[In ] upheavals broke out in Bordeaux…: the salt-tax riots, which would cause such stress to Montaigne’s father during his term as mayor.
The southwest had traditionally been exempt from this tax.
Now, suddenly, the new king Henri Ⅱ tried to impose it, with inflammatory results.
Crowds of rebels assembled to protest, and for , mobs roamed the streets setting fire to tax collectors’ houses.
Some attacked the homes of anyone who looked rich, until the disorder threatened to turn into a general peasant uprising.
A few tax collectors were killed.
Their bodies were dragged through the streets and covered in heaps of salt to underline the point.
In one of the worst incidents, Tristan de Moneins, the town’s lieutenant-general and governor — thus the king’s official representative — was lynched.
He had shut himself up in the city’s massive royal citadel, the Château Trompette, but a crowd gathered outside and howled for him to come out.
Perhaps thinking to earn their respect by facing up to them, he ventured forth, but it was a mistake.
They beat him to death.
The French central government sent in thousands of troops who terrorized the occupants, imposed martial law, and enforced humiliating terms (it wasn’t until much later, during Montaigne’s term as mayor, that Bordeaux regained an ordinary level of self-government).
However: “Amazingly, in the long run, the rebellion did achieve its aim.
Unnerved by the riots, Henri Ⅱ decided not to enforce the salt tax.”
A British customs official tarred and feathered in America
The textbook case of humiliation-attacks on tax collectors is the “tarring and feathering” practiced, in particular, by American revolutionaries.
After the revolution, the Whiskey Rebels took up the practice.
In one case:
A party of men, armed and disguised, waylaid [Robert Johnson, collector of the revenues] at a place on Pidgeon Creek, in Washington County, seized, tarred and feathered him, cut off his hair, and deprived him of his horse, obliging him to travel on foot a considerable distance in that mortifying and painful situation.
On other occasions, the rebels “docked [collectors’] horses’ tails, and in at least one instance tarred a collector and rolled him in leaves.”
One process server “was seized, whipped, tarred and feathered, and after having his money and horse taken from him, was blindfolded and tied in the woods, in which condition he remained five hours.”
A delusional man named Wilson, “manifestly disordered in his intellects, imagining himself to be a collector of the revenue, or invested with some trust in relation to it, was so unlucky as to make inquiries concerning distillers who had entered their stills, giving out that he was to travel through the United States, to ascertain and report to Congress the number of stills, etc. This man was pursued by a party in disguise, taken out of his bed, carried about five miles back to a smith’s shop, stripped of his clothes, which were afterwards burnt, and, after having been himself inhumanly burnt in several places with a heated iron, was tarred and feathered, and about daylight dismissed — naked, wounded, and otherwise in a very suffering condition.”
Violent humiliation attacks known as “carding” were also part of the Tithe War in Ireland.
According to one account:
Carding the tithe proctors (who certainly were the genuine tyrants of Ireland) was occasionally resorted to by the White Boys, and was performed in the following manner.
The tithe proctor was generally waked out of his first sleep by his door being smashed in; and the boys in white shirts desired him “never to fear,” as they only intended to card him this bout for taking a quarter instead of a tenth from every poor man in the parish.
They then turned him on his face upon the bed; and taking a lively ram cat out of a bag which they brought with them, they set the cat between the proctor’s shoulders.
The beast, being nearly as much terrified as the proctor, would endeavour to get off; but being held fast by the tail, he intrenched every claw deep in the proctor’s back, in order to keep up a firm resistance to the White Boys.
The more the tail was pulled back, the more the ram cat tried to go forward; at length, when he had, as he conceived, made his possession quite secure, main force convinced him to the contrary, and that if he kept his hold, he must lose his tail.
So, he was dragged backward to the proctor’s loins, grappling at every pull, and bringing away, here and there, strips of the proctor’s skin, to prove the pertinacity of his defence.
When the ram cat had got down to the loins, he was once more placed at the shoulders, and again carded the proctor (toties quoties) according to his sentence.
In , “An irate dry cleaner” named LaSaunders Hudson “who wouldn’t pay his taxes forced three state revenue agents to march naked out of his store”
Mabile said as the agents were removing their underwear, Hudson advised them that “this is part of the punishment we are going to give the white man for injustices done the black man.”
During the salt tax (gabelle) riots in Bordeaux in , “A few tax collectors were killed.
Their bodies were dragged through the streets and covered in heaps of salt to underline the point.”
In , Irish settlers in Canada who were refusing to pay a county tax there were confronted by a deputy sheriff who had intended to seize property for back taxes.
Instead, “they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.”
In one town, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, “the moment the clerk begins to read the document, the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and ‘tear it up with countless imprecations;’ the municipal council is assailed, and two hundred persons stone its members, one of whom is thrown down, has his head shaved, and is promenaded through the village in derision.”
Sometimes the humiliation attack would be performed on the tax collector in absentia or in effigy:
During the Tithe War in Ireland, resisters
audaciously dug a grave within sight of Dinefwr Castle, the family seat, and announced that [Colonel George Rice] Trevor would occupy it by .
Trevor, however, surrounded by soldiers, survived unscathed.
During the Whiskey Rebellion,
[T]he inspector of the revenue was burnt in effigy in Allegany county, at a place, and on a day, of some public election, with much display, and without interruption, in the presence of magistrates and other public officers.
Today I’ll give some further examples of terrorism and intimidation directed at tax collectors — this time by means of attacks on their homes and property.
Bailiffs, the officials responsible for seizing goods from Poll Tax rebels in Thatcher’s Britain, were targeted in this way.
In one case, the home of a bailiff company’s chief was surrounded by protesters, who, finding that the target of their protest was not at home, “had a look at his double garage — the door was open.
… Well, there wasn’t a car inside, but there was a mountain bike, fishing tackle, clothes, bottles of wine, garden equipment.
In fact, the place was chock-a-block.
A mock auction was held in front of the press.
Anyway, his possessions ended up strewn all over the garden, and slogans were daubed across the back of his wall: ‘Fuck off bailiff, we’ll be back!’
The police arrived about five minutes after we had gone.
We heard that Mr. Roach [the bailiff company chief] was escorted home later that night in a police car.
It’s good to give people like that a taste of their own medicine.”
“a party of armed men in disguise made an attack in the night upon the house of a collector of revenue who resided in Fayette County, but he happening to be from home, they contented themselves with breaking open his house, threatening, terrifying, and abusing his family.”
This tactic was used frequently during the Rebecca Riots in Wales, for example:
“A plantation belonging to Timothy Powell, Esq., of Pencoed (a magistrate active against Rebecca), was fired… and four acres were burnt.”
A crowd of some 7–800 Rebeccaites surrounded the home of tithe collector Rees Goring Thomas and fired guns through the windows at the terrified occupants.
“[P]arts of the walls were so thickly marked with shots and slugs that scarcely a square inch was free from them, while the windows and curtain were thickly perforated… There were in all fifty-two panes of glass broken in five windows.
… While these outrages were carried on at the house, several of the mob forced open the door, and entered the beautiful walled garden adjoining the house, where they committed devastations of a most disgraceful character.
Nearly all the apple trees and wall-fruit trees of different kinds, were entirely destroyed, being cut to pieces or torn up from the roots.
The various plants and herbs with which the garden abounded were all destroyed, and a row of commodious greenhouses, extending from one side of the garden to the other, was attacked, and a large quantity of glass broken with stones.”
That same crowd then attacked the home of a game warden, firing a blank directly into the face of his wife.
“They then broke the clock, a very good one, an old pier-glass which had been handed down for several generations, the chairs, table, and all the little furniture the poor people possessed.
They also carried away the gamekeeper’s gun, and 10s. or 12s. worth of powder and shot, and previous to leaving took from the drawers all the clothes of the family, which were torn, trodden upon, and partly burnt.
They then left the place, after firing several times.
Several of the painted doors, leading from the road to the plantation, were destroyed by the Rebeccaites.”
During the French Revolution, in Baignes, the home of the director of the excise “is devastated and his papers and effects are burned; they put a knife to the throat of his son, a child six years of age, saying, ‘Thou must perish that there may be no more of thy race.’ ”
In , French tithe resisters “wearing disguises sacked the granary of the tithe collector, and no witnesses could be found to testify against them.”
In Naples, in , “the populace began to attack the houses of those whom they knew had, by farming tolls or in any other way, become rich at the expense of the people.
… [T]he houses were emptied: first that of the cashier of taxes, Alphonso Vagliano.
Beautiful household furniture, plate, pictures, everything that could be found was dragged into the streets, thrown together in a heap and burnt; and when one of the people wanted to conceal a jewel, he was violently upbraided by the rest,” because the point was terroristic vandalism, not looting.
“All the rich and noble persons who were concerned in the farming of tolls, as well as all members of the government, saw their houses demolished.
… Above forty palaces and houses were consumed by the flames on , or were razed to the ground…”
During the French Gabelle Riots of mobs roamed the streets setting fire to tax collectors’ houses.”
