arrogance of caste thus mounts guard
over a right it is with obstinate vigilance. Accordingly, their
captains of the chase, their game-keepers, their wood-rangers, their
forest-wardens protect brutes as if they were men, and hunt men as
if they were brutes. In the bailiwick of Pont-l'Eveque in 1789
four instances are cited "of recent assassinations committed by the
game-keepers of Mme. d'A----,--Mme. N----, a prelate and a marshal of
France, on commoners caught breaking the game laws or carrying guns. All
four publicly escape punishment." In Artois, a parish makes declaration
that "on the lands of the Chattellany the game devours all the avetis
(pine saplings) and that the growers of them will be obliged to abandon
their business." Not far off; at Rumancourt, at Bellone, "the hares,
rabbits and partridges entirely devour them, Count d'Oisy never hunting
nor having hunts." In twenty villages in the neighborhood around
Oisy where he hunts it is on horseback and across the crops. "His
game-keepers, always armed, have killed several persons under the
pretense of watching over their master's rights. . . . The game, which
greatly exceeds that of the royal captaincies, consumes annually all
prospects of a crop, twenty thousand razieres of wheat and as many of
other grains." In the bailiwick of Evreux "the game has just destroyed
everything up to the very houses. . . . On account of the game the
citizen is not free to pull up the weeds in summer which clog the
grain and injure the seed sown. . . . How many women are there without
husbands, and children without fathers, on account of a poor hare or
rabbit!" The game-keepers of the forest of Gouffray in Normandy "are
so terrible that they maltreat, insult and kill men. . . . I know of
farmers who, having pleaded against the lady to be indemnified for the
loss of their wheat, not only lost their time but their crops and the
expenses of the trial. . . . Stags and deer are seen roving around our
houses in open daylight." In the bailiwick of Domfront, "the inhabitants
of more than ten parishes are obliged to watch all night for more than
six months of the year to secure their crops.[1353]--This is the effect
of the right of the chase in the provinces. It is, however, in the
Ile-de-France, where captaincies abound, and become more extensive,
that the spectacle is most lamentable. A proces-verbal shows that in
the single parish of Vaux, near Meulan, the rabbits of warrens in the
vicinit