteenth century. Now they could plunder anonymously
wearing the revolutionary uniform of the army. In October 1793, at Corbeil,
a gang of 25 thieves robbed isolated farms at gunpoint.
12
ARMY DESERTERS
Bands of brigands were augmented by deserters from the army. Worn
down and disillusioned by long service, many soldiers drifted away from
their units. Some were reintegrated into their home villages, but this was
not possible for everyone under threat of arrest for desertion. For these
people, there was little alternative but to take up a life of crime on the
road that also sometimes had political overtones. Throughout the last
decade of the eighteenth century, individuals and groups created severe
local problems by attacking property and persons. Buildings that held
administrative documents were targets for arsonists seeking to destroy
birth records, which were used for conscription.
Violent crime increased dramatically after 1789. The near-collapse of
public welfare and the many new military deserters, in conjunction with
232 Daily Life during the French Revolution
the thousands of unemployed, greatly infl ated the number of thieves and
bandits. Some of these pillaged the state services such as mail coaches,
while others raided granaries to eat or sell the contents. Blackmail and
extortion were common. Farmers and their wives were sometimes tortured
by having their feet roasted over an open fi re by thieves trying to force
them to reveal their cache of hidden stores and valuables.
In the west, armed gangs of deserters from the Vendée gathered. In the
southeast, gangs of counterrevolutionary brigands were reinforced by army
deserters. Some of the bands grew quite large, numbering more than 60 men,
and ranged the countryside at will between the Pas-de-Calais and Belgium.
Another group that menaced the population in the Beauce, south of
Paris, was not disbanded until 1799. In this case, about 120 people, 38 of
whom were women, were charged with 95 crimes in the year 1796–1797.
Children as young as 10 had been recruited to spy out likely targets.
Among this motley crew, most were from rural society, some were mili-
tary deserters, and some had mutilations and deformities. Some walked
with canes or crutches. To this gang, the Band d ’ Orgères, were attributed
some 75 murders. They sometimes camped in wooded areas and oper-
ated by night, but more often they slept in country inns and ate well on
their stolen spoils. They were also charged with killing entire households
in isolated farms before sitting down to eat the victims’ dinner. Drunken
entertainment among the corpses followed. Further, they were prone to
killing each other. Disobedience or failure on some mission might result
in an individual’s murder; a woman’s refusal of sex to a male leader could
and sometimes did result in her demise.
Brigands on the rampage, plundering an inn. Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Law and Order 233
Smaller gangs, too, kept entire villages on edge and in some cases mixed
their robberies with outright vandalism. In the Vosges, a farmhouse door
was smashed in one afternoon, the house robbed, and all the crockery
and windows broken; the thieves then cooked a meal with the provisions
available, eating it at leisure, and walked away with all the valuables they
could fi nd. Villagers were too afraid to attempt retaliation against bandits,
and these kinds of assaults paralyzed whole towns, villages, and hamlets,
where any passing stranger was treated with the utmost suspicion.
When the centralized power of the Terror was formally abolished, in
April 1795, the National Guard again took up its original duties of protecting
property. In December 1795, the government in Paris empowered itself to
send agents to all towns of fewer than 5,000 people and created a Ministry
of General Police. Military action sometimes put whole departments under
martial law. Some of the most lawless areas then were pacifi ed. Neverthe-
less, the Directory continued to be faced with gangs of royalist rebels in the
Haute-Garonne region and in the Atlantic western provinces.
13
HOMOSEXUALITY
The church considered sexual acts that were not specifi cally to procreate
a mortal sin. There should be no sex before marriage, the sole purpose of
which was to have children. Anything else, homosexuality or masturbation,
was strongly denounced as a sin against God and nature. On the other
hand, the philosophers believed that anyone who had cast aside the burdens
imposed by the church, including restrictions on sexual activity such as
abstention or repression, had become enlightened; hence, homosexual-
ity was known as le crime des philosophes. Many rationalist and humanist
philosophers who discussed such matters as sodomy considered it to be a
depraved practice, however.
It seems that homosexuality and transvestitism were not uncommon,
especially among the upper classes. In the 1780s, a police register in Paris
recorded the arrest of several hundred men from every social level who
had been found either in homosexual acts or in places that homosexuals
were known to frequent, as well as others who made their preferences
obvious by wearing certain kinds of clothes or hairstyles. The reports
mention male prostitution for cash and parties and other gatherings
where homosexuals could meet people of like mind, as well as sincere
relationships between men. Harassment by the police was common. Any-
one identifi ed as homosexual or lesbian could face the death penalty by
burning if the case was pursued. Most such cases never saw the inside of a
courtroom, but if a case did go to court, exile or a short stay in prison was
generally the result. The marquis de Condorcet, who was elected to the
Legislative Assembly and who was known as the last of the philosophers,
argued that the base vice of sodomy should not be a criminal offense since
234 Daily Life during the French Revolution
it violated no man’s rights. Because court cases were few, the extent of
homosexuality may never be known. Those that were prosecuted usually
involved transvestite dress or women who had tried to pass as men.
During the revolution, the Constituent Assembly, in the interest of
usurping political power from the church, drafted a new penal code that
decriminalized all forms of consensual adult sexuality as long as such
activity did not take place in public. This code was ratifi ed in 1791, and
France became the fi rst modern western country to overturn the ban on
homosexuality, so long perpetuated by the church. This penal code, how-
ever, was more liberal in theory than in practice, as persecution by police
continued as it had in the past.
14
The authorities were even less diligent when it came to women and
were likely to ignore reported acts of lesbianism; priests did the same,
perhaps because procreation was not involved. If the women involved
were nuns, however, the penalties could be severe. The most notable per-
son to be executed for, among other accusations, debauched sexuality was
Marie-Antoinette.
15
SMUGGLERS
Under the old regime, punishment was often erratic or out of proportion
to the crime. Groups of fi ve or more armed smugglers of salt in Provence
were sentenced to a fi ne of 500 livres and nine years in the galleys. In the
remainder of the kingdom, the penalty for smuggling was death. Groups of
fewer than fi ve armed men assembled for the purpose of smuggling paid
a fi ne of 300 livres and served three years in the galleys. Unarmed smug-
glers who used carts, horses, or boats for their illicit traffi c were fi ned 300
livres, and, if this was not paid, they were sentenced to three years in the
galleys. Sentences thus varied from region to region but were drastically
increased for those condemned for a second offense. Unarmed smugglers
who carried salt on their backs were subject to a fi ne of 200 livres, and, if
the fi ne was not paid, they were fl ogged and branded. A second offense
carried a penalty of 300 livres and six years in the galleys.
16
Women and children were treated with lesser fi nes, but repeat offenders
were fl ogged and banished from the kingdom. Parents were responsible
for fi nes incurred by their children and were fl ogged for defaulting on
payments. Nobles caught smuggling were deprived of their nobility, and
their houses were razed. Soldiers who used arms while smuggling were
hanged; if they had not used arms, they received a sentence of life in the
galleys. Death was the punishment for any employee who worked in
the salt works or who was involved in the transport of salt and who was
caught smuggling; their houses, even if they were of the privileged class,
could be entered and searched for incriminating evidence.
Smuggling salt was considered to be the same as stealing from the king,
since the tax on salt went to him. On average, about 3,500 people a year
Law and Order 235
were arrested for the offense. Evasion of the tax on salt was most prevalent
in the west.
In a country crisscrossed by internal district boundaries and customs
houses and in which the cities charged taxes on items entering their con-
fi nes, smuggling was bound to be a big business. Forbidden objects, such
as antiregime or pornographic books, magazines, and pamphlets from
foreign presses were carried through various customs checks with the aid
of a good bribe.
17
OTHER CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS
Prior kings had given princes of the blood and other nobles grants of
land that covered all the game animals on that land. A desperate peasant
living on the land who killed an animal often went to prison. Numerous
edicts were passed to prevent any disturbance of game. For example, it
was prohibited to weed or hoe the ground during nesting time lest one
disturb the young partridges or to spread manure of night soil lest the fl a-
vor of the birds be inferior to that of birds that fed on the peasants’ grain,
and mowing hay before a certain time of year was banned because it could
expose the birds’ eggs to danger. Removing stubble too early deprived the
birds of shelter.
18
These matters often came up in the cahiers.
The revolutionaries swept away these noble rights and the judicial sys-
tem of the old regime, instead establishing a criminal court in each depart-
ment, a civil court in each district, and a justice of the peace in each canton.
The judges of all the tribunals were elected. Buying and selling of offi ces,
preferential treatment of the wealthy, and bribes to judges became a thing
of the past. Trials by jury, honest courts of appeal, and free legal counsel
for those who could not pay for it were instituted. Torture was abolished,
and sentences were less harsh than before.
NAPOLEONIC CODE
The task of preparing a code of law was entrusted, in July 1800, to a
commission, named in honor of Napoleon, that consisted of the most
eminent jurists of France. The code enacted in March 1804 is still in force
in France today. The term applies to the entire body of French law as con-
tained in fi ve codes dealing with civil, commercial, and criminal law that
were promulgated between 1804 and 1811. This code was a compromise
between the customary law of the northern provinces of France, which
was basically Germanic, and the essentially Roman law of the southern
region of the country. Among its merits are its simplicity and clarity. It
has required many judicial interpretations, however, and has been fre-
quently modifi ed by legislative amendment. As a result of Napoleon’s
conquests, the code was also introduced into a number of European
countries. Some Latin American republics adopted it, and it also became
236 Daily Life during the French Revolution
the model for the civil codes of the Canadian province of Quebec and the
state of Louisiana.
The rise to power of Napoleon no doubt eased the fears of many people
who lived in the areas where brigandage and terror had reigned for years.
His effi cient centralized administration, with its effective police and mili-
tary, cleansed France of lawlessness, often, however, to the detriment of
liberty.
NOTES
1. Young, 320–22.
2. Lewis (2004), 13–14.
3. Rudé (1988), 14.
4. Schama, 362.
5. Lewis (1972), 129.
6. Ibid., 131.
7. Andress (2004), 54.
8. Ibid., 69–72.
9. See Cobb/Jones, 216, and Schama, 793ff.
10. Robiquet, 151.
11. Scurr, 186.
12. Andress (2004), 218–9.
Bonaparte ending the farce of égalité at St.-Cloud, 1799. Courtesy Library of
Congress.
Law and Order 237
13. Ibid., 248–49, for more on roving bands of robbers and deserters.
14. For these examples and others see Lewis (2004), 153–54.
15. The word “homosexual” had not yet been coined in the eighteenth century;
the French used the word “pederasty” to describe sexual acts between same-sex
couples.
16. Young, 315–16.
17. For more on salt, see Kurlansky. Schama, 75, states that between 1780 and
1783, 2,342 men, 896 women, and 201 children were convicted in one region of
Angers, along the Brittany border, for salt smuggling. Dogs, too, were trained to
smuggle salt, but there are no fi gures on canine arrests.
18. Young, 317.
15
Aftermath
By 1795, the people of France had had enough of revolutionary govern-
ment. The decade that began in 1789 was a time of high hopes for many
millions of people, who anticipated a golden age of political liberty, social
equality, and economic freedom. For hundreds of thousands, it was also
a time of bitter despair and bloody civil war. For the 300,000 or so nobles
and clergy, the revolution was a disaster, as it was for those who depended
on the upper classes for employment or the church for charity and for the
untold numbers of families who lost fathers and sons in the brutal wars
defending the revolution.
Direct results were the abolition of the absolute monarchy, the abroga-
tion of the feudal privileges of the nobles, including the total eradication
of the remaining vestiges of serfdom, the elimination of feudal dues and
church tithes, the breakup of large estates, and the principle of equal liabil-
ity for taxation. Career advancement became open to those with talent
rather than to members of a particular class, and the bourgeoisie gained
access to the highest positions in the state, which itself was no longer a
federation of provinces or the private property of a monarch. Instead, it
now belonged to the people.
Other social and economic reforms included the elimination of impris-
onment for debt and the abolition of the rule of primogeniture in inheri-
tance. The revolution managed to give practical application to the ideas
of the philosophers: equality before the law, trial by jury, and, ultimately,
freedom of religion, speech, and the press. It transformed the institutional
structures of France and led to lasting changes in the nature of the church