Here’s the first look at the opening of the prologue to my work-in-progress – an historical fiction novel. The question is — how does a young girl survive all this?
1639 was a bad time for Marie Rochon to be born on a simple farm in the Perche area in northwest France. The peasants of rural France toiled under the heavy hand of the monarchy. They bore the financial brunt of King Louis XIII’s costly Thirty Year War. When the conflict ended in 1648, France was deeply in debt. The king’s successor, six-year-old Louis XIV, allowed the greedy and power-hungry Cardinal Mazarin to find a solution. Taxation was his answer: taxes on mandatory salt purchases, the taille tax on land, and the standard tithe of ten percent for the church all deepened the desperate poverty throughout the countryside. The church itself and the favored nobility were granted exemptions to taxes, so the king’s financial burden fell on commoners and the peasant class. The rural people, already living a subsistence existence in 1640, were further beset by drought, famine, crop failures, conscription, and violent local rebellions. Many peasants and habitants were imprisoned, lost their lands, starved to death, or fled the country.
I’m intrigued by Marie Rochon‘s story so far. Follow along as I figure out how she survivies and emigrates to Quebec as a Fille en Marier (A marriagable girl.) https://www.facebook.com/groups/1185865059974956
Jeanne Meeks ~ Fiction Author 