Summary
The common ancestress of the Rougons and the Macquarts was Adelaide
Fouque, a girl who from youth had been subject to nervous seizures.
From her father she inherited a small farm, and at the age of eighteen
married one of her own labourers, a man named Rougon, who died fifteen
months afterwards, leaving her with one son, named Pierre. Shortly
after her husband's death she fell completely under the influence of
Macquart, a drunken smuggler and poacher, by whom in course of time
she had a son named Antoine and a daughter named Ursule. She became
more and more subject to cataleptic attacks, until eventually her mind
was completely unhinged. Pierre Rougon, her legitimate son, was a man
of strong will inherited from his father, and he early saw that his
mother's property was being squandered by the Macquarts. By means
approximating to fraud he induced his mother, who was then facile, to
sell her property and hand over the proceeds to him. Soon after he
married Felicite Peuch, a woman of great shrewdness and keen
intelligence, by whom he had three sons (Eugene, Aristide, and Pascal)
and two daughters (Marthe and Sidonie). Pierre Rougon was not
particularly prosperous, but his eldest son, Eugene, went to Paris and
became mixed up in the Bonapartist plots which led to the ''Coup
d'Etat'' of 1851. He was consequently able to give his parents early
information as to the probable course of events, and the result of
their action was to lay the foundations of the family fortune.
The scene of the book is the Provencal town of Plassans, and the
tragic events attending the rising of the populace against the ''Coup
d'Etat'' are told with accuracy and knowledge. There is a charming love
idyll between Silvere Mouret, a son of Ursule Macquart, and a young
girl named Miette, both of whom fall as victims in the rising which
followed the Coup d'Etat.
Factual basis
Mr. E. A. Vizetelly, in his introduction to the English translation of
The Conquest of Plassans (London: Chatto & Windus), points out that
almost every incident in The Fortune of the Rougons is based upon
historical fact. "For instance," he says, "Miette had a counterpart in
Madame Ferrier, that being the real name of the young woman who,
carrying the insurgents' blood-red banner, was hailed by them as the
Goddess of Liberty on their dramatic march. And in like way the tragic
death of Silvere, linked to another hapless prisoner, was founded by
M. Zola on an incident that followed the rising, as recorded by an
eye-witness."
