Read Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) Online
Authors: Craig Koslofsky
36.
Catherine Denys,
Police et sécurité au XVIIIe siècle dans les villes de la frontière franco-belge
(Paris: Harmattan,
2002
), pp. 276–77.
37.
Ibid
., pp. 192–200.
38.
Archives Départmentales du Nord [hereafter ADN], C w.305/2899, ordinance of August 31, 1667.
39.
ADN, C 2899, ordinance of July 23, 1668.
40.
AM Lille, Affaires Générales 1256, dossier 1, fos. 1–3.
41.
ADN, C 2899, ordinance of January 17, 1668.
42.
AM Lille, Affaires Générales 1256, dossier 1, fo. 3. With 600–700 lanterns for a population of about 55,000 in 1667, Lille compares favorably with Rouen (population 60,000 and 800 lanterns in 1700), but less so with Leipzig (21,000 residents and 700 lanterns in 1701).
43.
ADN, C 2899, ordinance of September 23, 1667 regarding innkeepers; ordinance of October 27, 1667 on closing time for “Tavernes & Cabarets”; see also Philippe Jessu,
Louis XIV en Flandre: Exposition historique … à Lille, 28 octobre 1967–30 avril 1968
(Société des amis des musées de Lille,
1967
), p. 93. All these ordinances issued from the
Magistrat
; in some cases the initiative of the French governor or intendant is apparent, as for example the announcement on September 22, 1667 of a reward for the denunciation of those guilty of assaulting a French officer. ADN, C 2899.
44.
Denys,
Police et sécurité
, pp. 193–95.
45.
Albert Croquez,
Histoire politique et administrative d’une province française, la Flandre
, vol.
II
,
Louis XIV en Flandres
(Paris: Champion,
1920
), pp. 50–58.
46.
Laurence Echard,
Flanders, or the Spanish Netherlands, most accurately described shewing the several provinces
(London: Printed for Tho. Salusbury,
1691
), pp. 17–18.
47.
Louis Trénard,
Histoire de Lille: De Charles Quint à la conquête française (1500–1715
), Histoire de Lille 2 (Toulouse: Privat,
1981
), p. 407.
48.
Croquez,
Louis XIV en Flandres
, p. 56, and Alain Lottin,
Vie et mentalité d’un Lillois sous Louis XIV
(Lille: É. Raoust & cie,
1968
), p. 356. The victim was probably the young man Weimel mentioned in the journal of the silk weaver Pierre Ignace Chavatte on August 24, 1668 (“Weimel fut descoutrez tout nud”). The journal of Chavatte covers the years 1657–93 and has been published in Gerhard Ernst and Barbara Wolf, eds., “Pierre Ignace Chavatte:
Chronique memorial
(1657–1693),” in
Textes français privés des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
, Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 310, CD 1–3 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag,
2005
).
49.
Croquez,
Louis XIV en Flandres
, p. 56, and Lottin,
Vie et mentalité
, p. 356.
50.
Lottin,
Vie et mentalité
, p. 356.
51.
Ibid
.
52.
In the same period Le Peletier reported on three soliders hanged for plundering a house near their barracks late one night. Croquez,
Louis XIV en Flandres
, p. 55.
53.
On the relationship between the French and the Lille
Magistrat
, see Victoria Sanger, “Military Town Planning under Louis XIV: Vauban’s Practice and Methods, 1668–1707,” PhD thesis, Columbia University,
2000
, pp. 64–68; Gail Bossenga,
The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille
(Cambridge University Press,
1991
), pp. 1–25; here p. 21; and Albert Croquez,
La Flandre wallonne et les pays de l’intendance de Lille sous Louis XIV
(Paris: H. Champion,
1912
), pp. 80–81.
54.
Trénard,
Histoire de Lille
, pp. 287–92, and Lottin,
Vie et mentalité
, pp. 171–88.
55.
“Un homme tuè dune centinel au marchè,” Ernst and Wolf, ed., “Chavatte:
Chronique memorial
,” in
Textes français privés
, July 23, 1672. Spelling and punctuation as original.
56.
Ibid
., October 16, 1673, “La guerre declarè contre la france.” The following year the French completed the Saint-Sauveur bastion overlooking the workers’ quarter of the city – a reminder of their distrust of Lillois artisans like Chavatte. See Sanger, “Military Town Planning under Louis XIV,” pp. 46–47.
57.
Ernst and Wolf, ed., “Chavatte:
Chronique memorial
,” in
Textes français privés
, February 7, 1675, “Un debat a la bourse d’or des bourgeois avec des officiers francois.”
58.
Trénard,
Histoire de Lille
, p. 290; see also Croquez,
Louis XIV en Flandres
, pp. 50–58.
59.
A. Crapet, “La vie à Lille de 1667 à 1789,”
Revue du Nord
6 (
1920
): 126–54, 198–221; and 7 (1921): 266–322, here 135; Denys,
Police et sécurité
, pp. 199, 277; and Catherine Denys, “La sécurité en ville: les débuts de l’éclairage public à Lille au XVIIIe siècle,”
Les Cahiers de la sécurité
61, 1 (
2006
): 143–50.
60.
Catherine Denys, “Le bris de lanternes dans les villes du Nord au XVIIIe siècle: quelques réflexions sur la signification d’un délit ordinaire,” in
La petite délinquance du moyen âge à l’époque contemporaine
, ed. Benoît Garnot and Rosine Fry, Publications de l’Université de Bourgogne 90 (Dijon: EUD,
1998
), pp. 309–19; here p. 311.
61.
Lottin,
Vie et mentalité
, p. 356.
62.
Denys, “Le bris de lanternes,” p. 314.
63.
Lottin,
Vie et mentalité
, p. 356, and Denys, “Le bris de lanternes,” p. 316, citing the
Magistrat
in 1710.
64.
SdAL, Urkundensammlung, 97, 1–7, “Laternen. 1701–1702,” fo. 1. Augustus also oversaw the introduction of street lighting in Dresden in 1705. See Müller, “Die Entwicklung der künstlichen Straßenbeleuchtung,” pp. 144–51; cf. P.G. Hilscher,
Chronik der Königlich Sächsischen Residenzstadt Dresden
(Dresden: In Commission der Ch. F. Grimmer’schen Buchhandlung,
1837
), pp. 313–14. No other Saxon cities established any regular street lighting until the late eighteenth century.
65.
SdAL, Sekt. K 252, Bl. 1–16., here fo. 6.
66.
Rudolf Reuss, ed.,
Aus dem Leben eines strassburger Kaufmanns des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts: “Reiss-Journal und Glücks- und Unglücksfälle
,
”
Beiträge zur Landes- und Volkeskunde von Elsass-Lotharingen und den angrenzenden Gebieten 43 (Strasbourg: J.H.E. Heitz,
1913
), p. 14.
67.
Why was Zetzner out to mail a letter so late at night? No doubt he was following the schedule of a post-coach. The coaches came and went at fixed times according to published schedules, picking up post and passengers at all hours of the day and night. They connected the insular time of individual cities with regional schedules and movement, and their regular travel brought a new kind of legitimate nocturnal activity to cities. See Wolfgang Behringer, “Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Kommunikation. Eine Sammelrezension zum Postjubiläum,”
Zeitschrift für historische Forschung
21, 1 (
1994
): 92–112, and the literature cited there. On students and the night, see below,
chapter 6
.
68.
“Also hat man auch nunmehr allhier zu Leipzig die düstere Nacht und Finsternüß in Licht und hellen Schein zu verwandeln resolviert.”
Aufgefangene Brieffe, welche Zwischen etzlichen curieusen Personen über den ietzigen Zustand der Staats und gelehrten Welt gewechselt worden
(Wahrenberg: J.G. Freymunden [actually Leipzig: Groschuff],
1701
), p. 890.
69.
The title of a verse pamphlet,
Das bey der Nacht Hervorleuchtende Leipzig
(Leipzig: Immanuel Tietze, 1701), held in the SdAL, Tit.
XXVI
, Nr. 3, fos. 21r–22v.
70.
See Jean-Louis Sponsel,
Der Zwinger, die Hoffeste und die Schloßbaupläne zu Dresden
(Dresden: Stengel,
1924
); Georg Kohler, “Die Rituale der fürstlichen Potestas. Dresden und die deutsche Feuerwerkstradition,” in
Die schöne Kunst der Verschwendung
, ed. Georg Kohler and Alice Villon-Lechner (Zurich and Munich: Artemis,
1988
), pp. 101–34; and Katrin Keller, “La Magnificence des deux Augustes: Zur Spezifik hÖfischer Kultur im Dresden des Augusteischen Zeitalters (1694–1763),”
Cahiers d’études germaniques
28 (
1995
): 55–66.
71.
See Karlheinz Blaschke, “Die kursächsische Politik und Leipzig im 18. Jahrhundert,” in
Leipzig: Aufklärung und Bürgerlichkeit
, ed. Wolfgang Martens (Heidelberg: Schneider,
1990
), pp. 23–38.
72.
Dresden, sixty miles to the southeast of Leipzig, had been the primary residence of the Saxon electors since the mid sixteenth century. Leipzig, with its three annual trade fairs, was the commercial center of the territory (and indeed of Central Europe as a whole) and the Saxon princes, including Augustus, usually visited Leipzig during the trade fairs. Augustus preferred to rent one of the city’s luxurious baroque palaces, the Appel’schen Haus on the market square, rather than stay in his own official residence in the city, the medieval Moritz castle on the city wall, which he considered too old-fashioned. See Karl Czok,
Am Hofe Augusts des Starken
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,
1990
), pp. 135–39. The court moved with Augustus when he came to Leipzig, renting the finest merchants’ houses on the market square, and court life was superimposed on the places and spaces of the city’s merchant elites: the opera house, the coffeehouses and merchants’ courtyards, and the city’s main churches.
73.
Nikolaus Pevsner,
Leipziger Barock: Die Baukunst der Barockzeit in Leipzig
(Dresden: W. Jess,
1928
). After a series of court intrigues still not clearly understood, Franz Conrad Romanus was accused of embezzlement, removed from office, and arrested in 1705. Unable to regain the favor of Augustus, Romanus was imprisioned at the Königsstein fortress and held there until his death in 1746. See Gustav Wustmann, ed.,
Quellen zur Geschichte Leipzigs
(Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot,
1889
–95)
II
: 263–352.
74.
Ibid
.,
II
: 264–67.
75.
Ibid
.,
II
: 267: “ins Meer der Vergessenheit geworfen sein möchte.”
76.
SdAL, “Acten, die Einrichtung der orthen Straßenbeleuchtung betr. 1701,” fo. 2.
77.
Ibid
., fo. 5.
78.
Wustmann, ed.,
Quellen
,
II
: 269.
79.
SdAL,
Das bey der Nacht Hervorleuchtende Leipzig
. The street lighting of Paris was celebrated in very similar terms in 1667: “Il fera comme en plein midi / Clair la nuit dedans chaque rue.” (“The night will be lit up as bright as day, in every street.”)
Gazette de Robinet
, October 29, 1667, cited in Schivelbusch,
Disenchanted Night
, p. 90.
80.
Quoted in Böck, “Beleuchtung Wiens,” pp. 10–12.
81.
See Verena Kriese, “Die Vorstädte Leipzigs im 18. Jahrhundert,”
Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte
16, 2 (
1989
): 110–25. The suburbs were not illuminated: until the late eighteenth century. The early modern street lighting was limited to the area within the city walls.
82.
Wustmann, ed.,
Quellen
,
II
: 269–70. In comparison, in 1701 the Leipzig city council contributed 6,000 florins toward the construction of a major new public building, the poorhouse, orphanage, asylum, and workhouse of St. George. See Tanya Kevorkian, “The Rise of the Poor, Weak, and Wicked: Poor Care, Punishment, Religion and Patriarchy in Leipzig, 1700–1730,”
Journal of Social History
34, 1 (
2000
): 163–81.
83.
Aufgefangene Brieffe
, pp. 890–91.
84.
Ibid
. For an example of this temporary festive street lighting in Hanover in 1665, see Siegfried Müller,
Leben im alten Hannover: Kulturbilder einer deutschen Stadt
(Hanover: Schlüter,
1986
), pp. 22, 146, and the examples above in
chapter 4
.
85.
Aufgefangene Brieffe
, pp. 890–91. The article is titled “Von der Illuminations-Pracht und Mißbrauch / und hingegen von nützlichen und nöthigen Gebrauch der See-Lichter und Nacht-Laternen auch nunmehr zu Leipzig aufgesteckt worden.”
86.
Ibid
., p. 888.
87.
Ibid
.
88.
Schivelbusch,
Disenchanted Night
, pp. 93–96.
89.
Wustmann, ed.,
Quellen
,
II
: 271, quoting from the
Ratspatente
of 1701–02. Richard Steele describes a similar fashion in London coffeehouses: “the students … come in their night-gowns to Saunter away their time … One would think these young Virtuoso’s take a gay Cap and Slippers, with a scarf and party-colour’d Gown, to be the Ensigns of Dignity.” “Hominem pagina nostra sapit,”
Spectator
49 (April 26, 1711), ed. Donald F. Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965),
I
: 209. See Ariane Fennetaux, “Men in Gowns: Nightgowns and the Construction of Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century England,”
Immediations: Research Journal of the Courtauld Institute of Art
1, 1 (
2004
): 77–89.
90.
The Leipzig ordinances regulating “night life” were all directed at heads of households and refer to nocturnal youthful disorder. Wustmann, ed.,
Quellen
,
II
: 271. Young people in the urban night are examined in
chapter 6
.
91.
Wustmann, ed.,
Quellen
,
II
: 271.
92.
Of course, the success of these attempts to police a city’s night life is another matter, as the following chapter will show.
93.
“Es wird manch Huren-Packt die Lichter müssen scheuen / Manch Dieb zu Bette gehen / der in die Nacht gelaurt.”
Das bey der Nacht Hervorleuchtende Leipzig
, SdAL, Tit. XXVI, Nr. 3, fo. 22v.
94.
Ibid
.: “Wenn sie bey Sicherheit / sich Freund und Feind zu kennen / Die Strassen auff und ab zu handeln können gehn.”
95.
See the Vienna petition noted above and Gerhard Tanzer,
Spectacle müssen seyn: die Freizeit der Wiener im 18. Jahrhundert
, Kulturstudien 21 (Vienna: Böhlau,
1992
), p. 58.
96.
Ibid
.
97.
After all, the “citizens and artisans” of early modern cities had been, not long before, the “many apprentices, boys … and such unmarried folk … found idly in the streets … late in the evening,” as the 1697 and 1702 Leipzig ordinances described them.
98.
Herlaut, “L’éclairage,” p. 166: “en mars, la saison et les affaires remplissent la ville et la Cour est à Paris.” The longer court schedule was adopted.