ABSTRACT
The theories were now translated into action. A series of legislative measures was issued, usually after an enquiry, and directed to each province in turn-France was never fully unified under the Ancien Regime. Between 1769 and 1781 edicts were issued authorising partition of the commons in the Three Bishoprics, in Lorraine, Alsace, the Cambresis, Flanders, Artois, Burgundy, and the Generality of Auch and Pau. In other regions ordinances or judgments might be handed down by the Conseil du Roi or the regional authorities, authorising partition in expressly defined localities. In Brittany a wholesale leasing out of heathland was accomplished under the auspices of a legal code which favoured the landlords. The numerous benefits attaching to land clearance, especially those of a fiscal nature, were a further incentive to the exploitation of much land which by custom or sufferance had forIl!erly been reserved for communal grazing; this was an open invitation to usurpation, to which both the wealthy and a throng of petty assarters responded.
