Ganging Up

I thought gangs would prove to be a popular theme with the Dead Good writing collective, but it seems I got that one wrong - so there's only one blogging gang in town this week. Oh well, press on.

"Let them eat cake!"  must rank among the most famous of historical quotes. It's popularly attributed to Marie Antoinette, as supposedly spoken to her husband Louis XVI in 1789 on the eve of the French Revolution, when the hungry and put-upon peasantry began to entertain thoughts of ganging up on their overlords.

The actual phrase in French runs "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!"  and there is evidence that it predates Marie Antionette by decades, probably having been coined by another princess, Marie Therese (wife of Louis XIV) in the late 17th or early 18th century, on the occasion of an earlier famine when the peasants of France remonstrated against their impoverished estate. Jean-Jacques Rousseau recounted it in his 'Confessions ' (written in 1765 but only published in 1782), so either Maria Antoinette was regurgitating the quote or - far more likely - she never said it and it was a case of false attribution on the part of  the revolution's media machine eager to smear the aristocracy of the Ancien Régime and to justify Marie Antionette's execution for high treason in 1793.

The power of the quote was that it landed squarely as a jibe and a slur on the working class of France, for whom a basic baton or baguette of bread was a staple of their diet, accounting for 50% of the average family income among the peasantry (compared to the 5% they spent on fuel - an interesting contrast to our own modern day cost of living disquiet, though we have still to see what effect the war in Ukraine will have on world grain supplies). The price of bread was therefore a constant preoccupation of the nation, especially in the 18th century, and the poor would never have been able to afford anything as fancy as brioche. 

Two factors combined to exacerbate the situation and eventually trigger a revolution. The first was a demographic change, for during the 18th century the population of France increased by a massive 25% and there was a population shift from country to town. The second was a political change as Jacques Turgot, Minister of Finance under Louis XVI, began to impose free market capitalism (laissez-faire ) upon an already struggling agricultural economy. Bad harvests led to food shortages and ratcheting grain and bread prices. Civil unrest was bound to follow, met inevitably by oppression from the militia of the ruling aristocracy, which in turn fuelled the workers' sense of grievance and will to resist. 

gang of revolutionaries

But the peasants' dissatisfaction bordering upon hatred for the aristocracy and the landed gentry was based on more than hungry bellies and an objection to economic policy. They believed they had been poorly treated for generations by those who owned the estates and ruled the country, had not only been taken for granted rather than being appreciated, but had been blatantly exploited both economically and morally - and nowhere was this historical abuse more evident than in the loathsome droit du seigneur, which from feudal times had given the lord of the manor "first night rights" to bed any new bride on his estate. 

There were other liberties the lord enjoyed as well, such as droit de ravage (right to ravage, which allowed him to devastate any fields on his own domain regardless of the tenants) and droit de prélassement (right of lounging - the mind boggles). 

However, droit du seigneur was the one French the revolutionary thinkers chose to highlight as they railed against the "oblivious and rapacious " ruling class of the country. Montesquieu referenced it in the 1748 treatise 'The Spirit of the Laws ', as did Voltaire in his 'Dictionnaire Philosophique ' of 1764. In fact he even wrote a five-act comedy 'Le droit du seigneur ' first performed just three years before the revolution, in 1789. The leaders of the resistance used such works to lend authority to their own revolutionary polemics in the closing decades of the 18th century, stirring up revulsion against lords and monarchs who would have their cake and eat it too. In 1792 gangs of revolutionaries started ripping up the cobblestones. The rest was an historical inevitability.

King Brioche

I'll leave you this week with my new gang-themed poem, a slight but satirical socio-political allegory based loosely on all of the foregoing.

King Brioche vs The Pantry Weevils*

A frightful bunfight in the palace of the pleasured

Fawn tapestries flapping in flour-filled air

The squeal of dark through transomed windows

A rabble in the courtyard, blood upon the stairs

The pantry door unhinged tonight

Ripped sheets and crumbs festoon the Royal bed

Calling to mind the parable of wheat and tares

For that's the rattling sound of Droit du Seigneur

Bring throttled by an upstart vassal in his lair

The pantry poor eat cake tonight

* as an entomological footnote I should explain that what we commonly call flour or pantry weevils are more correctly named red flour beetles, like this little chap here...

Thanks for reading. Go weevils! S ;-)