largely worked, to the point where the gendarmerie brigades were
reduced in number in 1810.
In central France there were many depressed areas too. Typical was
the Auvergne, though here the problem was the breakdown of fe udalism
rather than the Continental Blockade. Breaking up the common pastures
and woodland of the ancien regime, previously a haven for livestock, led to
ecological disaster: the Auvergne became a gigantic goat sanctuary,
against which possibility before 1789 there had been strict intendants'
prohibitions. Tens of thousands emigrated from the Auvergne to Paris,
swelling the throngs of unemployed and underemployed there; notable
were the bands of children who became chimney sweeps and beggars in
the capital.
But it was in the coastal areas that the worst effects of the blockade
were felt. La Rochelle and Bordeaux, previously boom towns, became
virtual ghost towns instead as the Atlantic ports collapsed through loss of
neutral shipping. One statistic alone is eloquent: 121 American ships
entered Bordeaux in 1807 but only six the following year. Any coastal
merchant wishing to survive had to diversify into terrestrial industries
such as sugar refining, paper milling or tobacco manufacturing. The
Mediterranean coast presented the spectacle of British seapower at its
most arrogant, with the Royal Navy often anchoring with impunity in the
roads at Hyeres. Toulon and Marseilles were the worst hit of the
maritime cities as the factory owners of Carcassonne, the proprietors of
the Nimes silk industry and the Marseilles soap manufacturers them
selves lost their markets in the East. The fu ndamental problem in the
Mediterranean departments was that they had to import corn and cereals,
but could do this only by the sale of goods for which the outlets had dried
up. Morale plummeted and pro-British plots were rife. None the less, the
decline in the Mediterranean relative to north and central Europe was not
as catastrophic as on the Atlantic seaboard.
As always, there were winners and losers. Lyons experienced a boom
in marketing because of new routes through the Alps, especially the
Mont-Cenis tunnel; exporting books and cloth through this route, it
received back lllyrian and Levantine cotton and Piedmontese rice. But
the general trend was that industry suffered and agriculture gained. Vast
amounts of land (but not 'national' property) came on to the market,
allowing entrepreneurs to make huge profits from supplying food to the
Army. Since investment in land seemed safer than industrial enterprise,
the upshot was yet another reinforcement of the landed power of the
notables.
The same general process was mirrored in the wider Empire, with
marcin
(Marcin)
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