[The Origins of Contemporary France<br> Volume 5 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link book
The Origins of Contemporary France
Volume 5 (of 6)

CHAPTER III
26/68

Besides all this, myriads of ministerial and notarial officials lawyers, ushers, auctioneers, and by way of surplus, or as a natural result, the members of every great private association since no collective enterprise, from the Bank of France and the press to stage lines and tontines, may be established without his permission, nor exist without his tolerance.

Not counting the latter, and after deducting likewise the military or active duty and the functionaries who draw pay, the prefect from the earliest years report that, since 1789, the number of people "employed or under government pay" has more than doubled: In Doubs, in the year IX, instead of 916 there are 1820; in Meurthe in the year XIII, instead of 1828 there are 3091; in Ain, in 1806 instead of 955 there are 1771[3336].
As to the army, it has tripled, and according to the First Consul's own calculations, instead of 9,000 or 10,000 officers as in 1789, there are more than 20,000 .-- These figures go on increasing on the old territory through the very development of the new organization, through the enormous increase of the army, through the re-establishment of religious worship, through the installation of droits reunis, through the institution of the University, owing to the increasing number of officials, cures and assistant-priests, of professors and school-teachers, and of retired and pensioned invalids.[3337] And these figures, which already swell of themselves, are to swell an additional half through the extension of the ancient territory.

Instead of 86 departments with a population of 26 millions, France ends in comprising 130 departments with 42 million inhabitants--Belgium and Piedmont, then Hanover, Tuscany, Central Italy, Illyria, Holland and the Hanseatic provinces, that is to say 44 departments and 16 millions of annexed Frenchmen;[3338] affording another large outlet for little and big ambitions .-- Add still another, as a surplus and not less extensive outlet, outside of France: for the subject princes and the vassal kings, Eugene, Louis, Jerome, Murat, and Joseph, each with their governments, import into their realms a more or less numerous body of French officials, familiars, court dignitaries, generals, ministers, administrators, even clerks and other indispensable subalterns, if for no other purpose than to bring the natives within the military and civil compartments of the new Regime and teach them on the spot the conscription, the administration, the civil code, and systems of accounts like those of Paris.

Even in the independent or allied States, in Prussia, in Poland, in the confederation of the Rhine, there are, at intervals or permanently, Frenchmen in position and in authority to command contingent forces, to garrison fortresses, to receive supplies and secure the payment of war contributions.

Even with the corporal and custom-house inspector on duty on coast at Dantzig and at Reggio, the sentiment of victorious priority equals the possession of rank; in their eyes the natives of the country are semi-barbarians or semi-savages, a backward or prejudiced lot, not even knowing how to speak their language; they feel themselves superior, as formerly the senor soldado of the sixteenth century, or the civis romanus.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books