The Creuse is noted for its beautiful granite houses, built to a high standard of craftsmanship by the famous maçons who, from the 17th century, spent a large part of each year in the major French cities, working on the great palaces, public buildings and monuments. In the 19th century they carried out the designs of Baron Haussman which transformed central Paris, and also constructed railways, canals, bridges and quays. Back home, they were proud to build their own homes with the same skill.

'Maçons de la Creuse' is really a shorthand term to cover men in all the different trades associated with the construction industry – such as masons, stone-cutters, sawyers, carpenters, tilers, roofers, plasterers, pavers, painters and unskilled labourers – who went on the annual March migration from their tiny farms in the rural Creuse to the building sites of cities like Paris and Lyon, and returned in late November or early December when it was too dark to work their usual long hours, and freezing temperatures would make their mortar unusable. They would bring back the money they had saved from their wages to sustain their families, to pay off debts, to buy livestock or to invest in more parcels of land to add to their smallholdings.


The maçons had learned their craft the hard way. Their native granite was difficult to work with, unlike softer materials like limestone, and mastery of that meant they could turn their hands to anything. Their talents were in great demand. There was also an economic reason for selling their labour farther afield – the farmland of the Creuse was so poor that it would not support the population, and one more itinerant maçon was one less mouth to feed. Their sojourn in the far-off cities was called the campagne or 'campaign' and the men who banded together to seek work were known as 'compagnons'.

The first campagne was usually undertaken when a youngster was between 14 and 17 years old. The age when men stopped making the journey depended upon their health – for building was a dangerous and physically demanding job – but many workmen finished when they were about 40 and few were in a state to carry on much after 45. The ones who had become successful entrepreneurs continued for longer, as they no longer needed to rely solely on their own physique.

With the young, strong menfolk absent, the maçons' smallholdings were run by their wives, children and elderly relatives. An enquiry in 1847, when the system was at its height, found that about 34,000 Creusois men were working away, which represented about 12% of the population across the whole département.

One of the early projects on which the maçons de la Creuse worked was at La Rochelle in 1627, when Richlieu called for thousands of ouvriers to build a sea-wall, 1500m long and 20m high, to besiege the Protestant stronghold from the sea and prevent the English bringing in provisions. Thereafter they spread further afield so that a map of the migration in 1800 would show them going out to four points of the compass, the majority to Paris, and the rest to Nantes, to Bordeaux and the south-west, and to Lyon, Dijon and St Etienne. With little tourism or development along the Mediterranean, and consequently no demand for builders on a large scale – there was no migration towards the south coast.

It was usual for all the men in one place to get together to make the arduous journey. In 1830 it took five days to get to from Pontarion to Paris – four days on foot on very poor roads and one final day, from Orléans to the capital, on public transport. Similarly, it was also a five-day slog from Aubusson to Lyon, via the mountains above Clermont Ferrand, but along a proper road. The trek to Paris is described in Martin Nadaud's book Mémoires de Léonard (of which more another day). There was safety in numbers, as sometimes the groups of men would be set upon by local gangs in the places they passed through.

Because there were many beggars and vagabonds roaming around, each maçon had to carry a 'passport' giving his destination, signed by the mayor of his commune. This could be inspected on demand by any gendarme. On the way home, he had to be able to show his livret ouvrier, a little booklet containing short references about his work, properly signed and stamped by his various employers. Without the right papers the maçon could not use public transport or find lodgings for the night, and until 1832 he could also be charged with 'vagabondage' (vagrancy) and imprisoned for three to six months.

(One of our old friends in the village has kept his grandfather's well-thumbed papers which the maire photocopied for the commune's archives – they're fascinating.)

As well as getting his documentation in order, the maçon preparing for his latest campagne also had to sort out other pressing financial and legal matters. In numerous communes, including ours, the vast majority of marriages took place in February; it was also a time for making wills and arranging for Masses to be said in the event of one's demise.

When the maçons arrived at their destination, they had to start work. If they had travelled with a master mason who had already won a contract and handpicked his men in the Creuse, they simply went with him to the site. Otherwise they would make their way to a certain recognised place in the town to offer their services to an employer. In Paris, since the Middle Ages, men had been going early in the morning, with the tools of their trade, to the Place de Grève where they waited to be recruited by a master mason.

There was always a certain amount of rivalry between those who chose Paris and those who worked at Lyon (the second most popular destination), with the former being much more militant and earning higher wages. Out of 382 building workers' strikes between 1830 and 1847, 139 were in Paris and 24 at Lyon. Indeed the word 'grève' (strike) comes from the Place de Grève. Originally it meant flat land covered with gravel or sand, situated on the seashore or the banks of a watercourse – in this case the sandy right bank of the River Seine.

The men had good reason to be militant, as their working conditions were often deplorable. As well as insidious dangers like getting lung disease from breathing in dust or plaster, there was the ever-present possibility of tumbling off ladders or scaffolding, being crushed by stone or vehicles, falling foul of snapped cables and dropped tools, and suffocating when working in wells or enclosed spaces. Many accidents happened at the end of the day when the men were tired or under the influence of the wine they had tucked away on site to slake their thirst. There was no Health and Safety in those times – no hard hats, or handrails on scaffolding – and a moment's inattention could be fatal. Paris records show that one young man died in 1787 when he stopped to look at a herd of cattle passing along the road below: his foot slipped on the rafter where he was standing and he fell to his death from the third storey roof onto the courtyard beneath.

When work was done, the maçons would go en masse to their lodgings – it was said you could see where they had walked because of the trail of plaster left on the ground. Their accommodation in the old quarters of Paris was the most decrepit, unsanitary and overcrowded in the city and one writer likened its occupants to reptiles in a marsh. The men chose to live in these places, called garnis, because they were cheap and they wanted to save their money in order to take it home at the end of the campagne.

Alongside the tall, narrow old houses flourished thieves' dens, seedy brothels and lowlife bars. It was no accident that the nearby Place de Grève was also famous as a place of gruesome public execution – reminding the criminals who lived in the area what might happen if they were caught. The cruel punishment meted out there to regicides in the 1600s and 1700s was so ghastly that I couldn't even bear to read through the description of what was done. Until 1832 the Place was the site of the gallows and pillory, and in 1782 the first victim – a thief – lost his head there to the newly-invented guillotine. From 1794-5 the guillotine there was used for Revolutionary political beheadings.

The maçons would rise at 5am and go to bed at about 9pm. Before taking to their straw mattresses the men would go into the street to pee (the only other sanitation might be a privy 'à la turque' shared between about 60 people) and this habit led inevitably to the spread of diseases like cholera. The atmosphere in their cramped, shared bedrooms was also foul. Martin Nadaud speaks of being revolted by the stink of sweaty, unwashed feet mingling with the odours of ripe cheese and lard that the men had brought from home. Theft was a big problem, as the workers were crammed together with nowhere secure to put their belongings.

The men's diet consisted mainly of bread, soup and wine – as it did at home. They would buy a 4lb loaf in the morning (known colloquially as a maçon) before they went to work, put it in their tool bag and have a bite or two en route. Then at the 9am break they would pay a few sous to dunk it into a communal cauldron of soup in a nearby bar. Some would have a glass of eau de vie to stiffen their courage to face the day, others would soak their bread in wine. At 2pm, the men would have their lunch on the building site, eating more bread and sharing out other provisions like meat and cheese. In the evening, the landlord of their lodgings would provide more soup and they would finish off the remains of the bread in it. Then they might go to a bar for a drink before bed.

Although their lifestyle was hard and they were often perceived as country bumpkins by Parisians who mocked their patois and thought the faraway Limousin was the epitome of 'the sticks', the maçons were not fools. They were proud, skilled artisans, enduring rotten conditions so they could earn money for their families. For them, liberty, equality and fraternity were not abstract ideals but true goals to aim for: they wanted respect, education and their rights, and were outspoken in their quest for them. Indeed, they literally 'manned the barricades' during the political upheavals of the 19th century. Their horizons had been broadened by living in the capital and they brought back to the Creuse a left-wing, independent attitude which still exists.

Annik

Part Two, looking at other aspects of the maçons' lives, will be posted in the next ten days or so...