Chapter III

). Acre-lengths, cordes, and other popular measures supplied

the want, more or less well. In some districts (also in Mauritius) there were milestones at intervals of 1000 toises, called a mille. In South France the mille was divided into centenié of 100 toises or perhaps local cano. This was probably the length of the sesteirado, the rood, 100 × 4 cano.

The corde, a field-measure used before the surveyor’s chain, was of variable length. In Burgundy the league of 3000 toises was divided for roadwork into 50 portées, of 12 cordes; these would thus be 5 toises or 30 feet. But there seems also to have been a corde of 33 feet, perhaps reduced feet, and thus = 30 royal feet, and this, doubled, was used as the rough measure of a ‘cord’ of firewood = 4 × 4 feet, in 4-foot logs. This is the probable origin of our ‘cord-wood’ as applied to stacked logs for fuel.

_Land-measures_

The units are the square toise = 4·543 sq. yards, the perche and the arpent, with other units in local usage.

There were three different perches officially recognised, and still in common use.

1. _Perche d’ordonnance_ or of the _Eaux et Forêts_ administration, 22 royal feet = 23·466 English feet; the square perch of 484 sq. feet = 13·44 sq. toises = 2 sq. rods.

The approximate coincidence of the quarter-aune with the reduced royal foot, i.e. of 12 Roman inches with 11 royal inches, was the probable reason of the standard perch being fixed at 22 feet = 24 Roman feet or 6 aunes.

The standard arpent was 100 square perches = 1344 sq. toises = 200 rods or 1·26 acre.

2. _Perche commune_, 20 royal feet = 21·3 English feet, the square perch of 400 sq. feet = 11·11 sq. toises = 50·47 sq. yards.

The _arpent commun_ was 100 of these square perches = 1111 sq. toises = 1·04 acre.

3. _Perche de Paris_, 18 royal feet = 19·83 English feet, the square perch of 324 sq. feet = 9 sq. toises = 40·9 sq. yards.

The _arpent de Paris_ was 100 of these square perches = 900 sq. toises = 0·844 acre.

The arpent commun is that of Quebec.

The arpent de Paris is that of Mauritius.

The acre de Normandie varies according to its perch, but it is always 160 sq. perches, and if these be standard it is equal to 2 acres. But the usual unit is the vergée or rood, of 40 perches = 1/2 acre.

It has been seen that the Jersey vergée is 40 perches of 22 reduced English feet square, the foot being 11 inches. This is an adaptation of a very general Normandy perch, 22 feet of 11 French inches. It is = 0·44 acre.

Local French land-measures varied considerably, from different standards of perch, from different lengths taken for the foot of the perch. But the size of the unit, Journal, Estrée, &c., &c., is very generally = 1400 to 1600 square perches or roughly about 1-1/2 acre. These measures, so irrational to the Parisian, are dear to the peasant’s heart; he understands them, and as people do not buy land as they would apples or eggs, no one is deceived.

The Estrée or Seterée (Setier seed-land) might be divided into 12 Boisselées (small-bushel lands).

_Weight_

The royal pound, _livre poids de marc_, the double-marc of Troyes, was one of several pounds current in Northern France. It was, like the royal foot, ascribed to Charlemagne, but his standard of weight, as known by his silver pennies, nearly always much above 24 grains, 1/20 of some ounce heavier than that of the Troyes marc, was probably altered later on. The royal pound, = 5570 grains, was raised for commercial purposes (about 1350) to 16 ounces = 7554·1 grains, the ounce = 472·13 grains.

The weight of the 12-ounce pound coincides very closely with that of the Bosphoric miná, 100 drachmæ of 56·66 grains; this is perhaps the origin of the story that it was sent to Charlemagne by Harūn al Rashid. Its ounce is also approximately the Tripoli ukyé of 10 dirhems × 470-3/4 grains, and nearer still to 471 grains, the weight of 10 of the dirhems of which 8 made the Provençal ounce.

It is probable that the French pound was one of the lighter pounds of the variable Northern Troy series, all with an ounce of 10 dirhems of 48 grains more or less.

The ounce was divided into 8 gros, groats or drachms, of 3 deniers or dwt., each of 24 grains. So the livre was 16 × 24 × 24 = 9216 French grains. These were light grains, not the heavy grains, 20 × 24 to the ounce, of English and other mint-weights.

There was a Quintal of 100 livres = 107·7 lb.

The Tonne or tonneau was 2000 livres = 2154 lb.

_Value_

The French coinage-system, probably instituted by Charlemagne, was the same as ours. The original unit was the silver penny, _estelin_ (sterling) or denier (L. _denarius_) of 24 French grains; 12 deniers made a sol or sou (L. _solidus_, shilling) and 20 sols made the livre or pound, originally a livre d’estelins, a 12-ounce pound of sterlings. But the silver coinage shrank and was debased, until, by the eighteenth century, the pound, livre or franc was a silver coin worth tenpence, the sol a copper halfpenny, and the denier had shrunk, even as copper, to so minute a size that its place was taken by the _liard_, a small copper coin of 3 deniers, a quarter-sou; even the _double_ of 2 deniers had disappeared. Accounts were kept in livres and sols and deniers, our £ _s._ _d._, but at 1/25 the present value of our coin.

The _écu_ of 3 livres, that is of 60 sous, was largely used; wages of farm-servants are often at the present day reckoned in écus. This was properly a _petit-écu_ or half-crown, but the real écu of 6 livres was so little used that the smaller coin took its name. And, as our half-crown has the great convenience of being one-eighth of a sovereign, so the écu had that of being one-eighth of a louis, the gold piece of 24 livres. This was the value of the louis at par, for it varied as did that of the guinea when England was a silver-standard country.

_Measures of Capacity_

These measures, both the wine-series and the corn-series, were quite discordant and had no relation to the measures of length. That this was caused by an incoherent system of factors is shown by there being in each series a unit derived from the perfectly concordant measures of the South:

The wine-velte = 1·76 gallon, half of the Escandau.

The corn-setier = 34·32 gallons, the Marseilles Cargo.

The former, when increased in water-wheat ratio, is almost exactly 1/16 of the latter. So, had the former, increased in this ratio, been multiplied sexdecimally, concordance would have been preserved. But there was a customary Muid = 63-1/2 gallons, our hogshead, with its quarter, our kilderkin, the Quartaut = 15·8 gallons, and not to derange these measures the velte was made one-ninth of the Quartaut. And in the corn-series the Setier was divided and multiplied duodecimally. So the concordance was entirely deranged.

1. _Wine-measures._—The Velte (the origin of which is given in