preface
Noble privileges are the benefits and benefits enjoyed based on nobility, and can be understood from the two levels of real value and symbolism. For the first time in human history, the French Revolution completely destroyed the vast and complex system of aristocratic privileges: economic privileges including financial privileges, lord taxes, political privileges, honorary privileges, etc. Examining the structural conflicts and limitations of aristocracy and royal power, bourgeoisie and peasants, this paper reveals the path dependence characteristics of aristocratic privileges, and then deeply explores the reasons for the loss of privileges of French aristocrats from the perspective of long and short periods of intertwined
French aristocratic privileges
To understand the existence of aristocratic privileges in pre-revolutionary France, it is first necessary to clarify the composition of the French aristocracy. As mentioned earlier, a nobleman is a member of society who holds a legal title and status of nobility. "In France, the nobility and the clergy were the only group with a clear legal identity." 23 It is well known that in France under the Ancien Régime, the law distinguished three classes: the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate. But strictly speaking, the clergy is a profession.
"The privileges of the French aristocracy from the social level were a complex system of honor and entitlement. While many people in society became privileged in various ways, aristocratic privileges, due to their large volume, variety, and wide range of areas, were far more striking than the privileges of other members of society. In France under the Ancien Régime, the specific content of aristocratic privileges also underwent historical changes, but the basic categories remained unchanged.
First, economic privileges. It mainly includes financial privileges and lordial taxes. On the one hand, the nobility enjoyed tax exemption and was exempt from paying most taxes. The nobility also bore the poll tax and tithe, but exempted the salt tax and the military service tax, which "was a major direct tax, imposed on men rather than land, and military service tax accounted for about three-quarters of the country's total income"25. It should be emphasized that this kind of monetary exemption and benefit is not a forbidden area for the nobility, and the social differentiation function of the tax exemption itself is weakening day by day.
On the other hand, noble lords26 could levy lordial taxes, which they had long enjoyed feudal law27. A territory is a collection of land and rights, and the lord, with his monopoly on economic resources and economic activities, collects a wide variety of miscellaneous taxes from the inhabitants of the territory: fishing tax, hunting tax, compulsory use of the lord's mill tax... Although these taxes have been gradually reduced, a considerable number have remained.
Second, political privileges. The French aristocracy was in a favorable position in the distribution of public office, not only by the law confirming its monopoly on certain political and military positions, but also subsequently effectively monopolizing the high public office of the state. Among them, the statutory monopoly of the aristocracy on officers, senior positions in the church, and the de facto monopoly of the governors of the provinces appeared earlier; The monopoly of court positions and high-ranking administrative positions appeared later. By the time of Louis XVI, the aristocracy had "infiltrated the institutions of state rule, monopolizing high positions in the church and the army, filling the high councils, and occupying almost all ministerial posts except the Treasurer" while enjoying the generous remuneration that came with it.
Third, honorary privileges and others. Honorary privileges, as an outward sign of noble status and status, take many forms: the right of way in public, the right to a special seat in the church, the right to distribute holy water and communion, burial in the church cemetery after death, wearing certain weapons, wearing certain clothing, etc. These pervasive perks of everyday life are purely ostentatious. In addition, some privileges of the French aristocracy, although distinctly symbolic, also carried certain practical functions, such as being tried in a specific court, not having to provide accommodation for soldiers, exemption from military service, exemption from conscription, etc.
The duties of the aristocratic group and its weakening
A typical social schema is: the clergy takes care of the spiritual world of people, laborers provide food and clothing, nobles promote the common good through protection, and each group has the responsibility and obligation to serve other members of society. There is a rationale for this assertion, and the nobility did assume specific duties, but this situation was first broken in France.
Privilege "implies an emphasis on the importance of the contribution of the aristocracy to society... It was a reward for the service of the nobility and their ancestors. "In the eyes of the nobility, privilege was a proper reward for the performance of one's duties, a due remuneration for services rendered to others. In the simple view of justice of the common people, the above law still holds, even if the privileges of the nobility mean both their own obligations and burdens. It can be said that the duty of service formed the legitimate basis of the privileges of the nobility.
The expansion of centralism was a distinctive feature of French politics during the Ancien Régime. The nobility was once a powerful pillar of central royal power, participating in conquests, defending the invasion, defending the royal family, and maintaining a natural kinship with the latter. However, on the road of the expansion of the French royal power, "the secession of powerful dignitaries constituted a hidden danger and threat to the central royal power and national unity." They competed with the royal family for the power to collect taxes, recruit soldiers, and mint currency. ”
Noble rebellions also occurred from time to time, and the two "Fronde movements" in the mid-17th century were the last attempts by the aristocratic upper echelons to control the central government, both of which ended in failure. Finally, during the reign of Louis XIV, the "Sun King" (1661-1715), the central government defeated the traditional power of lords and local communities, and the noble lords were stripped of their local administrative power, and many large nobles were recruited into office.
As a result, the governance model of the administrative bureaucracy replaced the aristocratic governance model, and the king's government with the structure of the king-superintendent-inspector-inspector-inspector agent 33 took over the affairs of taxation, conscription, security, relief, and public works, and the duties and acts of the noble lords in the local area ceased to exist.
Peasant intervention: spontaneous revolt against lord privilege
The bourgeoisie's challenge to the privileges of the nobility was not thorough, and because they lacked a deep experience of feudalism and had a strong sense of property, they were less likely to attack the feudal rights of the nobility, especially the lords' taxes. It was the peasants who liberated themselves from the shackles of lord privileges, "who suddenly rebelled, took their fate into their own hands, and dealt a fatal blow to the remnants of feudalism and the lordship system." "It can be said that it was the rural disturbances and the resulting crisis of property and order that directly forced the representatives of the nobility to make major concessions that had not been planned in advance, and to give up their rights and interests by virtue of their lordship half-forcedly and semi-voluntarily.
The great harvest failure of 1788 worsened the situation of the peasants, and the hungry peasants began a revolt as early as the spring of 1788, and a large-scale tax rebellion broke out in the spring of 1789. But why do this cyclical crisis, which is particularly vulnerable to infection in the established economic order, have different and serious consequences?
The interaction between the process triggered by the National Estates-General and the economic crisis constitutes the main cause. On the one hand, the convening of the diocesan election council and the process of drafting the letter of appeal stimulated the peasants' hopes for a better situation, believing that the king, aware of the suffering of the people, and that his demands in the letter were about to be met, refused to pay taxes. On the other hand, the idea of "aristocratic conspiracy" caused a great panic in the countryside, which in turn stimulated peasant riots. The idea was ingrained in the minds of the peasants, who suspected the nobles of hoarding grain to create famine; And against the backdrop of the political crisis, this move was naturally given the meaning of suppressing the third estate. At the same time, the peasants, who had always feared that strangers such as homeless people and vagabonds would cut the grain that was about to ripen, were now regarded as tools for aristocratic intrigue.
The stalemate at Versailles also spawned rumors, all of which reinforced the peasants' hostility to the nobility. Thus, the loss of lordial privileges was the product of the convergence of the traditional mentality of the French peasants with the specific situation. In general, the beginning of events is highly contingent, and the development of events is subject to the logic of necessity. In the case of the former, the agricultural failure and the resulting economic crisis were the trigger and catalyst for peasant uprisings, and "lords and monks (in the case of tithes) may have become scapegoats for economic crises."
conclusion
The fate of aristocratic privileges is not only one possibility. In the long run, the privileges of the French aristocracy will inevitably decline: on the one hand, under the combined effect of the expansion of royal power and social development, the traditional duties and social advantages of the French aristocracy will be weakened, and the privileges will gradually lose their basic raison d'être; On the other hand, structural conflicts between royal power and privilege, bourgeoisie and nobility, peasants and nobility always existed, and posed a potential threat to different types of aristocratic privileges, respectively.
But this in no way means that aristocratic privileges are bound to end in such a radical way, especially when pluralistic conflicts are subject to multiple constraints. In fact, its withdrawal from the historical stage is full of contingencies and uncertainties, which are the result of the interaction of strategic choices at critical moments with established structural factors