CHAMPAGNE RIOTS

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1105, 19 April 1911, Page 5

CHAMPAGNE RIOTS

NEW TACTICS. INCENDIARISM AND DESTRUCTION. RIOTERS SUFFOCATED. By Telejirapß—Press AssociatioD-CopytiEHt (Rec. April 18, 11.30 p.m.) Paris, April 18. Tho rioting in the Champagne districts continues, and further arrests have been made at Aube. Troops are pouring into tin; district. Tho rioters , new tactics consist of descents in bands numbering a few hundreds upon villages where the champagne depots are unguarded. Tho Cardinal Archbishop of Rheims, in a pastoral letter, acknowledges that, tho widespread suffering is due to vintage failures for three years. Ho deplores tho violence of Ihe wine-growers, which has been resorted to lo draw attention to their grievances. AYhilo incendiary fires were raging lil Ay on ■\Vedn;£day last the wind drove the smoke into tho cellars where the rioters smashed ten thousand bottles. Several of the rioters were asphyxiated. Paris, April 17. There have been wholesale resignations of municipalities in the Aube district as a protest against the exclusion of the department in tho delimited champagne area. Administration is at a standstill; Urgent official correspondence remains unopened, deaths and births remain unregistered, and no civil marriages are celebrated. VINE-GROWERS' RIOTS. WADING IN WINE.

Last year's champagne grapes were a folal failure (writes an English correspondent in February last), and the manufacturers of Hlieims and Epornay have, therefore, bought quantities of wine from other parts of France for the purpose of transforming it into champagne. This has aroused the fury of the local vine-growers, and has resulted iu the extraordinary rio'.s wmch havo kohvulmhi that part of France, and have ended in (ho destruction of tons of thousands of pounds' worth of property, aud ithe wastage of a huge quantity of wine. But Epernay is not the only town in the ■world which has seen its gutters run deep in wine. No longer ago than April last there were ugly wine riots in Portugal. " .....

All the best nort is grown north of the Douro Kivcrj while the southern provinces produce cheap and inferior qualities. But it has been the custom of certain dishonest'merchants in the north (o adullorato their expensive wines with the cheaper southern stuff, much to the indignation of the northern growers. On April 14, 1910, a largo consignment of tho cheap wine arrived at a certain railway station north of the Douro. The report spread rapidly, aud the bells of twenty suTTonndiiig villages were set swinging. Within two hours over a thousand men, armed with axes and suns, attacked the station, overpowered the employees, and hurled the barrels of southern, wine into the road, where they staved them with their axes. Thousands of gallons of ruby-coloured fluid ran flown the gutters and over the clifis into the river below, staining it red ns blood. Wine was tho cause of one of the most extraordinary national movements on record in France. In June, 1907< the winegrowers oV a huge district round Montpellier, having in vain petitioned the Government to put a stop to the fraudulent adulteration of tho wines which they grew, rose in revolt under the leadership of Marcolin' Albert,' aud refused to pay any taxes., Within a few days no ,fev;er than 568 municipalities .were in a ..state of rebellion, and heavy rioting began-.Thousands of barrels of doctored wine wero destroyed, and at one town the rioters sacked the Town Hall, and would have destroyed the Mayor's house but for the cleverness of the Mayoress, who drov« back the assailants with a hu.?a shovelful of burning sulphur. Troops were, called out, and a number of lives were lost.

Albert restored a certain decree of ppMe, and a demonstration of 800.000 ncoplo, who were conveyed to Xlnntpelliov ill 400 *pecial trains. Even, the troops stntioned in the neighbourhood mutinied, and the Government fice tn face with a tremendous crisis. But M. Clemenceau, the Premier, was en ml to the occasion. In an interview with Marcelin Albert, he reduced the hitherto omnipotent leader to tear?, and by giving promises of fresh leeislation on the subject of adulteration, he pacified the people, and put an end to all the trouble,