Source note

TONSARD (Francois), son of the preceding, born about 1773, was a country laborer, skilled more or less in everything; he possessed a hereditary talent, attested, moreover, by his name, for trimming trees, and various kinds of hedges. Lazy and crafty, Francois Tonsard secured from Sophie Laguerre, Montcornet's predecessor at Aigues, an acre of land, on which he built, in 1795, the wine-shop known as the Grand-I-Vert. He was saved from conscription by Francois Gaubertin, at that time steward of Aigues, at the urgent request of Mademoiselle Cochet, their common mistress. Being then married to Philippine Fourchon, and Gaubertin having become his wife's lover, he could poach with freedom, and so it was that the Tonsard family made regular levies on the Aigues forest with impunity: they supplied themselves entirely from the wood of the forest, kept two cows at the expense of the landlord, and were represented at the harvest by seven gleaners. Being incommoded by the active watch kept over them by Justine Michaud, Gaubertin's successor, Tonsard killed him, one night in 1823. Afterwards in the dismemberment of Montcornet's estate, Tonsard got his share of the spoils. [The Peasantry.]