Most of these banal mills were fitted with clumsy
wind-wheels, somewhat after the Dutch fashion. But nature
would not always hearken to the miller's command, and
often for days the habitants stood around with their
grist waiting in patience for the wind to come up and be
harnessed.
Some Canadian seigneurs laid claim to the oven right
(droit de four banal) as well. But the intendant, ever
the tribune of his people, sternly set his foot on this
pretension. In France the seigneur insisted that the
peasantry should bake their bread in the great oven of
the seigneury, paying the customary toll for its use.
But in Canada, as the intendant explained, this arrangement
was utterly impracticable. Through the long months of
winter some of the habitants would have to bring their
dough a half-dozen miles, and it would be frozen on the
way. Each was therefore permitted to have a bake-oven of
his own, and there was, of course, plenty of wood near
by to keep it blazing.
Many allusions have been made, in writings on the old
regime, to the habitant's corvee or obligation to give
his seigneur so many days of free labour in each year.
In France this incident of seigneurial tenure cloaked
some dire abuses. Peasants were harried from their farms
and forced to spend weeks on the lord's domain, while
their own grain rotted in the fields. But there was
nothing of this sort in Canada. Six days of corvee per
year was all that the seigneur could demand; and he
usually asked for only three, that is to say, one day
each in the seasons of ploughing, seedtime, and harvest.
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