The villages are poignant testimonies to the hardships that young workers, recently transplanted from the countryside, face in the new China.
Even John Jackson, the chairman of Britain's biggest association of hunters and hunt supporters, the Countryside Alliance, says that "the destruction of the miners' communities then was like the destruction we in the countryside face now".
They then stopped, unable to advance further, pillaging the countryside and facing increased resistance from the Norman nobility and a rebellion in Anjou itself.
Today single mothers in the countryside still face hardship, discrimination and shame, but benefit from government initiatives that started with the older generation.
Protesters speak of the importance of reaching out to Christians and Alawites, while in the same conversation warning that Alawites in the countryside will face retribution from Sunnis insistent on exacting revenge for the security forces' crimes.
Shaun Spiers, chief executive of the CPRE, said many aspects of the bill would harm rural life: "Families on lower incomes in the countryside already face higher house prices, lower wages and a lower supply of genuinely affordable housing.
"His father visited him once or twice before he died, but they lived in the countryside and faced a lot of ostracism, with people watching them all the time.
The maximum possible fine a court can issue to a large company will be £3m, while a "man and a van -type company taking household waste and dumping it in the countryside could face a fine of up to £95,000 for causing serious harm.
Pialat makes a comedy of two Parisian mothers facing the countryside's deprivations, but the disruptions of family life come off less as tragedy than as opportunity: at the heart of the story is the city boy Hervé (Hervé Lévy), who learns to love the freedom of the country and resents his return home.
Vie Sauvage follows a family who have opted to live rough in the countryside, but who face a split when the mother decides to return to civilisation.
