Geography and Borders
The country we know today as France was shaped considerably during the French Revolution in 1789. The author L.P. Hartley once declared that ‘The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there’[1] and this can be applied to pre-revolutionary France, known in French as the Ancien Regime or Old Regime in English. If you looked at a map of France at the beginning of Louis XIVs reign around 1643 the first thing that you would notice is that it is not quite the ‘hexagon’ shape we are all familiar with today.
- John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (London, 2009) p.9.
The French State and Provincial France
Old Regime France was divided into provinces each with their own regional capitals and some with their own parliaments or Estates which gathered the local political ruling classes to discuss the issues of the day. Historian E.N. Williams has called old regime France a ‘federation of provinces’.[1]
[1] Williams, The Ancien Regime in Europe 162.
The King and the Three Estates
Before the French Revolution in 1789 French society was structured into three estates, or three social classes, with the King at the top of the social hierarchy. Below the monarchy there was the first estate, the clergy, the second estate, the nobility and by far the most numerous, the third estate which comprised of everyone else, from the wealthy Bourgeoise to urban dwellers such as shopkeepers and publicans to the dirt poor and rural peasantry.
The Auberge: the melting pot of society
As Meldrum travels through rural France he eats and stays in inns or auberges. Indeed, throughout the novel there is a recurrence of inns as a meeting place for the characters. Robert Meldrum’s first encounter with John Hamilton takes place in an Auberge in Marly on the outskirts of Paris. But what was it like to be a visitor to an inn in France in the 1670s? What sights and smells would have greeted you?
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