Revolution and Environment in Southern France Peter McPhee

Revolution and Environment in Southern France, by Pëter McPhee published by Clarendon Press 1999.

On the 12th November in 1830 a brigade of gendarme were dispatched to Gleon at the request of a large local land owner, Auguste Latrielle, owner of Gleon and much of the land around to arrest locals from nearby Villeseque for illegally cutting wood from his land.

The confrontation with around a 100 armed locals rapidly turned violent, the gendarmes and Latrielle’s men were disarmed. Latrielle and his son, Gonzague, tried to flee through the forest and were promptly shot dead. When the gendarmes tried to arrest the perpetrators they were brutally dissuaded and encouraged to depart.

These brutal murders were one of the rare example of violence that occurred in Les Corbieres during the French revolution.

In Revolution and Environment in Southern France, Peter McPhee looks behind the history of the conflict between local peasant in the Corbieres and the Seigneurs, the pre revolution aristocratic landlords, who controlled the majority of both the agricultural land and the forests that dominated the mountainous parts of our corner of South West France.

The Corbieres of the pre revolutionary France was a very different place than you will find today. It was still one of the least densely populated parts of the country, with around 20 people per square kilometer.

The economy was dominated sheep raising, over 390,000 in Aude.  The large land owners dominated the sheep industryt while the peasants survived on self sufficient existance agricultureof barley, wheat, rye, vines for local consumption, olives and vegetables. A few sheep and goats were grazed on the hills sides for milk and cheese. Sheep were rarely killed for food, their value lay in the wool, much in demand by the fabric industry centred in Carcasonne and Limoux. Most people owned some land, but parcels were small dispersed and only a handful of large land owners could be described as wealthy. Skilled labourers such as cart makers, black smiths  millers and stone maisons still complimented their work with agricultural work. Apart from the three villages in the west most corner of Les Corbieres that spoke Catalan the vast majority spoke the local patois, Occitan.

As well as the local aristocracy the other large land owners in the area were the two great Abbeys of Lagrasse and on the Eastern extreme of the Corbieres Fontfroide.

The mines of the High Corbieres, around Maisons and Palariac fed the forges of Felines with a sparse supply of metals, mainly iron, copper with a little gold and silver.

The paysans of the Corbieres tended on the whole to be socially conservative and quietly religious. What united them was the crushing poverty that the vast majority suffered. The clearest way to increase agricultural wealth is to increase the area of land under cultivation, it is also to ove beyond subsistance production and produce an excess that coud then be sold. But what they needed was land. 

Indeed change was already afoot. Loius XV issued an edict in July 1770 giving tax concessions on state taxes for 15 years for cleared land in the Languedoc, with the provision that the forest act of 1669 stayed in place protecting the hillside, river bank and forested flat land of the Languedoc. Illegal logging had already had a major impact in the Midi, charcoal for the forges, and wood for heating as well as the isolated nature of much of the High Corbieres forests had lead to a major depletion of the forests.

Louis’s edict, despite being delayed by the Languedoc Parliament had a major effect in the low land Corbieres, St Laurent, Thezan, Boutenac all saw huge land clearances. That is to say the land easiest, and cheapest to convert to agriculture, primarily vines was naturally the first to be cleared. It was also cleared by the existing large land owners, and the bourgeois Caracssonne based new generation of land owners rather than the local peasants themselves, though they of course did the work.

What Peter McPhee’s fascinating book looks at is how the French Revolution accelerated the changes already underway in the Corbieres.

The shift from aristocratic rule to Bourgeois rule was relatively painless as exemplified by Jean Baptiste Ciceron. Before the Revolution Ciceron had been the Secretary for the Abbey of Lagrasse, post Revolution he became the Prefect for the Aude.

What the Revolution did change was land ownership, some, but not many of the ancien regime fled the Corbiers for Spain, leaving their land to be squabbled over, usually ending in the communes taking over. The big religious land holdings were broken up and either returned to the communes or sold off to predominantly Carcassonne based Bourgeois men.

What the Revolution did also was change was the expectations of the peasants, ‘freed’ from their subservient role they found themselves in exactly the same place they had been before. Apart from now the land around them was much less surveyed and policed. Those that could extended their small holdings, those that couldn’t stole. The forests of the Corbieres were devastated.

The mountain we live on is called Mont Tauch, Tauch in Occitan means Yew tree. The last yew tree on Tauch was seen in the mid 19th century.

The Corbieres was transformed, age old forests were felled, in less than 40 years little remained. After the deforestation came the vines on land that was workable, Sheep and goats.grazed the land that was not. Not only was the forest destroyed now the vegetation that grew beneath the trees was nibbled down to it’s roots.  Over grazing followed by rainfall meant that the thin top soil that covered the mountain sides was soon washed away leaving the rock covered hills that anyone who knows the Corbieres is very familiar with. far from the Nature so beloved of the conservationists the hills of the modern Corbieres are very much a product of man”s activity.  The short green and white oak forests are on the whole less than 150 years old, the deserts underneath the Forestry Commission Pine trees even younger. this is why we take an approach to managing our forest as outlined here Montrouch and our Forest.

McPhee’s Revolution and Environment in Southern France is well worth a read for anyone that loves the Corbieres. One word of warning, the book is an academic book with a limited print run, copies are difficult, and expensive, to get your hands on, the public library may be the best option for getting your hands on a a copy.