4.31 Europe: a.d. 1701 to 1800  (Page 12/28)

In 1707 almost 70,000 cattle were sold annually in Paris and later in the century there were some 21,000 horses in the city. By 1717 the capital h-ad about 500,000 people, the third largest city in Europe, but the streets were narrow and crowded, the noise deafening and the smells from human excrement dumped from windows and piles of manure and slaughtered animal carcasses were unbelievable. When the Swiss guards prevented Parisians from relieving themselves under a row of yews in the Tuileries, they simply went to the banks of the Seine, which was just as bad. Straw was put daily on the streets and the old straw pulled up and simply dumped in the river. Af ter midnight, when the candle lamps on the streets went out they became very dangerous. The same situation could be found in all towns, large and small. A bathroom in a house was a rare luxury. Fleas, lice and bugs conquered Paris as well as London and other European cities. (Ref. 260 ) High society was consumed with gambling - pharaoh, dominoes, checkers and chess were all played for high stakes. (Ref. 292 ) An average of 20,000 people died in Paris every year, even after the 1780s, some 4,000 of them ending their days in the poor-house. 7,000 to 8,000 children out of about 30,000 births were abandoned and depositing these at the poor-house became an occupation in itself. Hardly anyone in Paris took baths and those that did confined them to one or two a year. (Ref. 260 )

Mass consumption of low quality wine became commonplace, even at the times of famine and drunkenness was everywhere. In the country the peasants were poverty stricken and there were a series of disastrous harvests between 1773 and 1789. Overall there were at least 16 general famines during the century as well as numerous local ones. The last great western European plague epidemic occurred in Marseilles in 1720 (but it continued in eastern Europe). (Ref. 131 , 260 ) While glass was used in window-panes in Paris, oiled paper was still used for windows in Lyons and various provinces. But even in the midst of relative squalor, France began to set the fashion for dress for the whole of Europe. Dressed French mannequin dolls were sent far and wide for dressmakers to copy and one aspect of progress was the extension of decently surfaced highways. (Ref. 260 )

The larger towns continued to have fairs and sometimes the latter simply took over the former. The modern day "rock" concerts may have been foreshadowed by some of these. At times 50,000 people would invade a town and it took all the police available to keep a semblance of order. "Fairs meant noise, tumult, music, popular rejoicing, the world turned upside down, disorder”