Nineteenth century French law on legitimacy

[igenlode]

This is the summary I came across: http://www.placedauphine.net/projects/inheritancelaw.html

This is the actual law:
http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/code/book1/c_title07.html
In the original French: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Code_civil_des_Fran%C3%A7ais_1804/Livre_I,_Titre_VII

(Section relevant to Gustave's situation: VII.I.2 "De la paternité et de la filiation" ) 312. L’enfant conçu pendant le mariage, a pour père le mari. [...] 313.
Le mari ne pourra, en alléguant son impuissance naturelle, désavouer l’enfant : il ne pourra le désavouer même pour cause d’adultère, à moins que la naissance ne lui ait été cachée...)

Comments

[watervole]

Very different from English inheritance law. I can see why it might impact on family size when large estates are involved.

[igenlode]

I've always known vaguely that 'they do things differently on the Continent' (there's that plethora of pocket-handkerchief duchies and princedoms so much mocked by British writers of the period, for one thing; as Harriet Vane observes to the obnoxious Miss Quirk in the short-story collection "Striding Folly", the custom of dividing landed property equally may be "so much better for the children", "but it's very bad for the property"!)

What I didn't know until I started looking into this was that this was not the result of ancient custom but a procedure deliberately introduced after the French Revolution with the conscious intent of splitting up the great estates of the landed gentry...
One can't help feeling that responding to this by limiting one's offspring to a single heir in each generation (and females also qualified for their share -- Leroux mentions Raoul's sisters receiving their quarter-portions of their father's estate on marriage) must have led to a great deal of putting of eggs in a single basket, with potentially disastrous consequences if a war, for example, should occur :-(