You, men ofEngland, who have no right to this Kingdom of France, theKing of Heaven orders and notifies you through me, Joan the Maiden, to leave your fortresses and go back to your own country; or I will produce a clash of arms to be eternally remembered. And this is the third and last time I have written to you; I shall not write anything further.
Joan of Arc, Third Letter to the English at Orleans; May 5, 1429, translated by Allen Williamson, 2000-04. (online).
On 1 August 1779, Pierre Reynes and his son Mathieu met the royal notary of the small south-western town of Villefranche-de-Lauragais to enter into a contract with the ‘high and powerful seigneur’ the Marquis d’Hautpoul, through his agent, Jacques Maurel. The farm the illiterate peasants were rent ing was a considerable one – about 30 hectares – and produced about a hun dredsetiers of wheat (20setiers would feed a family of five) and a wide array of livestock, vegetables and other produce. This was, however, a sharecropping contract: the seigneur took 20setiers in advance – whatever the volume of the crop – and half of the rest; after setting aside seed for the next year, the Reynes would be left with 15setiers, less than their family needed. They were rigidly tied to a three-field system (maize and vegetables, wheat, fallow) and, while the proceeds from livestock were also divided, any extra forage had to be provided by them. Similarly, all the farm implements were the lessees’ responsibility. They were to buy young pigs, though the seigneur’s agent was to have half; in addition, they were to provide 108 chickens and capons and 600 eggs yearly. The lease was for one year only; should the Reynes not ‘do everything neces sary’ to be good husbandmen (‘bons ménagers et bons pères de famille’), it would not be renewed.
Peter McPhee,A Social History of France 1789–1914 (2004), Ch. 1: France in the 1780s
TheEnglishman, in eleven years, gets three bushels more of wheat than theFrenchman. He gets three crops of barley, tares, or beans, which produce nearly twice as many bushels per acre, as what the three French crops of spring corn produce. And he farther gets, at the same time, three crops of turnips and two of clover, the turnips worth 40s. the acre, and the clover 60s. that is 121 for both. What an enormous superiority! More wheat; almost double of the spring corn; and above z 20s. per acre per annum in turnips and clover. But farther; the Englishman's land, by means of the manure arising from the consumption of the turnips and clover is in a constant state of improvement, while the Frenchman's farm is stationary.
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