In the immediate aftermath of the French capture of Lille, security at night was paramount. Three days after the surrender of the city on August 28, the Magistrat issued an ordinance prohibiting all movement on the streets at night. This ordinance went beyond the standard requirement to carry at light when out at night, and instead established a strict dusk-to-dawn curfew. “All residents of the countryside and foreigners who came and will come into this city” were required “to retire to their homes each day in the evening before the bell called Le Vigneron (‘the wine-maker’) sounds without thereafter finding themselves back on the streets until daylight.” All residents were advised to “take care to have the things that they will need in a timely fashion, all the more [because] once the night watch has begun, they will not be free to go through the city unless it is a case of inexcusable [sic] necessity.” In such a case, “they will have to go with a light and address themselves to the first watchman [they meet] in order to be escorted to wherever they need to go and then return to their home.”38 This ban on all nocturnal movement was lifted on July 23, 1668 and replaced with the standard ordinance requiring anyone out at night to carry a lantern or face a heavy fine.39
In September 1667 the Magistrat established street lighting following the Paris model of lanterns suspended by cords over the middle of street.40 The traditional neighborhood authorities, the maîtres des places, were charged by the ruling council with the placement of the lanterns and their maintenance, while the responsibility for hanging out and lighting the lanterns was given to individual householders. As an update of the ordinance explained in January 1668: “wishing to obviate the insolence and disorders which occur in the evening in the said town,” the Magistrat ordered “all those who occupy corners and the entries of streets, and other locations designated by the maîtres des places” to put out candle-lanterns lit “from one hour after the evening bell until after midnight.”41 The ordinance is similar to that of Paris, though it is not clear who provided the 600–700 lanterns. The 1667 lighting was limited, but it went beyond the traditional requirement that residents hang out a lantern in two ways: the local maîtres des places were authorized to enforce compliance, and the placement of the lanterns on special ropes “hanging above the middle of the street”42 followed the new Paris model, lighting a street centrally from above rather than from lanterns in front of individual houses.
This street lighting arose alongside other measures intended to secure the night in Lille. In the fall of 1667 innkeepers were ordered to submit a list of their lodgers every evening, and the Magistrat again regulated the closing times for “Tavernes & Cabarets.”43 In the period from 1667 to 1715, the Lille Magistrat addressed nocturnal security in about sixty separate ordinances and resolutions; the requirement that one carry a light if out on the streets at night was repeated eleven times in this period.44
But whom were the authorities policing? Lillois journals and chronicles all describe violence between French officers and citizens of Lille, duels at dusk between French officers, nocturnal robberies by common soldiers, and attacks on French troops in the first months and years after the French capture of the city.45 For French military and civil authorities, the actions of their own soldiers were of great concern, and they had to tread carefully. Following the annexation of Walloon Flanders by the French, all eyes were on the fate of Lille, “accounted the third Place of Traffic in the Low-Countries next Amsterdam and Antwerp,” under French rule.46 Louis XIV had personally accepted the city’s surrender in August 1667 and confirmed the authority and privileges of the ruling Magistrat. Lille, described as the “capital of the conquests of his majesty,”47 stood as a “test case” for the possible annexation of other cities of the Low Countries by France, hence the sharp concern to maintain order in the city, and especially to prevent crimes by the occupying French soldiers.
In September 1668, a few months after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle confirmed the annexation of Lille and Walloon Flanders by France, Michel Le Peletier de Souzy, intendant of the new French province of Flanders, wrote to the Marquis de Louvois, secretary of state, to report on nocturnal crime in Lille: “Yesterday I handed down a judgment very stern but also very necessary – people were beginning to thieve at night in the streets of Lille as in Paris; and a citizen had been despoiled down to the shirt by four Liège horsemen from the company of Berlost.”48 Three of the four were apprehended and Le Peletier reported that he condemned two of them to be hanged, despite their rank.49 In reply, Louvois affirmed these concerns: “Public safety during the night is so important that one would have thought they might have to be condemned to [be broken on] the wheel.”50 He considered this public spectacle of slow death, then continued, “I do not understand how in a place where the watch must do its duty as carefully as in Lille, one still dares to attempt to rob at night.”51 In this case, disciplining the night was vital to reducing the impact of the French troops on the occupied city.52
Turning the conquered Lillois into loyal subjects of the French king would take some time, however. In December 1669 the intendant Le Peletier complained that the Magistrat was disloyal and difficult to govern.53 In 1670 the visiting Spanish ambassador (the representative of their former Habsburg rulers) was cheered in the streets, and some of the city’s clergy preached against the alleged decline of public morals brought by the French.54 We can also see the resentment of the French occupation from the street, so to speak, in the journal of the Lillois master silk weaver Pierre Ignace Chavatte (1633–93). Chavatte, like Le Peletier and Louvois, saw the night as a significant site in the negotiations between the Lillois and their new masters. Chavatte recorded numerous crimes and misdeeds by the French and observed that French attempts to police the night could themselves trigger new conflicts: in 1672 his journal notes that “on 23 July between 10 and 11 o’clock at night a French sentinel who was at the corner of the market fired his musket at a man who passed with a lit wick [of his candle or lamp] in his hand … and three to four days after he died; he was a tailor by trade and of the Flemish nation.”55 Chavatte emphasized that the unfortunate tailor was killed even though he was carrying a light as required.
Despite the French affirmation of the governance of the Lille Magistrat, Chavatte observed that authority over the city streets at night belonged to the French. He recorded the declaration of war between France and the United Provinces on October 16, 1673, adding resentfully “that same day in the evening servants of the Magistrat of the city of Lille were arrested and taken to the watch because it was forbidden to walk without a lantern.”56 Chavatte reflected a broad distrust of the French occupiers of the city, and of their policing of the night. Conflicts between French soldiers and residents of Lille often flared up at night, as on February 7, 1675, when “in the evening in the tavern La Bourse d’Or there was a great dispute by the citizens with the French officers in which three to four bourgeois were wounded, and a French surgeon wounded in the head; and the citizens were apprehended and taken to prison.”57 In the same year the intendant Le Peletier acknowledged the circulation of libels “prejudicial to the service of the king.”58
In the 1680s street lighting factored into the slow détente between Lille’s ruling patricians, the administrators of Louis XIV, and the common people. In 1682, the Magistrat established paid lamp-lighters for the city’s street lighting, and the provision of street lighting gradually became more centralized and professional.59 In 1689 the échevins (high judges) of the ruling council, “having noted that the establishment of lanterns to illuminate the city during the darkness of the night served not a little to prevent quarrels, thefts and other disorders that are commonly committed under cover of the night,” praised the service.60 The Magistrat also seems to have become more attentive to damage to the lanterns, referring in 1692 to the need to prevent people from “cutting the cords of the public lanterns.”61 In March 1697 the Magistrat ordered four young men “from good bourgeois homes” to pay heavy fines for destroying thirty-three lanterns in the
streets of Lille during the night of November 26–27, 1696.62
Early modern street lighting was thought to provide both prestige and security, but in Lille, the emphasis was entirely on the latter. None of the publicity that accompanied the establishment of street lighting in Paris or Leipzig (see below) appeared in Lille; conversely, none of the Lille ordinances regarding street lighting refer to the splendor, prestige, or beauty brought by the new amenity. In the occupied city, street lighting was seen as a response to the tensions and disorder brought by the French, rather than as an urban improvement. Only after two decades did Lille’s ruling council begin to refer to “the public lanterns” as a service of “the public trust.”63
The French conquest and integration of Lille and Walloon Flanders shows how much authorities’ attempts to police the night had in common with larger projects of territorial conquest and control. This comparison will be explored further in the discussion of policing, resistance, and the colonization of the night in chapters 6 and 7. In Lille, the establishment of street lighting slowly brought the French intendant and military authorities together with the city’s ruling council in a common project to light and secure the city’s streets.
5.3 Absolutism and street lighting in Leipzig
In the Leipzig case, the official initiative to light the streets came from Warsaw. While in residence there on September 19, 1701 King-Elector Augustus II decreed that in Leipzig “as is common in other prominent cities, to prevent all sorts of nightly inconveniences and for beautification, lanterns shall be set up and lighted by night.”64 Interest in lighting Leipzig’s streets goes back to 1695, when the Leipzig merchants’ guild (the Kaufmannschaft), citing incessant nocturnal crime, proposed to the city council that “constantly-burning night lanterns should be maintained and the streets illuminated with them, as is established in Vienna, Hamburg, Berlin, and other places.”65
The guild’s concerns were well founded, as the 1699 attack on the traveling Strasbourg merchant Johan Eberhard Zetzner shows. The twenty-two-year-old Zetzner was bringing a letter to the post late on the evening of March 28, 1699 when he encountered a group of drunken students who challenged him “with rude and insulting words.” Years later, he described what followed in his memoir:
Because I saw myself outnumbered, and had neither a knife nor a walking-stick with me, I responded with polite words and tried as much as possible to avoid them. But one drew his dagger; then I shouted for the night watch.66
As he called out, Zetzner felt (but did not see) a blow to his left arm. He blocked a second thrust but was badly injured; the students escaped easily. His reflections on the attack express no real surprise that the streets could be so unsafe, just anger at Leipzig’s wastrel students (“these privileged hangman’s knaves,” as he called them).67 Despite these dangerous conditions and the example of other leading cities, however, the fiscally conservative Leipzig city council did not take the initiative to set up street lighting.
Less than three years after the unlucky Zetzner’s visit, Leipzig’s streets were illuminated for the first time. A series of oil lanterns established and maintained at public expense were lit on Christmas Eve, 1701: “so it was also resolved here in Leipzig to transform the dismal night and darkness into light and bright radiance,” as a Leipzig newsletter reported.68 The decision of the absolutist King-Elector Augustus II to create “The Leipzig that Shines Forth by Night” illustrates the initiative of the court in the nocturnalization of Leipzig’s daily life.69
Elected king of Poland in 1697, the Saxon elector Augustus II made full use of the politics of spectacle at his opulent courts at Dresden and Warsaw, and his reign illustrates both the promises and the limitations of the politics of spectacle in this era. Like his contemporary Louis XIV, Augustus styled himself a “sun king,” and his celebrations sought to turn night into day. Even equestrian events could be held at night: the Dresden Reithaus, illuminated by thousands of candles, was the scene of riding displays during Carnival in 1695 (see Figure 4.3) and during the visit of the Danish king Frederick IV in 1709. The nocturnal celebrations and spectacles of the Saxon court reached their high point under Augustus.70 But the Polish election and Augustus’ lavish court swallowed immense sums of Saxon money, straining relations with the tax-weary citizens of Leipzig, the wealthiest city of the electorate.71
By initiating street lighting in Leipzig, Augustus followed the general pattern of royal provision of street lighting seen in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna.72 But the actual establishment of street lighting in Leipzig was directly connected with the swift rise to power of Augustus’ courtier, the appointed mayor Franz Conrad Romanus (1671–1746). Romanus came from an established Leipzig family and studied law before entering into the service of the king-elector. Romanus is perhaps best known for the urban palace built for him at the corner of the Brühl and the Katherinenstraße: this great mansion, completed in 1704, is the most important work of Leipzig’s baroque architecture.73
Franz Conrad Romanus was unique among the mayors of Leipzig during the Old Regime. He was not freely elected, nor had he served on the Leipzig city council (as was required) before his term as mayor began in 1701. Instead Romanus, a court official (“Appellation-Rath”) of the king-elector, took office on the express command of Augustus, who overrode the resistance of the city council.74 This was an unprecedented exercise of territorial authority over the city, intended to give the king-elector more control over the taxation of Leipzig, the single largest source of revenue in the electorate. Augustus and his privy cabinet suspected that the Leipzig city council could be more forthcoming with loans and contributions, and placed Romanus at the head of the city government to increase the flow of revenue for the unceasing expenditures of Augustus and the court. The written protests and financial counter-offers of the Leipzig city council were futile and on August 22, 1701 the council concluded that it had no choice and elected Romanus to its ranks. On August 29 Romanus took office as mayor, promising his fellow councilmen that their failed opposition to him would be “cast into the sea of oblivion.”75
The Leipzig councilmen, on the other hand, could hardly forget the unique circumstances that brought Romanus to the office of mayor. The average age of the councilmen was well over fifty; Romanus, all of thirty years old, with no prior experience in the city council, now led its meetings. Hated and feared by his peers, he served the interests of the king-elector alone, and his task was extraordinarily difficult: to bring money into the coffers of Augustus without further alienating the citizenry or the council. With the support of Augustus, Romanus quickly sought to gain the goodwill of the citizens. A few weeks after he took office, the council received the electoral decree from Warsaw calling for the establishment of public street lighting. The decree, no doubt planned by the king-elector and Romanus, also ordered the establishment of a city drain system, the regulation of coffeehouses, and several other measures for this city of about 20,000. As mayor Romanus would oversee a range of improvements to the city which had been in discussion for some time. Of all the projects, the street lighting moved most quickly.
The city council, led by Romanus, contracted with the entire Leipzig tinsmiths’ guild (7 masters), who delivered 478 lanterns: 2 van der Heyden lanterns from Amsterdam served as the models.76 Another 222 lanterns came from Dresden, sold to the city by the banking firm of Brinck and Bodisch, Romanus’ own bankers.77 By December 24 the 700 lanterns were in place across the city: 4 lantern masters and 18 lantern keepers maintained them.78 When the lanterns were all lit for the first time on that evening, one verse pamphlet enthusiastically reported: “away with the darkness in a brighter light … LEIPZIG’S prosperity resounds in all lands: it shines day and night.”79
The decree of the elector had proposed that the street lighting be funded by a new common tax or property tax. This had been the case in Vienna, for example, which led citizens to complain that those who paid the least for the lighted streets benefited the most. “The high ministers and cavaliers, who wi
th their people frequent the imperial court at the illuminated times, are free from all contributions,” as the Vienna city council protested in 1689.80 Similar objections from Berlin underscore the initial association of street lighting and “night life” with court society. Mindful of his popularity, Romanus instead funded the Leipzig lanterns at no direct cost to the townspeople by reclaiming for the city the fees collected to enter the city after dark at the Grimma gate, the location of the main watch. These fees were under the direct authority of the king-elector, and their importance also illustrates the level of Leipzig’s night life (specifically traffic between the city and its suburbs) at the turn of the century.81 The entry fees covered the annual maintenance costs of about 3500 florins; all but 400 florins of the start-up costs of 4500 florins were paid by the king-elector directly, making the street lighting his Christmas gift to the city.82
Leipzig’s newly illuminated streets were promptly illustrated in the clandestine news journal Captured Letters, Exchanged between Curious Persons Regarding the Current … Political and Learned World(Aufgefangene Brieffe, welche Zwischen etzlichen curieusen Personen über den ietzigen Zustand der Staats und gelehrten Welt gewechselt worden) published in Leipzig in 1702.83 The journal introduces the innovation in terms of baroque spectacle:
Among other amusements … at royal and princely solemnities and public festivals … many thousand lights are lit – and with them often an entire city is illuminated.84
Calling this use of the night “the waste and great abuse of illumination” the Leipzig author presents a typical critique of the extravagance of court life.85 But he then reveals a new bourgeois appreciation for the night by arguing that “A far better use of night-lanterns … in cities on public lanes and streets is to replace the waning sun- and moonlight in the evening and darkness and so well and truly ward off the dangers of the night.”86 The journal included a print (Figure 5.4) which offers a visual résumé of the presumed benefits of street lighting.
Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) Page 17
