All language subtitles for 3. Aufbruch in die Freiheit

For over a millennium,
the whole of Europe was agrarian.

From generation to generation,

men and women tended the land

to feed themselves and others.

But what do we know of
their hardships and their dreams,

of their solidarity
and their revolts

against all those in power
who tried to seize their fields

and labour?

Deprived of power and narratives,

these peasant people lived for
a long time in silence and darkness.

Today, they are said to be
on the verge of disappearing,

yet their story
is more relevant than ever.

For 15 centuries, it has been
marked by the same issue:

that of the land and its use.

They are wiser than us.
They went to hide

in the little house.

They went to hide
in the little house.

I don't know who says
that animals are stupid.

If we compare them to humans,

it's debatable.

My grandfather was illiterate.

My grandmother was illiterate.

My other grandfather
was illiterate.

My other grandmother
was illiterate

and my father,
who was very talented,

had only been able to study

up to Year 8

and they wanted to send him
to the priests' college.

It was his only way
to continue studying.

But when he was young,
he had already refused that

and my mother didn't finish
Year 8.

They both loved to read,
of course.

That's what

we inherited, if you will.

My mother and father
always wanted us

to study

because they had suffered

from submission
to those who "spoke well".

That's what they said.

Having knowledge
and know-how is key.

This issue of knowledge could arise
in the most unlikely of situations,

between the pear and the cheese,
for example.

In the Middle Ages,
cheese was considered

unworthy of delicate stomachs,

fit only for peasants.

Like them, it smelled bad,
it was said,

while the fresh,
delicate pear was considered

the noblest fruit.

In the 15th century,
people's tastes changed

and cheese combined with pears

became a refined delicacy.

A curious proverb
then appeared in Italy:

"do not let the peasant know

how good cheese is with pears."

In the Italian proverb that says:
"do not let the peasant

know

how good cheese is with pears,"

what matters is knowledge,

preventing someone
from knowing something,

preventing someone

from eating something
because if they taste it,

they'll realise it's good.

The peasant must not taste

certain things

because if they try these foods,

which are not rare

and which they could have access to,

then they would eat like a nobleman.

If they eat like a nobleman,
everything will be chaotic.

In Italy,

as in other European countries,

texts explicitly state

that peasants

must be

kept ignorant,

otherwise
they could become dangerous.

They could start thinking.

This idea of the peasant

as a somewhat animal-like being,

beyond the contempt it displays,

mainly serves to justify the idea

that they must be kept
away from civilised society,

away from decision-making

or reflection bodies.

This fresco in an Italian church
shows Christ

showing the peasants all the things
that are forbidden on Sundays:

dancing, playing music,

playing cards,
working, going to bed.

The peasants couldn't read, so they
were addressed through images.

Another church,
the Chapel of San Rocco,

in the village
of Montereale in Friuli.

Here a book reigns supreme,

omnipresent on every fresco.

It appears in every position,

no less than sixteen times,
but it is always the same:

the only book, the holy book,

the only book that can be read.

One of the parishioners
who came here

at the end of the 16th century

was Domenicos Candela,

known as Menocchio the miller.

We know the story of this rebellious
and philosophical peasant

thanks to the historian
Carlo Ginzburg,

who discovered
the records of his trial

in the archives of the Inquisition.

Menocchio was arrested in 1580,

denounced by the village priest

for blasphemy.

Before the judges,
he declared that he loved to read

and that he owned 12 books,

including Dante's Divine Comedy

and perhaps
an Italian version of the Koran.

He was aware that his reading
gave him access

to forbidden knowledge.

"The inquisitors don't want
us to be knowledgeable,"

he said during his interrogation.

He often quoted
The Travels of Mandeville,

an account of extraordinary
journeys to unknown lands.

Mixing this exotic fantasy
with his everyday experience,

Menocchio invented his own version
of the creation of the world,

which he presented
to the astonished Inquisitors.

"In the beginning,"
he said, "there was chaos,

which gradually coagulated,

like cheese from milk,

and worms appeared in it,
which became the angels.

Among these angels
was God himself,

born like them of this chaos".

Menocchio was burned
at the stake in 1600

for having dreamed of a peasant God.

At the same time,

the Inquisitors
made another discovery

in the village of Brazzano,

a day's walk from Montereale.

A sect of peasants

who called themselves
the Benandante,

"Good Walkers".

They claimed that on certain nights,
in their dreams, they travelled

to distant fields

where they fought
with fennel branches

against sorcerers armed
with sorghum stalks

who came to steal their crops.

All the accused were insistent.

These journeys and nocturnal battles
took place only in dreams,

but the inquisitors
believed in a different truth.

For a long time, the Church
treated village witchcraft

as the superstition
of gullible peasants.

At the end of the 16th century,
something shifted.

Witchcraft was now seen
as a vast collective conspiracy.

It was the rise of the legend
of the Witches' Sabbath,

invented by doctors of demonology,

and which influenced

this 1922 film.

Thousands of witches,
flying on broomsticks,

gather at night to worship Satan

and to destroy the Christian world.

The same narrative is found

in all the confessions
of alleged witches,

such as the Benandante,

who, after years of imprisonment,

eventually renounced
their version of events

and confessed to worshipping Satan,

as dictated by their judge.

In these forced confessions,
however,

their true voice
can sometimes be heard.

It is recognised,
says Carlo Ginzburg,

when the inquisitor notes
that he doesn't understand them.

There was, let's say,

a deep layer

of peasant beliefs,

or let's say

beliefs related to crop fertility,

on which

the inquisitors imposed

a diabolical reinterpretation.

These statements were always
influenced by power relations,

that much is clear to us.

It was the accused peasants who
spoke, when they were permitted to,

so, once again,

I think there's a problem

that affects not only the historian,

but in fact everyone

who tries to understand something,

not only about the past,
but also about the present.

What I mean is that...

the hierarchy of powers

also implies
a hierarchy of witness statements,

not all voices were heard.

This is quite easy
for us to imagine.

Perhaps they were there,
but they remained silent.

We don't know.

It was the Inquisition

that allowed us

to capture words

that would otherwise
have been lost forever.

Here again there is an ambiguity

because it is intolerance

and violence

that is at work here

and it was not intentional,

to capture documents of a culture

that this violence and
intolerance were trying to erase.

A Christian moral lesson:
the tree of vices.

Lust, greed, pride

and what comes of them.

At the foot of the tree,
the new diabolical couple

at the root of all evil,

the peasant and the woman.

Peasant women
were the main targets

of the witch-hunt epidemic

that swept through Europe
in the 16th and 17th centuries,

claiming tens of thousands
of victims.

Judges and inquisitors
relentlessly pursued the weakest,

the most isolated in the community,

elderly, single or widowed women,

to whom evil powers were attributed:

bewitching men, making animals sick,

destroying crops,

killing with a single glance.

Handbooks explain how to recognise

and track down these witches
and their companions,

animals with strange names
called their "familiars".

There was no village witch

not surrounded by animals,
both real and mythical creatures.

This shows animals' importance
to the rural economy.

Even the poorest
farmer owned animals.

But for the animals to feed him,

he must first feed them himself.

With the little land we have,
we couldn't feed 120 sheep.

When we had 250 it was even worse.

All around here

people pretty much
abandoned the land,

so they let them roam.

It was part of the landscape,
we let the sheep roam.

Back in my great-grandfather's day,

up in the mountains
it was all community land

or council land,

so the shepherds would graze

and would refuse to pay rent
to the local council

because they said

there was an expression
in our local dialect

for "grazing rights"

and it was a sacred expression.

Grazing rights.

Anyone who had animals

had the right to let them
graze in the mountains.

Until the rise of fascism,
nobody contested this.

It was normal,

they were grazing.
Again, it was grass

from the council

or because private owners
had abandoned the land.

This is something that
is still done today.

If you go to the countryside
near Rome, you'll see

flocks of sheep grazing

and you don't know if the shepherd
is paying anybody anything.

This is still done today. It's
a kind of permanent nomadism

that has continued over time.

The grass

and the landowner's eye,

as you have to manoeuvre
to avoid being caught!

Sometimes you give someone a lamb,

or some cheese.

The feeding of the herd,
a constant concern

of ancient village communities,

was governed by a set
of collective practices

that redefined
the entire rural space

in terms of what was allowed
and what was not.

There was the space
of the right of way,

where several
neighbouring villages

agreed on the free movement

of their respective herds,

provided that each herd

returned to its home village
before nightfall.

Then there was
the common area of fallow land,

which belonged to the village

and where all the animals
of the village could graze

without restriction
and at any time.

Then there was
the area of private fields,

where every villager
had the right to graze his cattle,

but only after the harvest,

which was called
the right to common of pasture.

Finally, there was
a forbidden space,

the peasant's garden,

marking a return
to private property,

of 'this is my land, stay off'.

Today,
the survival of common land,

wherever it still exists,

is directly linked
to the presence of livestock.

Here, unfortunately, the commons
are very much shrinking,

because, if you would
have come 15 years ago,

you would have
seen 800 cows.

Now you will see 10, 11.

The common herd has shrunk

because the people are dying out.
The peasants are dying out.

So as long as
there are no active farmers

or less active farmers,

there will be less animals,
there will be less commons.

It's an indirect equation between

big industry coming in
and filling in a gap

that is not so quickly
filled in by small farmers,

young small farmers.

So as long as the community,

the peasant community is shrinking,

the access
to the commons is shrinking,

and if nobody claims that,

it's a very big bet
for industry to come say:

"well, these lands
are sitting barren.

We want these lands so that
we can be economically

productive and we will
also maintain the lands."

So definitely
it's an entry point for big industry

to 'grab', as we say,

the big lands
that are sitting, for now,

they are sitting, maybe, empty.

It's also the problem of the power
of negotiation of the community.

Sometimes communities
lack voice and especially

during communist time,
this voice was

very much shut down
by the communist regime.

So right now, people are not
claiming what is rightfully theirs.

And even if they have animals,
they decide

to be hopeless
and just sell off the animals

and to stop being farmers

and not to raise up
and to ask for their right to land.

From the Middle Ages,

larger flocks were entrusted
to professional shepherds,

who lived on the fringes
of the village community

and spent more time
with animals than with people.

They were sometimes seen
as positive figures,

akin to the good shepherds
of the Bible, and sometimes

as silent loners,

rumoured to possess
malevolent powers,

capable of turning into wolves,

as in La Fontaine's fable,

and devouring the very flock
they were supposed to guard.

In Val di Fiemme,
an alpine valley in northern Italy,

shepherds are respected

and trusted individuals.

Every summer, they lead the communal
herds from the valley villages

to the mountain pastures,

a journey known
as vertical transhumance.

It is a difficult
and dangerous journey

and they have left traces
of their passage along the way.

There are 50,000 inscriptions here,

the oldest dating back
to the 16th century,

painted directly on the rock.

Drawings and crosses
to indicate the sizes

of herds and other writing,

bearing witness to the culture
of this unique society,

a people bound together
by shared knowledge.

Away from the village,

the mountain became
a place of freedom and play.

Everyone competed to climb higher,
leaving their mark

in the most inaccessible places,

reached thanks to a felled tree

or returning in winter
to make the most of the snow.

In Ireland, where summer pastures
were more accessible,

summer grazing
was a communal practice.

Young girls from the village
would go up with the herd

and would stay to guard it
throughout the summer.

These stones are all that remain

of the huts where they lived
together for a few months.

It was a communal life
away from the village,

in these borderlands
where legends were born.

The most popular legend
tells of a young girl's romance

with a supernatural being

who disguised himself
as a man in order to seduce her.

My curse on the priest

that married me

and my second curse,

on the big towns.

That's not how

I spent

my youth,

but dancing

in the summer

and herding cows.

She's regretting the fact

that she's moved
from the summer pastures

and is now down
in the lowlands, in the towns,

married, as an adult woman.

And this really
gives an insight into what

she feels she was missing.

There was more freedom
up in these summer pastures.

It was young people

and primarily
young women, teenagers,

and during
the time they were up here,

they had a chance
to sing and to dance

and to meet up with other herders

from other parts of the valley
or, indeed, from other valleys.

And sometimes young men
would come to visit them,

and they'd have a céilí together,

or a gathering together.

So it was a time of recreation,
a time of freedom

and a time when they actually

were able to express themselves

and express their own skills

without being controlled
by others. You have this saying:

“thug sí an damhsa ó bhuaile léi”,
in Gaelic,

and literally, it means "she brought

the dance from the booley".

It means basically this person
was well schooled in dancing

and it must have been up there
that she got it.

So there is
a sense that these places

were not necessarily
out of control of the community,

but were places

where young people
had perhaps a bit more space

to have their own practices.

Even though it seemed harmless,
the traditional summer grazing

was seen as a threat
by the English colonisers

who took over the island
from the 16th century,

leading to fierce battles
with Irish rebels.

And indeed,
you have one English general,

Sir George Carew, in the year 1600,

he's writing from this province
in Munster

and he actually complains
that the rebellion

wouldn't have gone on
as long as it has done

if it were not for the people
going up to the mountains

and to the forests
in the summertime with their cattle.

Effectively, they go out of sight.

They can't track them

and warriors
can go up with these people

and seek refuge in these places.

The English occupiers
saw transhumance itself

as evidence of Irish barbarism.

"They have no homes," wrote one.

"They move
with their flocks like nomads,

like wild animals,

always ready to rebel.

They must be settled
in villages and towns".

This is exactly the language

that the French occupiers of Algeria

would use two centuries later.

To civilise the shepherds,

they had to be transformed
into farmers.

There's a duality

between farmers and shepherds,

between nomadic
pastoral civilisations

and agricultural civilisations.

A medievalist
once wrote that shepherds

are always the others.

In spite of everything,

European farming communities

maintain a mixed economy

and it's this mixture

of farming and herding
that characterises them.

They're farming communities

who own livestock

and even though they specialise
in herding,

they remain farmers.

Remember that, because

that's what makes them unique.

There's no opposition
between herdsmen and farmers

by definition.

The balance between
farmers and herders

was disrupted when
the economy intervened.

This occurred during
the great Spanish transhumance,

which saw, between
the 14th and 19th centuries,

three million sheep crossing
the country each year.

They moved south for the winter

and north for the summer.

An army of giants!

Giants?

I don't see giants,

just sheep.
- Fool!

A knight never errs!

For once, the knight of the sad face

wasn't wrong.

The most serious writers of the time

likened this transhumance

to the march of
a gigantic army, devastating

everything in its path.

The aim of this horizontal
transhumance was economic.

The wool of the transhumant
merino sheep,

much finer than that
of the sedentary sheep,

was the main export

and the main source
of income for the state.

This is why the kings of Spain

gave their support

to the main breeders' associations,

of which Mesta
was the most important.

By bringing together
shepherds of herds of all sizes,

identified by
their distinctive signs,

the associations managed

to recruit professional shepherds,

negotiated with the towns
and villages they crossed

and allocated grazing along routes

of up to 800 kilometres

on specially reserved paths

under the protection
of the King of Spain himself.

Ten major routes
crisscrossed Spain

and wherever the sheep passed,

transhumance imposed itself

thanks to a series
of official decrees.

Fences couldn't be built
to protect communal lands.

Fields couldn't be extended

to block the routes.

People had to let the herds graze

and maintain water sources for them.

In forests, it was a free-for-all;

the herds and their shepherds

could help themselves
as they pleased

and you can imagine
what the impact of this was.

To top it all off,

the Mesta had its own police force

and courts

that allowed it to prosecute
recalcitrant peasants

and, in the north of the country,
the small Pyrenean shepherds

who were trying to protect
their mountain pastures.

Today, transhumance
has become a nostalgic symbol

of a lost freedom,

while the gigantic machinery
of the Mesta

has fallen into oblivion.

It didn't survive the collapse
of the wool market

at the beginning
of the 19th century,

nor the criticism of liberal
economists in the 20th century,

who condemned
this state-directed transhumance

as a typically Spanish monstrosity,

an obstacle to progress

and economic development.

Opinions on this
today are more nuanced.

We shouldn't

romanticise the period

or distort it
to see a harmonious world.

It was a time of great conflict,

but the feeling

of community

was very important.

The earliest texts

about farming

speak of "oteros"

and "mestas",

periodic gatherings of shepherds

and of people from
the same communities.

What did they discuss
at these meetings?

They talked about the condition
of the pastures, of the water,

how to share it,
how many animals there were,

how to take care of them,

the routes to take
to reach certain places

and the state of the ponds,

water troughs and wells.

All these elements were necessary

for the sustainability
of the farming community.

In order to reproduce

and survive as a social

and economic group,

they had to consider

how they used the natural resources

of their environment.

Jumping forward in time.

1968.

The May barricades in Paris,

Russian tanks
in August in Prague

and the Vietnam War.

It was at this time
that American Garrett Hardin

chose to launch
a rare and vigorous attack

against the rural commons,

which had disappeared
in the West for over a century.

What was even more surprising
was that Hardin

wasn't a historian, but a biologist

obsessed with preserving
the genetic capital

of the white race in the USA.

The Tragedy of the Commons
is concerned

with the problem
of allocation of resources.

For religious reasons,

many people want to adopt a model

like the one Karl Marx expressed:
"from each according

to his abilities,
to each according to his needs."

In other words,
the mere fact that you exist

entitles you to your share

of whatever there is that's around.

Now, no other species of animal

operates by this principle

and to think that
human beings can do so

safely is a very radical idea

and biologists
don't think that they can.

To illustrate his point,

Hardin used the example
of a common pasture.

Since humans are reasonably
selfish creatures,

each farmer sought
to maximise his own profit

by increasing
the number of cows grazing there.

Since everyone
was doing the same thing

and neglecting the common good,

the pasture was overexploited

and eventually destroyed.

Meanwhile, in the name
of the same economic rationality,

the private owner would
preserve his own property.

This overlooked
the fact that the commons,

both the land and its use,

were carefully regulated
by the village communities

and that adherence to these rules
was not only key

to their survival,

but was also the foundation of
their economic and social coherence.

But wasn't that exactly
what they were accused of?

As one 18th-century advocate
of their abolition put it,

the more common land in a village,

the fiercer its inhabitants were

and the more prone they were

to enjoy the most
dangerous excesses.

It was England that,

starting in the 17th century,
first undertook

the systematic destruction
of the commons.

Royal power led the charge,

as in the Fenlands,

a region of marshland
in the north-east of the country

that the king privatised in 1626

to give to his associates.

The peasants revolted.

Come, Brethren of the water,

and let us all assemble,

To treat upon this matter,

which makes us quake and tremble

For they do mean all Fens to drain,

and waters overmaster,

All will be dry and we must die,

because Essex calves want pasture.

The feathered fowls have wings,

to fly to other nations

But we have no such things

to aid our transportations.

We must give place,
oh grievous case,

to horned beasts and to cattle,

except that we can all agree

to drive them out by battle.

After 20 years
of sporadic resistance,

the peasants were defeated.

Today, all that
remains of their marshland

is this small nature reserve

surrounded by fields,

but what most marked
the English landscape

and the minds of
the contemporaries

was the enclosure movement,

the fencing erected
by large landowners

around common lands,
reserving it for their own use,

as well as around their own fields,

thus cutting out traditional
grazing routes for livestock.

The process of enclosures
is a process in which

landowners claim common land

as their own personal property.

And it is a very English thing,
in fact,

with specific acts of parliament
for a specific village.

I do not think
there is a genealogical link

between that

and the claims by lords of rights

over common land in the Middle Ages,

because enclosures tend to be

for changing

the status of the land

from uncultivated to cultivated.

When lords claim the property,

then peasants have no rights at all,

but when lords claim dues

for the use of land,

then the peasants
still have rights of usage.

It's much more radical
when you claim property.

It's interesting

that it is sufficiently radical

that you have to change the law
in order to make it happen,

which is why an act of Parliament
is necessary to enclose land.

Enclosures
caused hundreds of local riots

in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Only a few left a trace.

However, on this map
of the area around Norwich,

the location of an oak tree
was drawn.

The tree, if this is
indeed the right one,

still exists.

It is known as Ketts' Oak,

after the leader of
the Norfolk peasant insurgents.

In 1549,

it was at the foot of this tree

that they gathered
to breach the enclosures

and seize the city of Norwich.

After three weeks of occupation,

they were defeated

and their leader, Ketts,

was hanged on the city walls.

With the monopolisation
of the commons,

the countryside became
the preserve of the aristocracy,

reserved for
their leisure and enrichment.

Chased from their homes,

hundreds of thousands of peasants

were forced to beg in the streets
or seek work in the cities.

The misery and desertification
of the countryside

was the price they had to pay

for this English
agricultural revolution,

adapting to market changes

prioritising sheep, for example,

then switching to cereals
when the price of wool fell.

The whole of Europe

admired the English model
and tried to imitate it.

In France, it had many supporters
within the royal administration.

The monarchy was, of course,

aware of enclosures

and they considered
implementing them.

There was a lot of pressure
from agronomists

and from economists, saying:

"this land is not productive.

These practices are inefficient.
We need to put an end to all this.

We need to do it like the English.

We will engage in large-scale
farming and inevitably

this will be more efficient
than small-scale farming."

It was about physiocracy,

about militant agronomy.

Large-scale farming is
inevitably, like in England,

something efficient.
Small-scale property is inefficient.

So, the monarchy
issued decrees on enclosure

and decrees concerning the commons,

but it did not really itself
the means to enforce them.

So why? Well,

under Louis XV,

a special envoy was sent
to England

to investigate,
to see if it was viable.

So he came back

and the report he presented
was catastrophic.

He said:
"you absolutely must not do this!

What would this lead to?

It would lead to
the ruin of the poor.

They would no longer have access
to common goods.

What would these
poor people do next?

They would go to the city.

This would create unrest.

What you would create
doing this is unrest,

revolts and conflicts.

You absolutely must not do this."

Jean Petit dancing,

Jean Petit dancing

with his finger he dances,

with his finger, he dances

with his finger, finger, finger

with his finger, finger, finger

so dances Jean Petit.

Behind its childish rhythm,

this popular song describes
the convulsions of a tortured body,

beaten in 1643,

that of Jean Petit,

leader of one of the many
Croquant uprisings,

the major anti-tax revolts

France experienced
in the 17th century.

All ended in the defeat
of the insurgent peasants.

These revolts came to an end
in the early 18th century.

In France,
in the peace that followed,

the rural world was divided
into three categories:

the labourers

who possessed only
the strength of their arms,

which they hired out to survive.

The yeomen,

independent farmers

who owned a plough

and enough land to live on.

At the top of the ladder,

the rural elite,

the large farmers

who sometimes owned
several hundred hectares of land.

There was constant tension
between these three categories.

During the harvest,

the big landowners hired
thousands of workers every year,

who took advantage
of this critical moment

to go on strike

and force the big landowners
to accept their conditions.

These were violent
and carnival-like movements

that the authorities
called "bacchanals"

and the leaders risked the galleys

if caught.

The yeomen, meanwhile,

competed with the landowners
for access to the land.

Less wealthy,

they lived in constant fear
of losing their fields

and being reduced to mere labourers.

Finally, in the event of conflict
between yeomen and landowners,

the wealthiest could count
on the support of the poorest,

the labourers,

who depended on them for work.

But all three categories of peasants

had a common enemy:

the feudal lord,

or whoever
had bought the feudal rights.

The 18th century
saw a revival of feudalism.

Lords in need of money

tried to make their lands
profitable.

They hired surveyors

who used new surveying techniques

to update the plans of their estate.

The aim was to correct
any encroachment

and any other liberties
taken by the peasants over the years

in order to recalculate
the ever-increasing

dues owed to them.

Peasants no longer understood
the idea of seigniory,

what it was all about,

because initially,
around the year 1,000,

the lord had granted land
in exchange for a right,

a kind of lease,

and one could have accepted
that the lord was the owner.

But over the centuries,

lords detached themselves
more and more

and the peasants had
grown used to this.

Initially, they couldn't
pass on their lands

but now, they did as they pleased.
The peasant could sell,

pass on the land to their
children, mortgage it

and they didn't hold back.

They could exchange, they could
produce whatever they wanted.

What were the constraints,
apart from the fact

that they had to pay dues?

They no longer even understood

why they had to pay dues,
since they felt like the owners.

The lords would say, "you have
to pay me such and such."

There were countless dues to pay.

It could be absolutely ridiculous,
like sometimes a pair of gloves...

Unexpected things,
but one had to pay.

"Why should we pay that?

We're the owners. It's our home.

What does he want from us?

What does he offer us in return?

Nothing. In the past,
he offered us protection.

There were robberies, wars...

All that's over now.

Why should we continue
to pay the seigniory?"

So, indeed, there was
a strong protest movement

against a seigniorial regime

that was no longer understood.

Only the lord understood,

but he was both judge and party.

Why?

Why?

14 July 1789 in Paris,

as seen in a 1930s film
by Jack Conway.

The Revolution
that broke out in France

was anything but a surprise.

The previous year
had seen major peasant uprisings

owing to famine

caused by a poor harvest

and exacerbated by speculation
on the price of wheat.

"The people no longer
obey the orders of the king,

the judges,
the gendarmes or anyone else",

wrote an overwhelmed official.

The peasants' anger
prepared the political revolution,

which in turn
gave it a new dimension.

After the storming of the Bastille
in mid-July,

the peasants started the revolution

through a movement known
as the Great Fear

and, if I may say so, it all began

with what we would now call
"fake news":

rumours that the lords,

the aristocrats,

were taking revenge
on the revolutionary movement

by hiring bands of brigands

to come and set fire to crops

and attack peasant villages.

I remind you that France

was experiencing a serious famine.
It was in a serious crisis,

so France was eagerly
awaiting the new harvest.

If it was bad, there was
a great risk of famine.

So the peasant communities
mobilised.

It was a defensive mobilisation,

which means that patrols
were organised day and night,

crops and forests were monitored,

but nothing happened.

So this defensive movement
turned into

an offensive movement.

The mobilised peasants turned,
this time,

against the feudal system.

From a defensive movement
of protection,

it became an offensive movement

directed against the seigniory.

Between 20 July and 4 August 1789,

the peasants attacked hundreds
of castles and monasteries.

Buildings were looted.

Dovecotes, a feudal privilege,
were destroyed

and the pigeons were eaten.

But the real target of the peasants

was the archives room,

home to the documents

and titles
that proved their subjection

and showed what they had to pay,

both in terms of "sens",
or taxes, and "champart",

a share of their harvest.

On 4 August,

to calm the countryside,

the Assembly voted
to abolish feudal rights,

but this was a sham.

Shortly afterwards,
Parliament reneged

on the commitment
made on the night of 4 August

and made a clear distinction

between the feudal rights that
were to be abolished immediately,

these included personal

and symbolic feudal rights
such as the right to hunt,

the lord's monopoly on fishing

and the lord's priority
in the church.

Essentially, they did away
with the trivialities.

However, they determined that

feudal rights
linked to the land itself,

were property,

which was considered a sacred value

by the men of 1789,

as it was by most
of the men of the Revolution.

However, the abolition

of feudal rights
that burdened the land,

particularly taxes
and sharecropping,

was seen as an attack on property.

This put the Revolution
at odds with itself

and led to a significant rupture

with the peasant world.

The fate of the commons
usurped by the Ancien Régime

was a constant source of conflict.

One such conflict took place
in the autumn of 1790

between the villagers
of Gournay in the Oise

and the local lord

over apples.

The apple trees in question
were planted along a road,

but the lord
still claimed ownership.

The villagers proclaimed

that the Revolution had restored
the trees and their fruit to them,

and they organised
a collective harvest.

The landlord
appealed to the authorities,

who sent in the army.

The peasants wanted to ring
a bell to call for reinforcements,

but the priest,
who was in cahoots with the lord,

had hidden the bell ropes
and the key to the bell tower.

The army confiscated the apples
and returned them

to their illegitimate owner.

The Maypole,

planted in villages to celebrate
the return of spring,

is an ancient ritual
shared throughout Europe.

In 1789,

French peasants made it
the emblem of their revolution,

hanging on it all the odds and ends
of feudal oppression,

from the writing desk,

symbol of the hated registers,

to the weather vane, privilege
of the house of the lord.

It would take another
four years of peasant struggles

before the feudal regime
was finally abolished

after 1,000 years of existence.

The revolution celebrated
agriculture and the peasants.

They were now full citizens.

This new dignity,

however, left the inequalities
of the village intact,

as each individual's property

was proclaimed sacred.

But the peasants lived better,

freed from the burden
of feudal taxes,

selling their produce
at high prices in towns,

where political upheaval
had led to famine.

They became richer,

the beneficiaries of a revolution
that is described as bourgeois,

but which was also peasant.

It was only half a century later

that the ideas
of the French Revolution

reached Vorarlberg,

a remote valley
in the Austrian Empire,

where cows were worshipped.

They were said to be
the source of all wealth,

but people also said they were
endowed with magical powers,

capable of speaking and predicting
who will die during the year,

especially at Christmas
when midnight strikes.

In the spring of 1859,

a young shepherd was taking
his cows to summer pasture

when a wooden bridge
over a stream collapsed,

dragging him down with it.

Swept away by the current,

he found himself
in a Buster Keaton situation,

minus the gags.

As he struggled to save his life,

the other shepherds
watched him drown and moved on.

"I was alone," he wrote later.

His name was Franz Michael Felder.

He loved to read and adored writing,

judging from his school
notebooks and the books

that made him famous,

but also earned him the hostility
of the other villagers,

who accused him
of betraying the community

by trying to rise above
his position.

Already known at the age of 24

and celebrated as a peasant poet
all over Germany,

he chose to stay in Shoppernau,

where he organised
the peasants' revolt

against the two lords of the valley:

Gallus Moosbrugger,
known as the Cheese Baron,

who controlled the market

and imposed his conditions
on the poor peasants,

and his accomplice,
the village priest,

who preached humility
and obedience to the same peasants.

Felder died at the age of 30.

For many years,

the church refused to bury him
in the village cemetery

and his grave was moved
to a nearby vacant lot.

The church's vengeance
did not stop there.

The Shoppernau priest

added a question mark

to the death register,

as if to confirm
that one could not be both

a peasant and a poet.

It was petty. It was mean-spirited,

but it was also
a sign that times had changed,

that you could no longer simply

deny access to knowledge
to peasants,

as in the old proverb
about the pear and the cheese.

Actually, paradoxically,

people embraced this proverb,

even though it was originally

directed against peasants.

"Do not tell the boss that cheese
goes well with pears,"

is now said jokingly.

As is this other version:

"do not let the peasant know

how good cheese is with pears.

Except that the peasant

is no fool and he
knew that well before the boss."

Live free or die!