Let Me Become a Commoner Before You Blow Up the Fief with Cannons
1777 December 21. Brest naval shipyard, France.
Europe's winters were brutally harsh. As an unwritten rule, shipyards granted workers one to two weeks off around Christmas for welfare reasons. But that winter of 1777, the laborers at Brest naval shipyard toiled away silently, heedless of the cold.
It stemmed from the recession that had ravaged all of Europe just a few months prior. Fortunately, the king had declared a national disaster and released the royal strategic grain reserves from the king's coffers, preventing any outright starvation. Yet while deaths from famine were averted, prices for everything but bread skyrocketed to the point where even those with money couldn't buy them.
Separate from the inflation, the Third Estate had suffered little in this downturn. Finance had long been seen as the exclusive domain of nobles and the elite, and even when commoners visited coffeehouses, the brokers ignored them. Still, the reason they worked right up to Christmas Eve was simple: there was nowhere to spend their money.
The Europe-wide deflation had first choked off logistics, making consumer goods impossible to buy even with cash in hand. Normally, such deflation would sap workers' motivation, turning most into voluntary unemployed. But rumors from the public auctions—of minor estates worth tens of thousands of livres repeatedly failing to sell until they went for a few hundred—kept the common laborers' spirits from plummeting off the cliff.
Over two and a half months like this, they managed to produce a sloop or schooner—ships lightly armed with cannons but high in cost-performance, often used as privateers—every three weeks. With about twenty workshops at Brest, that meant twenty such vessels completed every three weeks. The situation was no different at other shipyards like Toulon or Rochefort.
No one knew where the raw materials like timber and hemp sails came from amid the stalled shipments, but that wasn't for the shipwrights to worry about. What mattered to the workers now was that they still had jobs in these times.
And so, eyes shut and ears plugged, the laborers quietly built small ships for the pirates. The pirates loitered near the naval base and snapped them up the moment a sloop or schooner was launched. Those who bought royal privateering licenses turned their prows toward the Atlantic as soon as they boarded.
Of course, the licenses specified capturing only enemy vessels—those of Great Britain. But that was merely on paper. The pirates claimed they "didn't speak English" and seized Dutch or Spanish merchant ships indiscriminately.
The pirates' plundered cargoes flowed straight into France, stabilizing prices there. The common folk in coastal and key cities dimly knew these goods were pirate booty, but without them, they couldn't sustain their livelihoods—so they stayed silent.
*
1778 January 6, uninhabited island near the Caribbean. The remnants of New France's deserted island port. Pirates with privateering licenses rested there. They brewed rum from sugar looted off Spanish merchantmen and sugarcane from Portuguese ones, tore into beef from Dutch ships, and tallied their spoils.
Rookies could only watch the feast, loading tribute for the state onto French vessels. They hauled loads of 100 livres each—based on the Roman as coin's standard weight, roughly 489 grams per livre—aboard without complaint, though it amounted to about 50 kilograms per man.
No grumbling, because the man directing the loading was the privateer captain, Pierre.
"Tch, that's odd."
"Hey, grab a sergeant from the feast when you go."
"Which sergeant, sir?"
"Huh?"
"Ah, sorry. You mean Quartermaster Sergeant Jean?"
And because the man overseeing the captain was a French bureaucrat.
"Yes."
"Yes, Captain. I heard you called for me."
"Right. How much did we take today, and how was it divided?"
Privateer Captain Pierre treated the French bureaucrat like one of his crew. Normally, this would seem utterly unnatural. Pirates had no titles, while French bureaucrats were at least nobles with lifetime baronies.
"I'll check. Please wait a moment."
"Hm."
But these weren't ordinary pirates; they were privateers. Unlike the free-for-all, law-of-the-jungle image of pirates, they operated with near-naval discipline. Especially Captain Pierre, who was an active French naval lieutenant.
"Dividends went as usual: 10% to naval personnel, 1% to other collaborators."
Not all privateers were formal soldiers, though. Navies were money pits; maintaining standing fleets cost a fortune. That's why most states of the era relied on privateers.
18th-century privateers drew guns from naval armories, supplies from shipyards, and armed themselves with their own navy's cannons—practically paramilitary outfits. But they got no salaries. In peacetime, they hunted pirates for prize money; in war, they plundered enemy merchants to pay themselves.
And now, with France having declared war on Britain to support the American Revolution, privateers were fair game.
"Plundered 510,000 livres' worth of sugarcane from four Portuguese ships, 200,000 livres of sugar from Spanish ones. Confiscated about 200 livres in gold bullion. Gave them dinghies and sent them to the colonies; refitted the prizes to expand the squadron. Nabbed a Spanish frigate, so we can even counterattack British regulars now."
But war has no rule saying you can't loot the enemy only, right? In an era before "international law" existed, breaching merchant honor codes drew no real ire.
"Good."
France thus seized or plundered even neutral or friendly merchant ships. In peacetime, such recklessness wouldn't fly. But with the pan-European economic panic gutting national influence and America running hundreds of privateers amid its revolution, no one knew—or could complain about—who was looting whom. Everyone was doing it.
"Even after giving half to the crown, it's hugely profitable. Three more years like this, and I could build a mansion in Paris."
"Quite right, sir."
*
1778 January 19, Bordeaux, France.
"Pirates! Pirates coming up the river!"
With governments paralyzed across Europe, some privateers chased quick riches.
"Commoners, get lost! Don't bring bulky junk that won't sell! I want ransom. Bring me nobles!"
In an era where lives were cheap, slaves fetched money—but French privateers selling Frenchmen as slaves was absurd. So they kidnapped nobles.
Commoners fled in terror at the very word "pirates," and to hurry them away, they voluntarily handed over lords and their families.
"Eek! Take the fief, the manor, the title—anything! Just spare me!"
"Then bring your fief's land deeds and gold bullion!"
Pirates hit coastal nobles, seized their land documents, and forced contracts ceding fief inheritance to the captain.
"Sign! Or should I blast your fief to rubble with cannons?"
"Eeeek!"
Occasional nobles stood on pride, but resistance didn't last.
"There, Charles the commoner. Mind your manners with the baron? Ah, whatever. We'll be back."
Having stripped titles, lands, and inheritance rights, the pirates leisurely sailed back down the Garonne to the open ocean.
"Damn pirates! I have no face left for my ancestors!"
The pirates came and went, leaving noble authority, titles, and land ownership intact otherwise, so the peasants paid little mind. A beggar's wailing was everyday scenery.
*
1778 January 29, Versailles Palace, France.
The plan was going smoothly. The privateers' rampage had an unexpectedly powerful effect.
Before it, Europe suspected France of engineering the economic panic—not from evidence, but because France had suffered least. Was it because its pre-panic finances were already near bankruptcy, making default seem painless? Or the Seven Years' War defeat making it an easy target?
But now, with plunder reports from every coast and attacks on nobles and churches, European states turned sympathetic eyes toward France. Even ostensible ally Austria, enemy Britain, and the Papal States sent letters of regret.
"Your Highness, contracts with pirates are fraudulent. Declare them void at once."
"We must correct these pirates' insolence! Dispatch warships to exterminate them!"
"Enough."
Why punish the good boys? I should cheer them on to do more.
"I understand your views well. But look at the papers first."
I handed them the documents in my hand.
"These aren't mere pirates. They've pooled merchant armaments to rival warships; those near the West Indies even captured a British ship-of-the-line, making them de facto regulars. How could our navy subdue them? And our nation is bankrupt now. Not just us— all Europe. This is Europe's problem, not ours."
"But..."
"No counterarguments. Pirates? Who doesn't know they're a problem? But suppression costs money too. Don't speak unless you're volunteering to fund it."
That's why England knighted Drake. He only picked the pretty jobs.