Des anciennes lois sur la jouissance et la conservation des fleuves et des rivières.

CHAP. 16: Of the ancient laws on the use and conservation of rivers and streams.

There exist, as has been seen, intimate relations between the state of the soil of the upper parts of a great basin, and the watercourses that traverse it. These relations ought to have served as a basis for the measures taken in various times and in various places for the conservation of the great watercourses, and yet they have been without influence on the acts of most governments. We should not be astonished by this: they were not known, not very long ago, even by the men who occupied themselves with the sciences with the most success. It would have been difficult, moreover, for them to be taken as rules in epochs of troubles and wars, when peoples were divided in the most arbitrary manner; when industry and commerce were objects of contempt, and when nations, like their governments, were plunged in a profound ignorance [^97].

It would have been necessary, to dare to conceive, and above all to put into practice in each great basin, a system proper to develop all its agricultural, industrial, and commercial resources, that the political divisions of the various countries be in harmony with the territorial divisions formed by nature herself, and that public authority be in the hands of men enlightened enough, powerful enough, and above all upright enough to subordinate to the general interests all the individual interests that were opposed to them; in the times in which we live, there are few nations that can boast of having reached this degree of perfection; and none had reached it in the times that preceded us; we must not therefore hope to find, in the laws of the ancient peoples, a body of measures proper to keep the great watercourses always in good condition.

Rivers, as has been seen previously, have, for the nations that know how to make use of them, various kinds of utility: they do not serve only to furnish them with the water that is necessary for their drink, for the preparation of their foodstuffs, and for their cleanliness, or to nourish the fish that make up a part of their subsistence; in many places, they carry fertility to a soil that would be sterile or at least not very productive, if it were watered only by the waters of the sky; as motive forces, they transport to one place the foodstuffs or merchandise that are lacking there, and which abound in another; they give motion to powerful machines, and thus contribute to the development and perfection of the arts; the force of steam which today produces so many marvels, cannot always replace the power of a watercourse, and it is more expensive.

When one considers a river in all the parts that concur to form it, one can, as I have shown, compare it to an immense tree whose trunk rests on the sea, and whose branches and small branches extend over the surface of a great basin. The various parts of which it is composed can be divided and treated separately in a writing; administrators or writers can occupy themselves alternately with the trunk, the main or secondary branches, and the smallest branches; but in whatever manner they divide it, it is not in their power to make it so that, in nature, it does not form a vast whole whose parts are all linked together. The trunk could not, in effect, exist independently of the branches, the branches independently of the small branches, the small branches independently of the infiltrations that give them birth. The conservation of the principal parts is therefore subordinate to the conservation of the smallest.

It does not appear that the Romans ever thought of keeping the plateaus and the highest slopes in the state most favorable to the conservation and good distribution of waters; but at least they had enough good sense and logic to see that the watercourses that were in each basin formed but a whole, and that there was no way to preserve the navigable rivers, if they did not watch over the conservation of those that were not.

The Romans recognized in principle that all rivers, navigable or not navigable, as well as the beds they traversed, were public; they also admitted that the use of the banks was public, although the property thereof belonged to the riparian proprietors [^98]. Having divided the watercourses into two classes, the rivers that flow in all seasons of the year, and the torrents that flow only at certain times, they had declared that these latter alone belonged to the private domain [^99]. They did not, however, confuse public rivers with simple streams; what distinguished the one from the other in their eyes was a greater volume of water, or, in case of doubt, the opinion of the inhabitants of the vicinity [^100].

A spring that was in a private property could be employed, either for the uses of agriculture, or for the establishment of a manufactory; but the proprietor who used it could neither gather the water to make it flow in a great volume onto the lower properties, nor send it to them after having soiled it [^101].

From the fact that all rivers were public, the Romans did not draw the consequence that no private individual could, either engage in fishing there, or draw any sort of materials from them, or make any work there, without the permission of the public authority; they concluded, on the contrary, that every person had the right to make use of them, on the condition of respecting the rights of others, or of causing no damage, either to navigation, or to the riparian properties [^102].Everyone therefore had the right to navigate on a public river, lake, canal, or pond, to take fish from it, to load or unload his boats on the bank, or to moor them to the trees that were placed there [^103].

The right of navigation in a river being common to all citizens, it followed that no one could, even with the authorization of the praetor, place objects in it, make works on it, or practice water intakes there, which might harm navigation or cause any damage to others [^104]; but also, enterprises harmful either to navigation or to the riparian properties were the only ones that were forbidden, whether in navigable rivers or in those that made others navigable [^105].

It was therefore forbidden either to widen or to narrow the bed of a river or to practice water intakes there, whenever these works were to have the result of making navigation more difficult; works and water intakes in a non-navigable river that fed a navigable river were likewise forbidden, if they were to harm navigation [^106].

As for water intakes that could not have the result of making navigation more difficult, they were formally authorized for all rivers that were not consecrated to a public service: the prohibition took place, as we have just seen, in navigable or non-navigable rivers, only in cases where navigation suffered from it [^107].

The bed of a public river, that is to say, of any river whose course was perpetual, was necessarily public, as was the use of its banks. If, therefore, it happened that a river formed a new course, or that it was artificially diverted from its old course, the bed that it traced for itself, or that into which it was made to enter, became public. The old bed was, by full right, acquired by the riparian proprietors, or by the first occupant, if there was no private property that reached the abandoned bed [^108].

Every citizen having the right to use a public thing, and the violation of a right always giving rise to an action for the benefit of the injured person, it followed that any person whose interests were harmed by an enterprise made on a watercourse could oppose its execution, and demand the destruction of the works completed or begun [^109]; individual interest thus became the guardian of the public interest.

A citizen not only had the right to oppose the execution of any work harmful to navigation or to his properties, or to demand the destruction of works already executed; he could moreover require that any person who proposed to undertake an enterprise on the bed or on the banks of a river be held to answer, by a surety, for the damages that this enterprise might cause for ten years; this surety could be required even of one who limited himself to fortifying the banks for the conservation of his properties [^110].

The bank was defined as “that which contains the river when it is in its ordinary state:” Id quod flumen continet naturalem rigorem cursus sui tenens [^111]. However, the places that confined it were considered as forming part of the bank; but the space that was thus considered public was very poorly determined [^112].

Although the use of the banks was public like the rivers, and everyone had the right either to load or unload his boats there, or to attach there the ropes necessary for the service of navigation, they belonged, as did the trees that were placed there, to the riparian proprietors [^113]. The rights of the public existed only as a servitude.

An island that formed in a river belonged to the first occupant, if the neighboring properties did not reach the river, or else to the proprietor whose lands were contiguous, or to the proprietors of the two banks, if it was situated in the middle of the river [^114].

Almost all these dispositions of the Roman laws are but consequences of a great principle; they derive from the fact that a river, navigable or not navigable, belongs to the population that has developed in the basin it traverses. This principle being admitted, it follows, in effect, that each can enjoy it, on the condition of respecting the same right in others, and of not making a use of it that is damaging to the members of society. Each can draw from a watercourse all the advantages it is susceptible of producing, while respecting the equality of rights and the interests of the entire body of the nation. All preventive measures are reduced to answering, for a determined time, for the unfortunate consequences that the works one proposes to execute may have.

The first ordinances rendered by the kings of France on watercourses do not go back further than the thirteenth century; at first they had for their object only fishing. The establishments of Louis IX, of 1270, did not permit a gentleman who had running water on his lands to forbid fishing there, except with the consent of the baron and the vavasour [^115]. The barons and vavasours could therefore, at that epoch, prevent fishing in the waters that traversed the lands subject to their domination.

By an ordinance of 1292, Philippe IV regulated the fishing of all rivers, large and small; he prohibited certain fishing instruments; he forbade taking certain species of fish until they had reached a determined length, or acquired a certain value; but he neither recognized nor created any privilege; he established no distinction between watercourses; which might lead one to think that the principles of Roman law on this matter then governed France.

In the middle of the fourteenth century, on 29 May 1346, Philippe VI rendered an ordinance on waters and forests. This grandiose title might lead one to believe that the government already perceived some relations between the state of the waters of a country and the state of the highest parts of the soil; but, if one thought so, it would suffice, to be disabused, to read some of the dispositions of the ordinance. Philippe VI is occupied only with his table and that of his family; he orders the masters of waters and forests to have his ponds stocked, and to have them fished at a suitable time. He wants them to send to Bertaut Bardilly, his intendant, the fish that will be profitable for his house, and for the household of his very dear companion the queen, and of his children, and that all the others be sold to buy him sea fish. As for the rivers, he is occupied with them only to recommend the observation of the preceding ordinances. These ordinances, in effect, were only poorly executed, as Charles V declares in the one he rendered in the month of July 1376 (article 52).

At the beginning of the following century, the lords, who had depopulated the countryside of cultivators to populate it with wild beasts, as is proven by the ordinance of 25 May 1413, made themselves masters of the rivers and streams; they established themselves on all the passages, and levied, says the same ordinance, great and excessive duties and tolls on the foodstuffs and merchandise passing through the passages of the said lands and rivers. The Seine, the Loire, the Rhône, were thus invaded like the least important rivers [^116].

At the same time that the lords seized the rivers to establish arbitrary tolls there and to ransom commerce, they formed dams there to bring water to their properties; they established weirs there for fishing, or formed islands there; they thus stopped the fish in their passage and rendered navigation dangerous and almost impossible; and, in times of high water, they flooded the lands of their neighbors, in such a manner, says the ordinance: “that when there is a great abundance of water, the neighboring lands and the tillage thereof are entirely lost and ruined, to the very great prejudice of the public good of our kingdom and of the subjects of the neighboring lands [^117].”

It resulted from the same disorders that the bed of the rivers and the ditches made to facilitate the flow of water were not maintained, and that, for lack of dredging, the water spread into the countryside and transformed it into swamps; the roads and causeways were so degraded that one could not pass over them without danger [^118].

Charles VI, by his ordinance of 25 May 1413, tried to remedy these disorders: he pronounced the abolition of all tolls and duties established on the roads and rivers that did not have an immemorial existence, or that were not founded on titles; he forbade the establishment of new ones without his authorization, under penalty of an arbitrary fine and of confiscation of the lands on account of which they would be exacted; he declared that the tolls established for the maintenance of bridges, ports, roads, and causeways would be collected for the profit of the crown, if the conditions under which they had been conceded were not fulfilled; he ordered that the weirs, islands and other obstructions made on the public rivers since a time of which the memory still existed, would be destroyed and annulled, and that the places would be restored to their original state; finally, he prescribed the dredging of the rivers, and of the ditches that had been made to facilitate the flow of water.

Twenty-five years after the publication of this ordinance, the abuses it was intended to destroy had not yet ceased; since, on 30 June 1438, Charles VII rendered a new ordinance for the abolition of the tolls that the lords continued to collect on the Loire.

By his ordinance of 1292, Philippe IV had subjected the fishing of all rivers, large and small, to certain rules. Charles VI likewise made no distinction between them in the ordinance of 25 May 1413, on the reformation of the kingdom; he included them all in the same dispositions. It appears therefore that, at this latter epoch, the principle consecrated by the Roman laws was still admitted in France, and that the rivers that were not navigable were public like the navigable rivers.

This principle is, in effect, implicitly consecrated by the dispositions of the latter of these two ordinances.

“Although anciently in the matter of the government of the waters and forests of our kingdom,” says article 229, “there was none who, over and above the ordinary masters of our waters and forests, called himself great and sovereign master of the said waters and forests, nevertheless, for some time now, some have seen and obtained from us the said office of sovereign master and governor of the said waters and forests of our said kingdom, and under the shadow and color of this, have taken and exacted from us great and excessive wages, gifts and profits, to our very great expense, and have done and committed by themselves and their agents and sergeants, several great oppressions upon our people....”

Charles VI consequently abolished the office of great and sovereign master of the waters and forests of the kingdom, and retained only the ordinary masters of waters and forests, whose number he fixed at six: two for the lands of Normandy and Picardy, two for the lands of France, Champagne and Brie, one for the land of Touraine, and one for the land of Languedoc. He considered as usurpation, as has already been seen, the enterprises made by the lords on the public rivers, and he ordered the destruction of all the works that had been executed, and which harmed the multiplication of fish, navigation, or private properties. He therefore applied to all rivers the principles consecrated by Roman law.

The Estates of Languedoc, in their remonstrances of 1456, exposed to Charles VII all the grievances of which they believed they had to complain; among the abuses they pointed out to him were the vexations that the lieutenants of the master of waters and forests made the churchmen and nobles suffer, by forbidding them to hunt even in small thickets, or to fish in small streams that had no water for a third of the year, without having obtained the permission of the master of waters and forests.

“Also,” they said, “the master of waters and forests, who wishes to prevent anyone from hunting wild beasts, or from fishing in any waters without his license; and although he ought not to meddle, nor take cognizance, except only of the royal forests and rivers bearing ships, which belong to you, and not at all of the forests of the churchmen and nobles who have their woods and rivers in all jurisdiction, high, middle and low, and yet strives to do the contrary, and sends through the villages and places his lieutenants, commissioned or deputed, who hold their courts and assizes in the jurisdiction of the said churchmen and nobles, against the ordinances made thereon; and, on this, make inquiries, and summon all manner of people who will have hunted in some small thicket, or fished in some small stream where there will not be water for two parts of the year, against all reason, and to the very great prejudice of the said churchmen and nobles, to whom cognizance thereof belongs, they ought not to be troubled or molested for small fish, and they ought to regulate themselves according to the said ordinances made thereon, under the shadow of his office, he undertakes to have cognizance over the whole, to the great expense of the people, who have enough others to bear.”

The ordinances on waters and forests prior to the fifteenth century had established no distinction between navigable rivers and non-navigable rivers; they had not declared that the former would form part of the public domain, and that the latter would belong to the churchmen and the nobles; they had, on the contrary, all subjected them to the same regime, and it was natural that the masters of waters and forests should exercise their jurisdiction over the ones as over the others. It would, consequently, be very difficult to say on what laws the Estates of Languedoc based their claim that the rivers bearing ships belonged to the crown, and the others to the nobles and churchmen; this claim appears to have for its object much less to reclaim a right than to have a usurpation sanctioned. If the churchmen and the nobles had really considered themselves proprietors of the rivers that did not bear ships, they would not have limited themselves to complaining that they were prevented from taking small fish in small streams, which were dry for a third of the year. The modesty of these complaints is little in harmony with the grandeur of the claims with which they are accompanied.

Thus, Charles VII, in responding to this part of the grievances of the nobles and the clergy, was careful not to recognize that they were proprietors of all the non-navigable rivers; he announced that he had the intention of soon occupying himself with the abuses committed, throughout the kingdom, by the officers of waters and forests; he promised to forbid these officers from appointing lieutenants, and from holding their jurisdiction outside the ancient and accustomed places, and against the disposition of the ordinances; but he abstained from explaining himself on the property of the watercourses, and would not admit in principle that his authority extended only over the rivers bearing ships.

When, toward the end of the fourteenth century, the lords seized, by force, the watercourses that existed on the surface of France, they did not distinguish the navigable rivers from the non-navigable rivers; they established themselves on the Rhône, on the Loire, and on the Seine, as on the least important rivers. For their part, the princes who attempted to repress these usurpations, or to subject fishing to certain rules, made no distinction between the different rivers. The ordinances of Philippe IV, of Charles V, of Charles VI and of Charles VII, applied equally to all. Toward the middle of the fifteenth century, the nobles and the churchmen recognized that the rivers bearing ships formed part of the public domain; but they claimed to be proprietors of all the others...

In the middle of the seventeenth century, the usurpation of the non-navigable rivers by the nobility and the clergy was accomplished, and Louis XIV himself did not dare to combat it. The ordinance on waters and forests of 1669, in effect, deals with navigable or floatable rivers; but it is mute on the property of all the others. What is the cause of this silence? It was not believed, doubtless, that non-navigable rivers were without influence on public prosperity, and that one could, without inconvenience, subject them to no rule. One could not fail to see that these rivers interested in the highest degree all the properties situated on their banks, and that it was only by them that the navigable rivers could exist. It must therefore be believed that the government of Louis XIV kept silent in this regard only because it did not wish to sanction a usurpation that it did not have the power to make cease.

The ordinance of 1669 declared that the property of all the rivers of the kingdom, bearing boats from their own depth, without artifice and work of hands, formed part of the domain of the crown, notwithstanding all contrary titles and possessions, save for the rights of fishing, mills, ferries and other uses that private individuals might have there by valid titles and possessions, in which they were maintained [^119].

It forbade all proprietors or pledgees, under penalty of an arbitrary fine, to make, on these rivers, mills, cofferdams, factories, weirs, sluices, walls, plantings of trees, piles of stones, earth and fascines, or other edifices or obstructions harmful to the course of the water, to throw any refuse or filth there, or to pile it on the quays or the banks; finally, to divert the water or to weaken and alter its course by trenches, ditches and canals, under penalty of being punished as usurpers [^120].It was enjoined upon those who had built mills, sluices, gates, weirs, and other edifices on the same rivers, without having obtained permission from the government, to demolish them; failing which, the demolition would be carried out at their expense [^121].

The proprietors of riparian holdings were ordered to leave along the banks at least twenty-four feet of space in width for the royal road and towpath for horses; and they were forbidden, under penalty of a five-hundred-livre fine, to plant trees or make hedges or enclosures less than thirty feet from the bank intended for the towpath for horses, and less than ten feet from the opposite bank [^122].

Finally, it was forbidden, under penalty of a one-hundred-livre fine, to take earth, sand, or other materials from the banks at a distance of less than six toises; it could not be permitted, consequently, to take them from the very bosom of the river [^123].

This ordinance had decided nothing on the property of islands, islets, and accretions that formed in the rivers and streams bearing boats from their own depth, without artifice and work of hands; a declaration of the month of April 1683 considered them as forming part of the domain of the crown.

There exist, as one can see, numerous differences between the right recognized by Roman laws and that established by the ordinance of 1669. The Romans, having admitted that all rivers, navigable or not, were part of the public domain, recognized for each person the faculty of profiting from all the advantages he could derive from them, provided that he respected the rights of others and caused them no damage. The absolute monarchy, born of the feudal regime, claimed navigable and floatable rivers and streams as part of the domain of the crown, and recognized for private individuals only those rights that it pleased it to concede to them. The Roman laws, born of a principle of liberty, did not sacrifice the rights of all to the pretensions or interests of a few; but they authorized only repressive measures. The laws born of the absolute monarchy are, on the contrary, essentially preventive: no one may put the domains of the crown to his own use, except by virtue of a personal concession.

The former repressed any act, any enterprise that had the effect either of harming navigation or of causing some damage; they did not distinguish between acts undertaken or executed in navigable rivers and those undertaken or executed in the watercourses by which these rivers were fed. The latter, on the contrary, concerned themselves only with enterprises attempted or executed on navigable or floatable rivers; but they also prohibited them in an absolute manner, without distinguishing those that caused no prejudice to private individuals or the public from those that could cause them some damage.

Under the laws of the monarchy, the government could and did in fact prevent a proprietor from making any water intake in a navigable or floatable river for the service of his properties, even when no damage should have been the consequence; but it could not have opposed thousands of water intakes being made in the rivers that fed that one, and their being run dry, if that had been possible; as if navigable rivers had an existence independent of those that are not!

The government of Louis XIV could oppose anyone making, in a navigable river, cofferdams, walls, sluices, weirs, or other works harmful to the course of the water and capable of flooding the riparian properties; but if similar works were executed in the small rivers that formed the first, the ordinance of 1669 did not prescribe their destruction, however unfortunate the consequences might be for the neighboring properties.

It was forbidden for any person, by this ordinance, to form piles of stones or earth in a navigable or floatable river, or to throw refuse or filth there; but it was not forbidden to throw refuse, filth, piles of stones or earth into the rivers that carried their waters to it, as if the materials thrown into the latter were not to arrive in the former!

In making these observations on the ordinance of 1669, my intention is not to condemn it; I do not mean to accuse its authors of improvidence or absurdity. Their measures were a genuine progress, since their object was to strip the nobles and the clergy of a part of the usurpations they had committed on the watercourses. If they did not do better, we must believe that it was not in their power. All that I wished to demonstrate is the impossibility of separating navigable rivers from non-navigable rivers; I wished to show that the ones like the others belong to the public domain, and that there is no way to admit a contrary principle without falling into a multitude of inconsistencies.

It must be added, however, that the measures prescribed by the ordinance of Louis XIV were far from new. By his regulation of the month of February 1415, Charles VI had taken similar ones for the Seine and its tributaries. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, therefore, one was not much more advanced on these matters than one had been at the beginning of the fifteenth.

The ordinance of 1669 nevertheless governed France until the revolution; several of its dispositions are still in force, and its influence has extended to all the laws that have been passed since that epoch.

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Notes

[^97]: Descartes supposed that the waters of the sea made their way, by secret conduits, into reservoirs placed under the mountains; that there they were reduced to vapor by the central fire; that these vapors, raised into the interior of the mountains, condensed into water against their walls, and that this water flowed out through the cracks of the rocks, as distilled water flows through the beak of an alembic. If such were the ideas of one of the greatest philosophers and best observers of the seventeenth century, one can judge what those of the common people must have been in previous centuries. [^98]: Insti. lib. II, tit. 1, § 2. Dig. lib. XLIII, tit. 12, leg. 1, § 3. [^99]: Flumina quædam publica sunt, quædam non. Publicum flumen esse Cassius definit quod perenne sit. Dig. lib. XLIII, leg. 1, § 3. [^100]: Flumen a rivo magnitudine dicernendum est, aut existimatione circumcolentium. Ibid, § 1. An author, M. Daviel, claims that, according to Roman law, non-navigable rivers were the property of those whose lands they bordered or crossed. He bases this opinion, which is condemned by the very definition that the Roman jurists gave of a public river, on law 2, Dig, de damn. infect., and on law 1, § 4, de flumin. The first of these laws does not say a word of what it is made to say; if the citation were exact, it would only prove that the riparian proprietors could use a right common to everyone. The phrase that the author cites from the second law applies only to torrents that flowed only at certain times of the year, Practice of Watercourses, by A. Daviel, p. xvii and xix of the Preliminary Observations. [^101]: Si tamen aquam conrrivat vel si spurcam quis immitat, posse eum impediri plerisque placuit. Dig. lib. XXXIX, tit. 3, leg. 3. [^102]: Fluminum publicorum communis est usus, sicuti viarum publicarum, et littorum. In his igitur publicè licet cuilibet ædificare et destruere: dum tamen hoc sine incommodo cujusquam fiat. Dig. lib. XXXIX, tit. 2, leg. 24, in princ. [^103]: Dig. lib. XLIII, tit. 14, leg. 1, in princ.- Instit. lib. 2, it. 1, § 2 et 4. [^104]: Dig. lib. XLIH, tit. 3, leg. 10, § 2. Tit. 8, leg. 2, S $ 16, eod. lib. [^105]: Non autem omne quod in flumine publico, ripave fit coërcet prætor: sed si quid fiat, quo deterior statio et navigatio fiat. Dig. lib. XLIII, tit. XII, § 12. [^106]: Leg. 2, eod. tit. [^107]: The prohibition to make watercourses in navigable rivers and in those that feed them appears absolute in § 18 of law 1 of the same title; but it is clear that it must be understood in the sense given to it by § 15 (Proindè sive derivetur aqua, ut exiguior facta minus sit navigabilis). Otherwise it would never have been permitted to make a water intake in a river, however small it might be, since there is no stream that does not contribute to making a river navigable, unless it is situated on the seashore. [^108]: Dig. eod. tit. leg. 1, § 7. [^109]: Ibid. lib. xxxix, tit. 11, leg. 7, in princ. lib. XLIII, tit. xv, leg. 1. [^110]: Ibid, tit. xi, leg. § 3. [^111]: Eod. tit. leg,3, §2. -- Vinnii Comment.in Insti.lib. x, tit. 1, §4. [^112]: Insti. lib. II ,tit. 1, § 4. [^113]: Dig. lib. XLIII, tit. XII, *leg.*1, §6. [^115]: Establishments of Saint Louis, art. 124. [^116]: To get an idea of the oppression that the nobility then made the people bear, one would have to read all the dispositions of this famous ordinance, which had for its object the reformation of the kingdom: "Because several wolf-hunters and otter-hunters," says article 241, "have striven and strive several times to prevent good people from taking and killing wolves, small and large, and to exact from the poor people great sums of money..... We will and permit by these presents that all persons, of whatever estate they may be, may take, kill and hunt without fraud all wolves and otters, large and small."Article 242 adds: « Est vray que plusieurs seigneurs de nouvel et puis XL ans on ça, par la grande force et puissance, et par la faiblesse, povreté et simplesse de leurs sujets et voisins, ont fait et introduit nouvelles garennes, et estendues les leurs anciennes...... En dépeuplant le pays voisin des hommes et habitans, et le peuplant de bêtessauvages, par quo y les labourages et vignes des povres gens ont été tellement endommagiez et gastez par icelles bestes sauvages, que icelles povres gens n'ont eu de quoy vivre; et leur a convenu laisser leurs domiciles. » [^117]: Article 246. [^118]: "And also many roads, causeways, and passages, such that one can hardly pass them without very great disadvantages and dangers." Article 247. [^119]: Art. 41, tit. 27. [^120]: Art. 42 and 44 of the same title. [^121]: Art. 43 of the same title. [^122]: Art. 28, tit. 27. [^123]: Art. 40 of the same title. Decrees of the Parlement of Dijon of August 1, 1720, and of August 20, 1746.