THE KING’S revenue in Brittany consisted of freely given sums that varied according to needs, income from the royal domains adding up to three or four hundred thousand francs, and the stamp tax, etc., etc.
Brittany had revenues of its own to meet its expenditures. The great duty, and the small duty laid on liquor and the transportation of liquor furnished two million a year. Finally, there were the sums raised by “hearth money.” No one suspects the importance of hearth money to our history; but in fact it was to the French Revolution what the stamp tax was to the American.
Hearth money, or fouage (census pro singulis focis exactus), was a feudal censure, or a sort of tallage, levied on each commoner’s fire. By gradually increasing fouage, the province covered its debts. In wartime, expenditures rose by more than seven million from one session to the next: a sum that exceeded the revenue. A plan was proposed to create capital from the funds collected by the tax and to consolidate this capital in a stock that would be to the benefit of the taxpayers. The injustice (although a legal injustice according to custom) lay in taxing only the property of commoners. The communes never stopped complaining; the Nobility, clinging less to their money than to their privileges, refused to entertain any arrangement that would make their property taxable. Such was the state of affairs in December 1788, when the bloody Estates of Brittany convened.
Minds were then agitated by various causes: the Assembly of Notables, territorial taxation, the coffee trade, the imminent meeting of the Estates-General and the affair of the necklace, the Plenary Court and the Marriage of Figaro, the large bailiwicks and Cagliostro and Mesmer, and a thousand other serious or trivial things that were the topic of controversy in every family.
The Breton nobility, on its own authority, had assembled in Rennes to protest the establishment of the Plenary Court. I went to this assembly. It was the first political gathering that I ever experienced. I was aghast and amused at the shouting I heard. Some climbed on tables and chairs; others gesticulated or talked over each other. The Marquis de Trémargat, a peg-leg, spoke out in stentorian voice: “Let us go to the Commandant, M. de Thiard, and say to him: ‘The Breton nobility is at your door; we ask to speak with you. The King himself would not refuse!’”
At this eloquent eruption, cheers shook the rafters.
He raised his voice again: “The King himself would not refuse!”
The shouts and stamping redoubled.
We went to see M. le Comte de Thiard, a courtier, an erotic poet, a gentle and frivolous-minded man mortally tired of our agitation. He regarded us as so many screech owls, wild boars, and beasts of the jungle. He longed to be somewhere far from our Armorica, and had no desire whatsoever to refuse us entry to his house. Our spokesman told him what he wanted, after which we went back and drew up the following declaration: “We declare dishonorable all those who would accept any post either in the new administration of justice or in the administration of the Estates, which will not be sanctioned by the constitutional laws of Brittany.” Twelve gentlemen were chosen to deliver this document to the King. On arriving in Paris, they were locked up in the Bastille, from which they soon emerged as heroes; they were greeted with laurels on their return. We wore coats trimmed in ermine with big mother-of-pearl buttons, and sewn around these buttons was a Latin motto: death before dishonor. We triumphed over the Court, over which everyone would triumph, and we fell with it into the same abyss.