[The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac]@TWC D-Link bookThe Two Brothers CHAPTER VII 4/44
They are nearly all vine-growers, and display a remarkable inflexibility of manners and customs, due, undoubtedly, to their origin,--perhaps also to their victory over the Cottereaux and the Routiers, whom they exterminated on the plain of Charost in the twelfth century. After the insurrection of 1830, France was too agitated to pay much attention to the rising of the vine-growers of Issoudun; a terrible affair, the facts of which have never been made public,--for good reasons.
In the first place, the bourgeois of Issoudun refused to allow the military to enter the town.
They followed the use and wont of the bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages and declared themselves responsible for their own city.
The government was obliged to yield to a sturdy people backed up by seven or eight thousand vine-growers, who had burned all the archives, also the offices of "indirect taxation," and had dragged through the streets a customs officer, crying out at every street lantern, "Let us hang him here!" The poor man's life was saved by the national guard, who took him to prison on pretext of drawing up his indictment.
The general in command only entered the town by virtue of a compromise made with the vine-growers; and it needed some courage to go among them.
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