Conclusion
This history opened with a record of the inhabitants of La Malène who in November 1793 looked around at the smouldering remains of their homes. Perhaps a few of those rural people speculated about the fate of the local noble family, the Brun de Montesquiou, when they saw the château de La Malène ablaze. It was impossible to know then whether noble landowners in Gévaudan or any other province might receive compensation for losses or recover property that had been confiscated owing to revolutionary reforms. War and economic problems rumbled on, but there were signs by 1800 that ‘after ten years of revolution, after its official suppression, the nobility still had another future’. Michel Figeac cautions against imposing chronological limits when viewing the evolution of the Second Estate. Reflecting on the ...