Since society was still mostly rural in the eighteenth century,
the peasantry constituted the largest social group, making up
as much as 85 percent of Europe's population. There were rather
wide differences, however, between peasants from area to area.
The most important distinction at least legally was between the
free peasant and the serf. Peasants in Britain, northern Italy,
the Low Countries, Spain, most of France, and some areas of western
Germany shared freedom despite numerous regional and local differences.
Legally free peasants, however, were not exempt from burdens.
Some free peasants in Andalusia in Spain, southern Italy, Sicily,
and Portugal lived in a poverty more desperate than that of many
serfs in Russia and eastern Germany. In France, 40 percent of
free peasants owned little or no land whatever by 1789. As the
century progressed and new agricultural methods developed, small
peasant proprietors were often unable to compete in efficiency
with large estates.
Small peasant proprietors or tenant farmers in western Europe
were also not free from compulsory services. Most owed tithes,
often one-third of their crops. Although tithes were intended
for parish priests, in France only 10 percent of the priests received
them. Instead they wound up in the hands of towns and aristocratic
landowners. Moreover, peasants could still owe a variety of dues
and fees. Local aristocrats claimed hunting rights on peasant
land and had monopolies over the flour mills, community ovens,
and wine and oil presses needed by the peasants. Hunting rights,
dues, fees, and tithes were all deeply resented.
Eastern Europe continued to be dominated by large landed estates
owned by powerful lords and worked by serfs. Serfdom had come
late to the east having largely been imposed in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Peasants in eastern Germany were bound
to the lord's estate, had to provide labor services on the lord's
land, and could not marry or move without permission and payment
of a tax.
By the eighteenth century, the landlord also possessed legal jurisdiction,
giving him control over the administration of justice. Only in
the Habsburg empire had a ruler attempted to improve the lot of
the peasants through a series of reforms. In Russia, peasants
were not attached to the land but to the landlord and thus existed
in a condition approaching slavery. In 1762, landowners were given
the right to transfer their serfs from one estate to another.
Unlike the rest of Europe and with the exception of the clergy
and a small merchant class, eighteenth-century Russia was largely
a society of landlords and serfs. Although eastern Europe, especially
Poland, Russia, and some Habsburg provinces, experienced revolts
by desperate peasants, they were easily crushed.
The local villages in which they dwelt remained the centers of
peasants, social lives. Villages, especially in western Europe,
maintained public order, provided poor relief, a village church,
and sometimes a schoolmaster, collected taxes for the central
government, maintained roads and bridges, and established common
procedures for sowing, ploughing, and harvesting crops. But villages
were often dominated by richer peasants and proved highly resistant
to innovations, such as new crops and agricultural practices.
The diet of the peasants in the eighteenth century did not vary
much from that of the Middle Ages. Dark bread, made of roughly
ground wheat and rye flour, remained the basic staple. It was
quite nourishing and high in vitamins, minerals, and even proteins
since the bran and germ were not ground out. Peasants drank water,
wine, and beer and ate soups and gruel made of grains and vegetables.
Especially popular were peas and beans, eaten fresh in summer
but dried and used in soups and stews in winter. The new foods
of the eighteenth century, potatoes and American corn, added important
elements to the peasant diet. Of course, when harvests were bad,
hunger and famine became the peasants' lot in life, making them
even more susceptible to the ravages of disease.
The nobles, who constituted about 2 or 3 percent of the European
population, played a dominating role in society. Being born a
noble automatically guaranteed a place at the top of the social
order, with all of its attendant special privileges and rights.
The legal privileges of the nobility included judgment by their
peers, immunity from severe punishment, exemption from many forms
of taxation, and rights of jurisdiction. Especially in central
and eastern Europe, the rights of landlords over their serfs were
overwhelming. In Poland until 1768, the nobility even possessed
the right of life or death over their serfs. Other aristocratic
privileges included the sole right to carry a sword, occupy a
special pew in church, and possess a monopoly on hunting rights.
In many countries, nobles were self-conscious about their unique
style of life that set them apart from the rest of society. This
did not mean, however, that they were unwilling to bend the conventions
of that lifestyle if there were profits to be made. For example,
nobles by convention were expected to live off the yields of their
estates. But although nobles almost everywhere talked about trade
as being beneath their dignity, many were not averse to mercantile
endeavors. Many were also, only too eager to profit from industries
based on the exploitation of raw materials found on their estates;
as a result, many nobles were involved in mining, metallurgy,
and glassmaking.
Their diet also set them off from the rest of society. Aristocrats
consumed enormous quantities of meat and fish dishes accompanied
by cheeses, nuts, and a variety of sweets. Nobles also played
important roles in military and government affairs. Since medieval
times, landed aristocrats had functioned as military officers.
While monarchs found it impossible to exclude commoners from the
ranks of officers, the tradition remained that nobles made the
most natural and hence the best officers. Moreover, the eighteenth-century
nobility played a significant role in the administrative machinery
of state. In some countries, such as Prussia, the entire bureaucracy
reflected aristocratic values. Moreover, in most of Europe, the
landholding nobility controlled much of the local government in
their districts.
The nobility or landowning class was not a homogeneous social
group. Landlords in England leased their land to tenant farmers
while those in eastern Europe used the labor services of serfs.
Nobles in Russia and Prussia served the state while those in Spain
and Italy had few official functions. Differences in wealth, education,
and political power also led to differences within countries as
well. In France, where there were about 350,000 nobles, only 4,000
noble families were allowed access to the court. The gap between
rich and poor nobles could be enormous. According to figures for
the poll tax in France, the richest nobles were assessed 2,000
livres a year while some nobles, because of their depressed economic
state, paid only 6. Both groups were legally nobles. In Poland,
where the legal nobility constituted 10 to 15 percent of the population
or about 750,000 people, most were poor and owned little or no
land.
While these nobles had special pews in church and wore special
dress, they were often as poor as the peasants. As the century
progressed, these poor nobles increasingly sank into the ranks
of the unprivileged masses of the population. lt has been estimated
that the number of European nobles declined by one-third between
1750 and 1815. Although the nobles clung to their privileged status
and struggled to keep others out, almost everywhere the possession
of money made it possible to enter the ranks of the nobility.
Rights of nobility were frequently attached to certain lands so
purchasing the lands made one a noble; the acquisition of government
offices also often conferred noble status.
The Comte Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, the arch-survivor
of the French revolutionary era, once commented that "no
one who did not live before the Revolution" could know the
real sweetness of living. Of course, he spoke not for the peasants
whose labor maintained the system, but for the landed aristocrats.
For them the eighteenth century was a final century of "sweetness"
before the Industrial Revolution and bourgeois society diminished
their privileged way of life.
In so many ways, the court of Louis XIV had provided a model for
other European monarchs who, built palaces and encouraged the
development of a court society as a center of culture. As at Versailles,
these courts were peopled by members of the aristocracy whose
income from rents or office-holding enabled them to participate
in this lifestyle. This court society, whether in France, Spain,
or Germany, manifested common characteristics: participation in
intrigues for the king's or prince's favor, serene walks in formal
gardens, and duels to maintain one's honor. Hierarchy and status
were all important. A complex mixture of family heritage, title,
and wealth determined the position one occupied in this society.
KJ The majority of aristocratic landowners, however, remained
on their country estates and did not participate in court society;
their large houses continued to give witness to their domination
of the surrounding countryside. This was especially true in England
where the court of the Hanoverian kings Georges I-III from 1714
to 1820, made little impact on the behavior of upper-class society.
English landed aristocrats invested much time, energy, and money
in their rural estates, giving the English country house an important
role in English social life. One American observer remarked: "Scarcely
any persons who hold a leading place in the circles of their society
live in London. They have houses in London, in which they stay
while Parliament sits, and occasionally visit at other seasons;
but their homes are in the country."
After the seventeenth century, the English referred to their country
homes, regardless of size, not as chateaus or villas but merely
houses. Although there was much variety in country houses, many
in the eighteenth century were built in the Georgian style named
after the Hanoverian kings. This style was greatly influenced
by the classical serenity and sedateness of the sixteenth-century
Venetian architect, Andrea Palladio, who had specialized in the
design of country villas. The Georgian country house combined
elegance with domesticity, and its interior was often characterized
as possessing a comfort of home that combined visual delight and
usefulness.
The country house also fulfilled a newfound desire for greater
privacy. Domestic etiquette militated against unannounced visits,
and the rooms were designed to serve specialized purposes while
their arrangement ensured more privacy. The central entrance hall
contained a large staircase to the upstairs and also led to, the
common rooms of the downstairs. The entrance hall, whose coats
of arms and suits of armor still reflected its medieval ancestry,
now also provided the setting for the ceremonial arrival and departure
of guests on formal occasions. The lower floors of the country
house held a series of common rooms for public activities. The
largest was the drawing room of larger houses possessed two, which
contained musical instruments and was used for dances or card
games, a favorite pastime.
Other common rooms included a formal dining room, informal breakfast
room, library, study, gallery, billiard room, and a conservatory.
The downstairs common rooms were used for dining, entertaining,
and leisure. Upstairs rooms consisted of bedrooms for husbands
and wives, sons, and daughters. These were used not only for sleeping
but also for private activities, such as playing for the children
and sewing, writing, and reading for wives. This arrangement reflected
the new desire for privacy and to some extent the growing awareness
of individuality. "Going upstairs" literally meant leaving
the company of others in the downstairs common rooms to be alone
in the privacy of the bedroom. This eighteenth-century desire
for privacy also meant keeping servants at a distance. They were
now housed in their own wing of rooms and alerted to their employers,
desire for assistance by a new invention long-distance cords connected
to bells in the servants, quarters.
Although the arrangement of the eighteenth-century Georgian house
originally reflected male interests, the influence of women was
increasingly evident by the second half of the eighteenth century.
Already in the seventeenth century, it had become customary for
the sexes to separate after dinner; while the men preoccupied
themselves with brandy and cigars in the dining room, women would
exit into a "withdrawing room" for their own conversation.
In the course of the eighteenth century, the drawing room became
a larger, more feminine room with comfortable furniture grouped
casually in front of fireplaces to create a cozy atmosphere.
One characteristic of the high culture of the Enlightenment
was its cosmopolitanism, reinforced by education in the Latin
classics and the use of French as an international language. Travel
was another manifestation of the Enlightenment's cosmopolitanism
and interest in new vistas. One important aspect of eighteenth-century
travel was the Grand Tour in which the sons of aristocrats completed
their educations by making a tour of Europe's major cities. The
English aristocracy in particular regarded the Grand Tour as crucial
to their education. The great-aunt of Thomas Coke wrote to him
upon his completion of school:
"Sir, I understand you have left Eton and probably intend
to go to one of those Schools of Vice, the Universities. If, however,
you choose to travel I will give you 500 pounds [about $12,500]
per annum."
Coke was no fool and went on the Grand Tour, along with many others.
In one peak year alone, 40,000 Englishmen were traveling in Europe.
Travel was not easy in the eighteenth century. Crossing the English
Channel could be difficult in rough seas and might take anywhere
from three to twelve hours. The trip from France to Italy could
be done by sea' where the traveler faced the danger of pirates,
or overland by sedan chair over the Alps, where narrow passes
made travel an adventure in terror. Inns, especially in Germany,
were populated by thieves and the ubiquitous bed bugs.
The English were particularly known for spending vast sums of
money during their travels, as one observer recounted: "The
French usually travel to save money, so that they sometimes leave
the places where they sojourn worse off than they found them.
The English, on the other hand, come over with plenty of cash,
plenty of gear, and servants to wait on them. They throw their
money about like lords." Since the trip's purpose was educational,
young Englishmen in particular were usually accompanied by a tutor
who ensured that his charges spent time looking at museum collections
of natural history and antiquities. But tutors were not able to
stop young men from also pursuing wine, women, and song. After
crossing the Channel, English visitors went to Paris for a cram
course on how to act sophisticated. They then went on to Italy,
where their favorite destinations were Florence, Venice, and Rome.
In Florence, the studious and ambitious studied art in the Uffizi
Gallery. The less ambitious followed a less vigorous routine,
according to the poet Thomas Gray, since they ''get up at twelve
o'clock, breakfast till three, dine till five, sleep till six,
drinking cooling liquors till eight, go to the bridge till ten,
sup till two, and so sleep till twelve again."
In Venice, where sophisticated prostitutes had flourished since
Renaissance times, the chief attraction for young English males
was women. As Samuel Johnson remarked, "If a young man is
wild, and must run after women and bad company, it is better this
should be done abroad." Rome was another "great object
of our pilgrimage", where travelers visited the "modern"
sights, such as Saint Peter's and, above all, the ancient ruins.
To a generation raised on a classical education, souvenirs of
ruins and Piranesi's etchings of classical ruins were required
purchases. The accidental rediscovery of the ancient Roman towns
of Herculaneum and Pompeii made them a popular eighteenth-century
tourist attraction.
Source: Jackson Spielvogel, Western Civilization, 3rd.
edition.