ABSTRACT
Pierre Prion spent most of his life in the service of the marquis d’Aubais, who inhabited a chateau and village of the same name on the Languedoc side of the Rhone river. Pierre has left a fascinating account of daily life in the Midi, and his descriptions of the famine of 1709, and the reaction at Aubais to the outbreak of plague at Marseille in 1720, are of particular interest. Pierre wrote that starving peasants roamed in hordes through the fields and woods looking for grass, weeds, berries, roots, anything to eat. Having spent most of their day outside, peasants at night slept in poorly roofed, badly lit cottages, which were malodorous and dirty, with everyone sleeping together in the same room with the animals. The Annalistes have recognized the diversity of peasant income-producing activities but not the implications, insisting that there was little peasant participation in the commercial economy.
