[Taken from the statement of the defendant in the trial of one Jean Berenger, a peasant of Combourg, for the murder of his lord, Monseigneur de Chateaubriand, May 1789].
Why should a simple peasant such as myself wish to kill a noble? For kill him I did, a fact that I am not ashamed of. Should one be ashamed of killing a leech, such as Monseigneur and the rest of his class? These leeches, they feed on the blood of the common people, and give nothing in return. We are no better off than serfs; and indeed, worse off, for while serfs are owned by their lords, they are also protected by them. All that we can say is that we are free, that we own our little plots of land. But what of it? We must pay taxes and fees for everything; toll charges to use roads in deplorable conditions, fees to use our lord's wine press or mill, dues to sell our goods at market, quitrents on our own land. All this we pay, and to what end? That we may live a hand-to-mouth existence, until the day comes when we can no longer scrape together enough to get by, and then begin to slowly starve? I have a wife, seven children, and little else: a cow, a horse, and a fraction of the land I would need for my family to thrive, what with the taxes the nobles exact from us. The nobles will not lift a finger to help us, for they no longer own us, and so we are nothing to them but money. The aid provided for us by the king's council? Ha! They know nothing of what we need, and so they guess. They send us money, wheat, rice, low-paying jobs in a poorhouse, but they never think to send us relief from the taxes levied on us by the nobles, and so what they send is never enough to sustain all the hungry. We must then help ourselves, and pray that God chooses to support us.
How do we help ourselves? We cannot protest in a town assembly or anything of the sort, for the bourgeoisie have done their best to limit such power to themselves, because we, the peasants, are too stupid to have a say in the election of officials, or how many additional taxes we pay. We are the lowest of the low; even the sans-culottes look down on us. Who will listen to us? We are quite uneducated, and have nothing to say of any interest to anyone else. The Estates-General cannot help us. The First and Second Estates can easily outvote the Third. Not by any majority of members. Oh, no. The system is prejudiced in their favour, for it calls for voting by chamber, so that if the Third Estate should come up with some measure beneficial to the people but abhorrent to the nobles and rich clergy, it can be quashed immediately. Thus peaceful avenues are closed to us, and we must use other methods of change, that we may gain our freedom in more than name.
I am not the first to kill a noble in an attempt to gain justice, nor will I be the last. Armageddon is not long in coming for to-day's regime, and I for one embrace it; cataclysm brings change, upheaval brings freedom. And who knows? Perhaps the peasant shall someday rule France. The thought gives me great comfort, though I shall never see that day arrive; Your Honour cannot appreciate the greatness in what men such as I have done, in striking a blow for the peasant against the leeches of the nobility. I will be able to claim for myself nothing more from revolution than vindication, but that matters not. I pave the way for the next man. So hang me; you only make me a martyr for the cause. You only bring revolution, and freedom, one step closer. You only bring disaster down upon your own head. Knowing these things gives me all the satisfaction I need to see me to the next life. Make what you will of that, Your Honour, and do not blame me if you should come to regret choosing the law over justice.
January '00
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