Chapter 2: Town and Civil Administration

In the wake of the military, a civilian population also arrived in considerable numbers as early as 1687. People were attracted above all by the favorable opportunities for work and earnings, as well as by the royal promises of tax exemption that the citizens of Fort-Louis were to enjoy.

§ 4 The Founding of the Town

By letters patent of 21 June 1688, the King decreed the following:^¹

The inhabitants of Fort-Louis are exempt for ten years from all billeting and the taxes connected with it, and indeed from all taxes whatsoever, whether in money or provisions. He was willing to grant them this privilege because the construction of houses and other buildings already imposed many expenses upon them. During those ten years, no billeting or any tax may be imposed upon them under any pretext.

On the basis of several years’ study of the local parish records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I can say that the majority of the immigrant civilian population came from Baden. There, around 1689, the hardships of war had assumed an especially severe form, and a great many localities had been reduced to ashes. It was therefore only natural for many a person to accept the offer in Fort-Louis; after all, he did not have much to lose at home. Moreover, traffic between the right bank of the Rhine and this little garrison town was always quite lively at the time. There was no question of shutting the population off from Baden. Many people from the interior of France also settled here permanently, as did a number of Italians, Swiss, and other Germans. Relatively few Alsatians settled here.

By way of example, the places of origin of the couples married in 1690 may be noted, insofar as they are stated at all in the marriage register or can be deciphered. The brides and grooms came from Thionville (German: Diedenhofen), Offenburg, Solothurn, Carcassonne, Paris, Heilbronn, Worms, Switzerland, Massendorf (Switzerland), Oberlauterbach, Chevrières (Lyon), Nuremberg, Wilsau (Lucerne), the Lordship of Bern, Brittany, Oberkirch, and Rastatt.

The parish registers provide a reliable basis for determining the number of inhabitants. Exact figures cannot be given for 1687 and 1688 because several leaves are missing from the baptismal register. The following numbers of children were subsequently baptized here:

Year	Baptisms	Years	Baptisms
1689	82	1701–1710	886
1690	64	1711–1720	792
1691	83	1721–1730	856
1692	59	1731–1740	770
1693	90	1741–1750	839
1694	80	1751–1760	643
1695	81	1761–1770	763
1696	84	1771–1780	673
1697	102	1781–1788	506
1698	107
1699	80
1700	72

Thus, even in the first decade, the average annual number of births was eighty-two, corresponding to a resident population of a little over eighteen hundred. In contrast to Huningue and Neuf-Brisach, Fort-Louis was therefore quite well populated from the outset.

Despite certain fluctuations, the annual average remained unchanged from 1701 to 1750. At mid-century it still stood at eighty-three.

Only after 1750 can a marked decline in the birth rate, and thus in the population, be demonstrated. Shortly before the Revolution it fell to sixty, which may correspond to a population of about fourteen hundred.

The garrison is not included in these figures, except insofar as military personnel had families of their own.

Nor do the figures above include the resident Jews. Jews were always resident here,^² though never in large numbers. In 1751, twelve Jewish families lived here with five Alsatian and six foreign servants.^³ The town council then complained to the government: the inhabitants were suffering noticeably from the large number of Jews, who were expanding their trade. The King therefore added the following provision to his lettres patentes for Fort-Louis of June 1756: Jews who were French citizens might continue to remain, but the granting of burgher rights to Jews would henceforth be reserved to the King—that is, to the Intendant.^⁴ Ten to thirteen Jewish families continued to live here; several of them were very old, while others were quite poor. In 1766 there were ten families;^⁵ in 1780, a total of 38 Jews were counted: 20 men and women, 11 boys, and 7 girls.^⁶

The statistics of 26 August 1781 provide a precise picture; according to them, the following people then lived here:^⁷

	Christians	Jews
Men	290	11
Women	270	11
Widows	90	—
Boys and young men	312	7
Girls and young women	376	6
Servants	38	6
	1,376	41

According to the official work Dénombrement général des juifs tolérés en Alsace (General Enumeration of the Jews Tolerated in Alsace) of 1784, 55 Jewish persons were resident in Fort-Louis that year. They are listed by name and comprise 13 families: 26 husbands and wives, 21 children, and 8 maidservants. Five of these families were childless, or their children were married and living elsewhere. We find the following family names: Dreyfus (three times), Cerf, Elie, Isaak, Wolff, Weill, May, Götschel, Elias, and Hirsch.^⁸

Altogether, then, the civilian population amounted to a little over eighteen hundred from the outset. This number fell after 1750; in 1780 the population numbered 1,417, and in 1791 only 1,182 inhabitants.^⁹

In his memoirs, Intendant Lagrange wrote in 1698:^¹⁰ “Many persons of different nationalities have settled in the southern part of the island; they have built about one hundred and fifty houses and engage in trade. At present, one counts one hundred and eighty families and eight hundred souls.” In light of what has been said above, this latter figure is incorrect.

The Intendant of Alsace, d’Angervilliers, was better informed when he wrote to Desfort in 1717:^¹¹ “Huningue has about seven hundred inhabitants, Neuf-Brisach one thousand, and Fort-Louis eighteen hundred.”

What did all these people live on? In the new towns founded by Louis XIV, complete freedom to practice a trade was granted as a privilege. The citizens of Fort-Louis could therefore engage in any businesses they wished, even several at once.^¹² In the long run, however, this system of free competition produced serious abuses in Fort-Louis.

As early as the first decades, for example, the number of inns—thirty—was quite high and more than sufficient. How were these innkeepers to continue doing business after 1770 with a total population of sixteen hundred, including the garrison? We learn in passing that from the time of the town’s founding there were always two, or even three, apothecaries open here in addition to the military pharmacy. How were they to survive? They were bound, after all, to hamper one another.^¹² Similar abuses may also have come to light in other branches of business.

The little town was evidently overpopulated. Colonists had come here in droves in the hope of easy work and easy earnings. All too soon, however, it became apparent that too many people wished to divide the available work among themselves. The average citizen could therefore never attain a measure of prosperity.

Writing to Desfort in 1717 about the inhabitants of the three garrison towns of Huningue, Neuf-Brisach, and Fort-Louis, d’Angervilliers observed:^¹³

Ce sont presque partout des vivandiers des troupes, et des gens ramassés de toute part qui n’ont rien à cultiver hors des murailles et qui ne vivent que par le commerce qu’ils font pour la subsistance des garnisons.

Almost everywhere they are sutlers to the troops and people gathered from every quarter, who have nothing to cultivate outside the walls and live solely by the trade they carry on to provision the garrisons.

These statements by Alsace’s highest administrative official are confirmed by the parish registers. Only a few citizens engaged in farming and livestock raising; they lived chiefly on outlying islands in the Rhine toward Oberwörth and Auenheim. A shepherd^¹⁴ is mentioned several times, and occasionally a cowherd^¹⁵ and a swineherd.^¹⁶

The expansion and maintenance of the fortifications provided work for many years. So skilled workers such as masons, carpenters, and locksmiths may well have been welcome. Most citizens, however, were innkeepers, bakers, butchers, and barbers. The innkeepers must be named first. From incidental entries in the parish registers, I was able to identify more than thirty inns. Their signs bore “golden” names suited to the age of the Sun King and to the character of the little town; they form part of the town’s cultural and moral portrait. There was the innkeeper of the Golden Lion, the Golden Eagle, the Salmon, the Ox, the Bear, the Wolf, the Golden Lamb, the Golden Stag, the White Swan, the Stork, the Dragon, the Carp, the Rose, the Golden Grape, the Golden Cross, the King, the Queen, the Dauphin, the Spirit, the Angel, the Prince of Condé, the Three Crowns, the Cannon, St. James, St. Louis, the Wild Man, the Red House, and the Sun . . . Brewers are attested several times.^¹⁷ Hairdressers are frequently mentioned, as are fishermen, Rhine workers, craftsmen, and watchmakers. On 6 November 1775, Laurentius Camlosy died, described as horologiorum portatilium faber Viennensis (“a Viennese maker of portable timepieces”); on 15 June 1777, Anton Greiner died, described as horologiorum in hac urbe confector (“a maker of timepieces in this town”).

The townspeople had received the privilege of exemption from all billeting, and they always resisted vigorously any curtailment of it. Why might that have been? The meaning of the privilege was this: individual families gladly quartered officers of the garrison, and even enlisted men and troops passing through—but only for payment. This rental income was the most important source of earnings for the majority of the townspeople, and they were unwilling to surrender it under any circumstances. Another detail in the cultural portrait of the eighteenth century!

All in all, the inhabitants of the little town were an easygoing, happy-go-lucky little folk, most of them unaccustomed to hard, steady work. Uprooted, without civic pride or family tradition, they came here and made a living as best they could in complete dependence upon the garrison.

The town’s coat of arms^¹⁸ shows a field strewn with fleurs-de-lis on a sky-blue ground. Across the middle runs a silver horizontal band bearing an image of the Fort carré. The smaller coat of arms depicts a fortress framed by fleurs-de-lis.

Some citizens also bore individual coats of arms, which they had entered in the official rolls drawn up for that purpose upon payment of a fee. Thus, between 1694 and 1697, the following citizens of Fort-Louis registered their arms:^¹⁹

Ladouze, capitaine dans le Régiment du Luxembourg, ingénieur ordinaire du Roi à Fort-Louis (captain in the Luxembourg Regiment and ordinary engineer to the King at Fort-Louis); Etienne Courty, exempt de la maréchaussée d’Alsace, employé pour le service du Roi à Fort-Louis (an exempt in the Alsace mounted constabulary, employed in the King’s service at Fort-Louis); Major de Paquelon; merchant Henri Souverain-Pré; merchant Jean-Henri Haizer; prêteur royal (Royal Praetor)^a François Chantereau de Bellefond; procureur fiscal (fiscal prosecutor) Victor Somny; procureur fiscal Joseph Joanny; échevin (councilor) François Barris; échevin François Joubert; échevin Boisrecloud; Boucherat, contractor for the carpentry of the fortifications; Corre, postmaster; merchant Thomas Lagarde; burgher Michel Boucher; merchant Gervais Dufour; merchant Dominique Crasser; merchant Pierre Fraret; merchant Michel Finolle; merchant Jean François; Stephan Clad, innkeeper of the Bear; Jakob Fleury, innkeeper of the White Cross; Claude Rivier, merchant-apothecary; Michel La Baume, innkeeper of the Three Kings; Michel Werver, innkeeper of the Angel; Pierre Benoist, innkeeper of the Lamb; Pierre Suret, innkeeper of the Maltese Cross; merchant Anton Britanni; surgeon Jacques Niquart; and the wife of Major Paquelon. The local butchers’ guild is also found in the rolls just mentioned.

§ 5 The Population

In this section we turn to the family life of the little town, insofar as it can be reconstructed from the records. Unfortunately, the parish registers were not kept with the same care throughout. The origins, ages, and social status of those marrying or dying were not always recorded conscientiously. It is therefore quite difficult to treat this material statistically.

The first striking point is that this little folk was rather fond of marrying and entered quite readily into second and third marriages. Often enough, among twenty bridal couples there would be ten widowers or widows entering into a second or even a third marriage. This high proportion of remarriages persisted throughout the eighteenth century; only from 1830 onward did they become rare and exceptional. The surviving records do not adequately explain this fact. At any rate, it points to an easygoing view of life and, bound up with it, to straitened circumstances.

On 4 February 1750, after the banns had been proclaimed three times, the noncommissioned officer Stephan Hirsch of Hungary was to marry Katharina Marie of Fort-Louis. The bride, however, died suddenly at nine o’clock that morning, just before the wedding, though she could still receive the last rites. On 27 July of the same year, Hirsch then took a local widow as his wife.

The number of illegitimate births cannot be established beyond doubt. Under the law of the time, the father’s name had to be entered in the baptismal register. If a priest habitually omitted the words legitimus (“legitimate”) or coniugum (“of the spouses”), legitimate births could no longer be distinguished from illegitimate ones. That is the case here. Nevertheless, it is certain that the ratio between the two was often ten to one, though on several occasions even five to one.

The man whom the mother named before the sworn midwife was entered as the father of the child. Accordingly, a number of scandals also occurred among the better circles of the little town.

Under this method, a man could no doubt at times be unjustly suspected. So the following case may well have caused a great stir. On 29 August 1758, the married midwife Katharina Bregen had her child baptized and named as its father the mayor of our little town, Johann Philipp Desportes, chief physician at the military hospital. He was accordingly entered as the father in the baptismal register. By decree of the episcopal Official^b of Strasbourg dated 30 December 1758, however, his name was deleted again.

The method of keeping the records changed in 1764. Pastor Ott noted the following in the baptismal register:

Hac die 19. Februario 1764 communicatum mihi fuit arrestum supremi senatus Colmariensis latum die 18. Maii 1763 prohibens ne in nomina patrum illegitimorum inquiratur.

On this day, 19 February 1764, there was communicated to me a decree of the Sovereign Council of Colmar, issued on 18 May 1763, forbidding inquiry into the names of the fathers of illegitimate children.

The local parish registers are a valuable storehouse for the history of individual families and are therefore still consulted frequently. The following alphabetical survey naturally presents only a small selection of earlier families. It includes only those families that are still represented here or in the surrounding area, or that were of particular importance to local history.

Antonelly Santo, son of Martin Antonelly, from Lavatoggia (Canton of Muro, District of Calvi) in Corsica, married here in November 1783. At times he practiced the butcher’s trade, but the records also describe him as a Krämpe—an itinerant petty dealer in foodstuffs. He remained resident here after the Revolution and died at an advanced age in 1817. His baptismal name, Santo, was translated here into French; he and his children were called only Toussaint. Owing to the fault of the municipal clerks, this name eventually even entered the civil registers as a surname, and since 1840 the family has been called Toussaint.

Batiston first appears here in 1737. He came from Prosto di Piuro in the northern Italian province of Sondrio and conducted a business here whose nature is not known more precisely. In later years, Nikolaus was once elected to the town council. Only one daughter, Salome, survived him; she later became the wife of Ignaz Walter. Later, in the nineteenth century, the name Batiston was to become very famous through Christoph, a younger relative who came to Alsace around 1798. But more will be said of that later.^¹

Charpentier. Around 1735, a locksmith—or blacksmith—named Joseph “Cherbantier” settled here with his wife, Eva Jaeger. He found employment with the military administration and died here at the age of eighty on 14 January 1789. He was married three times: first to Eva Jaeger (died 1741), then to Maria Eva Cron of Schwarzach (died 1753), and finally to Anna Maria Spetzger, likewise of Schwarzach. A grandchild of the first marriage was the later Baron Germain Charpentier. Louis Charpentier was born of the third marriage, and we shall meet him several more times in the course of this history.

Many details are known about Joseph Charpentier, a son of the first marriage, and about his son Germain. Joseph, the husband of Rosina Nessel, became, like many other citizens of our little town who had a head for business, an entrepreneur des fortifications—that is, a supplier to the military.

During the Revolution, however, misfortune overtook him. On 18 August 1793, he entered into a contract with the military authorities and undertook to supply fodder for two thousand oxen stationed at Strasbourg. The daily ration for each ox was fixed at twenty pounds of hay and eight pounds of bran. Six livres and twelve sols were to be paid for each ration. The authorities also promised him every possible assistance in procuring the fodder. Later, however, he was charged with making a daily net profit of nineteen sols on each ox, and thus earning nineteen hundred livres a day in all. On 28 November 1793, the military court found him guilty and imposed the following sentence: three years’ penal servitude, three hours in the pillory, and one hundred thousand livres in damages. All this while his son Germain was fighting bravely with the Army of the Rhine, and he himself had suffered substantial losses of property fourteen days earlier when the fortress of Fort-Louis fell. Immediately after the judgment, Joseph Charpentier published a defense.^² In it he calculated a daily loss of ten sols on each ox and thus claimed to have suffered a heavy loss on the entire transaction. The ultimate outcome of the trial is unknown. At any rate, it may be assumed that the new public prosecutor, Franz Neumann, drawing upon his own knowledge of the circumstances, was able to secure a fairer judgment than his predecessor Eulogius Schneider^c could have done. For Neumann, a former citizen, mayor, and justice of the peace of Fort-Louis, had known Joseph Charpentier for decades. The latter died as a rentier in Paris on 9 March 1807. His wife, Rosina née Nessel, likewise from Fort-Louis, had preceded him in death in Paris on 3 November 1798. It was only through their son Germain, however, that the name Charpentier attained greater fame.

Germain Charpentier deserves special mention. He was born here on 13 April 1771, the son of Joseph Charpentier and Rosina Nessel. During the Revolution, he joined the 8th Regiment of chasseurs à cheval, then part of the Army of the Rhine. On 1 May 1793, he was wounded in the head by a saber slash before Mainz, at the very time when the public prosecutor Eulogius Schneider had his father arrested under the pretext of a conspiracy against the security of the state. He was promoted to lieutenant on 3 Nivôse, Year IV, and to captain on 26 Germinal, Year V. Before Austerlitz, he mounted a captured Russian horse, which, however, trotted back into the enemy lines. The horse was killed, Charpentier was wounded, and he was soon afterward made a Knight of the newly founded Legion of Honor. He was appointed colonel in 1806, and shortly thereafter Napoleon granted him the hereditary title of baron. The year 1809 brought his military career to an end: outside Vienna he was wounded in the head by a saber slash, and at the Battle of Essling two enemy bullets passed through his right hand. An operation became necessary. Since he could no longer wield a saber, he left active service and, on 22 April 1811, married the seventeen-year-old Josephine Saglio, daughter of the Strasbourg citizen Peter Michael Saglio; she died young, however. Charpentier devoted another fifty years to agriculture, promoted the cultivation of hops, and died on 11 December 1860. We shall encounter his son Achilles, who likewise took a Josephine Saglio as his wife, later in this history.^³

Dandes is first mentioned in 1761 in the person of Joseph Dandes, a carter and farmer. He was married four times: first to Maria Chaumont, then to Maria Brenner, Elisabeth Blum of Bühlertal, and Katharina Schnabel of Schöndorf (Württemberg). Each of these women bore him several children. Joseph Dandes’s origins can no longer be determined. He died as a refugee at Rœschwoog on 8 Germinal, Year V, at the age of eighty-two. Because he was unable to write and the name itself is not an everyday one, the most varied spellings occur down to the Revolution, including Dantaise, Dantez, Tentes, Dandet, Dantes, and Dantesse.

Groff. Alongside several persons named Graf, the name Groff is occasionally found as early as 1695. In 1723, Johann Groff of Oberentzen became resident here through marriage. It cannot be said, however, whether he was the ancestor of today’s extensively branched Groff family. For the family tree of the Groff families now resident here can be traced back only to 1779, the year in which Georg Groff, husband of Christine Keisert, died.

Huber, occasionally also written “oubre,” is attested as early as 1690.

Krafft. There are two lines here: Anton, a tailor from Haguenau (1752), and Georg Krafft of Rastatt (1775).

Lang was already a common name in earlier times.

Loge. Kaspar Loge, son of Anton and Margareta Elisabeth Chustille, is mentioned in 1691. He had previously belonged to the parish of St. Stephen in Lamarche (Vosges). Later, at the low ebb of schooling after 1800, one occasionally encounters the spelling Losch, even written in Gothic letters.

Marfing Peter is the sole bearer of this name before the Revolution. Not until 1783 does his name appear in the parish records. He was born elsewhere on 5 April 1738, the son of Andreas and Elisabeth Hartmann, and served here as gravedigger. His origins cannot be established. Marfing is said to be a Portuguese name.

de Massesy. Not a single officer of the Fort-Louis garrison is still mentioned as often today as Jacques-Louis de Massesy. Not that he had distinguished himself more than his colleagues. He did, however, acquire extensive properties; his grave still survives, and his family remains resident here today under the name d’Angelo. The facts of his life will therefore be set out in detail,^⁴ especially since the biographical dictionaries omit him.

He was born at Bastia in Corsica on 12 April 1749, the son of Senator Joseph Maria de Massesy and the noblewoman Maria Benedicta de Merelli. He was baptized in the Church of St. John there. From 1766 he belonged to the Royal Corse Regiment, first as sous-lieutenant, then as lieutenant (1770), and finally as captain (1775). In any case, he was already stationed at Fort-Louis on several occasions around this time. On 26 August 1783, he married Martha Antonia Broy, daughter of the local military paymaster Jakob Broy.

During the Revolution, he took part in the first two campaigns of the Army of the Alps. He was made a Chevalier de S. Louis on 7 February 1791, promoted to lieutenant-colonel and commandant du quatrième Bataillon d’Infanterie légère (commander of the Fourth Battalion of Light Infantry) on 7 August 1792, and finally, on General Kellermann’s recommendation, provisionally appointed brigadier general with the First Army of the Alps by the Representatives of the People on 16 February 1793. Ill health, however, compelled him to retire on 15 September 1794 with a pension of twelve hundred livres.

Through his wife, de Massesy had come into possession of a number of landed properties. During the Revolution, moreover, he himself increased his holdings of houses and fields within the districts of Fort-Louis and Rœschwoog. Thus, among other properties, the Capuchin monastery passed into his possession. He did indeed suffer various losses when the fortress here fell, but only temporarily. Until 1817, he was the highest-taxed person here, for his landed property was initially even greater than Christoph Batiston’s. In that year, the “Massesy Estate” in the fields of Rœschwoog was auctioned in 91 lots.

As a pensioner, Louis de Massesy first took over the collection of direct taxes at Molsheim, but around 1815 he settled once more in Fort-Louis.

As a Corsican, Louis de Massesy may have placed special hopes in Napoleon I, whom he had held in his arms when Napoleon was a child. Thus, on 29 September 1800, he wrote from Strasbourg to the First Consul:

Un Corse, Jacques-Louis de Massesy, qui a eu le bonheur de vous prendre souvent dans ses bras quand vous étiez encore au berceau.

A Corsican, Jacques-Louis de Massesy, who has had the happiness of often holding you in his arms when you were still in the cradle.

He was, however, bitterly disappointed—how, is not known. In the end, he therefore owed his last great honor to the Bourbons. After Napoleon’s first fall, he promptly had himself presented with the Lily^d at Molsheim, and in September 1814 he was promoted to Maréchal de camp pour tenir rang seulement (brigadier general, for rank only). When Napoleon returned from Elba, de Massesy alone approached the prefect at Strasbourg in an effort to organize a march on Lyon and thus bar the “Usurper’s” path. This open support for the Bourbons may have brought the maréchal de camp new difficulties during the Hundred Days. For in October 1817 he demanded compensation from the Ministry of War for all the misfortunes and persecutions he had suffered at Napoleon’s hands.

Louis de Massesy lived to be one hundred years old^e; he died here on 4 August 1848 at the age of ninety-nine years and four months. The municipality’s death record describes him simply as a pensionnaire (pensioner), while the parish death register calls him an officier supérieur en retraite (retired senior officer). He himself occasionally signed as ancien chef de brigade (former brigade commander).

His only son fell as a lieutenant before Danzig in 1812 during Napoleon’s campaign against Russia. His three daughters also died young; the youngest had married the forester Anton d’Angelo.

Moisset. This name has been established here since 1698. Its first bearer was the baker Wilhelm Moisset dit de Saint-Lorie. — After 1800, at the low ebb of schooling, the original spelling was so thoroughly forgotten that people unhesitatingly wrote Mase, even in Gothic letters. The form Maisset, which arose in Dalhunden after 1870, is an arbitrary alteration made solely out of tender consideration for the ears of the Reichsdeutsche—Germans from the Reich.

Nessel. In 1746, the miller Franz Ludwig Nessel, son of Nikolaus Nessel of Wolxheim, married here. His son, the later councilor Franz Ludwig Nessel (1750–1835), became the leader of the Catholic party in Fort-Louis during the Revolutionary period and municipal agent at Rœschwoog. This family also includes Franz Xaver Nessel (1786–1838), justice of the peace at Haguenau, and Xaver Joseph Nessel (1834–1918), mayor of the town of Haguenau and founder of its museum.

Renaudin Peter, the major’s orderly, came from Nancy. His son Franz Xaver Anton became a military physician in Phalsbourg and Strasbourg and ultimately chief medical officer of the army. He was born at Fort-Louis on 21 July 1729 and died in Paris on 20 March 1784.

Saladin Johann and Joseph practiced here as surgeons, the former around 1750 and the latter around 1780. The name is found here as early as 1710, however.

Sitter. Georg Sitter married here in 1694 and 1703; he was an oarsman on the Rhine. Also in 1703, a second Georg Sitter, from Söllingen, married here. One of the two was a brewer and innkeeper.

Wanner. The roots of this family likewise lead to Baden. Around 1750, the mason Peter Wanner and the surgeon Paul Wanner lived in Lichtenau. The latter practiced for a time as a physician in Mothern, but finally for many years in Fort-Louis. Today’s Wanner family descends from the mason Christian, a son of Peter Wanner.

Wimmer. In 1748, the fisherman Matthias Wimmer married here. He came from Rheinau and was a son of the baker Anton there. The family was always engaged in fishing and, at times during the nineteenth century, also leased the Söllingen Rhine ferry.

Wolf is likewise represented here several times as a family name; it first appears in the parish records in 1690.

Clergymen from Fort-Louis. For the sake of completeness, the few relevant indications may be assembled briefly here. They would add a few brighter points to the cultural portrait of the little town and make it more favorable. Unfortunately, in most of the following cases they provide no certainty. The following clergymen may have come from Fort-Louis; at least their closest blood relatives were resident here:

Clad Johann Gottfried, early-Mass chaplain at Lauterbourg and pastor of Büchelberg, served as a godfather here twice, in 1718 and 1720. In the latter case he is described simply as a vicar of Lauterbourg. He was probably a son of our mayor Stephan Clad. It is noteworthy that he served Büchelberg, which, as we have seen, owed its very existence to the fortress of Fort-Louis.

Father Caecilian of Fort-Louis, a Capuchin of the Alsatian Province. Born 25 January 1728; religious profession, 10 July 1749. In 1755, as a young priest, he studied at the Capuchins’ international house of studies in Bologna.^⁵ In 1758 and 1759, he occasionally signed parish records in Oberlauterbach. No further information is available. He may have been Christoph Trautmann, who was baptized at Fort-Louis on 25 January 1728.

Father Fridolin Fink of Fort-Louis, a Capuchin of the Alsatian Province.^⁶ Born 29 November 1712; religious profession, 4 November 1736. From 1744 to 1749, he served at the Capuchin residence in Fort-Louis, and later at Wissembourg. I have not found his baptismal record; I therefore suspect that he was born elsewhere and moved to Fort-Louis with his family at an early age.

Gœrger Franz Joseph, pastor of Ingwiller (German: Ingweiler), served as a witness to a marriage here in 1746, together with Philipp Jakob Gœrger, a citizen of Fort-Louis. He may have been born here on 9 March 1719 as a son of the butcher Jakob Gœrger.

Lièvre Johann Ludwig, the Capuchin Brother Matthaeus of Fort-Louis, of the Alsatian Province. He was the son of the master baker Stephan Lièvre and was baptized on 11 March 1755. At the beginning of the French Revolution, he was stationed at the Capuchin residence at Trois-Épis (German: Drei-Ähren). His later fate is unknown.^⁷

Rivier Johannes Claudius, son of the apothecary Claudius, is recorded as a clericus (cleric) in 1715.

Seither Joseph, born at Fort-Louis on 19 February 1700. He was ultimately archpriest of the Bruderberg rural deanery and pastor of the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul at Rosheim;^⁸ he died at Rosheim on 13 January 1762.

Seither F., pastor of Schœnenbourg (German: Schönenburg) and Hoffen in 1761,^⁹ may likewise have come from Fort-Louis.

Vichard Jos. Jak., pastor of Rœschwoog and later of Munchhausen, was probably a son of the local teacher Vichard. In 1737, he baptized a child of Magdalena Barbara Torque, née Vichard, who was probably his sister.

Thus, three priests are known with certainty to have come from Fort-Louis before 1800: the Archpriest Joseph Seither, Pastor Franz Joseph Gœrger, and the Capuchin Father Caecilian.^¹⁰ This number is small; most localities in Alsace no doubt come out ahead in this respect. One may regret that Fort-Louis, wanting in other titles to fame, lacks a worthy crown of priests^f as well.

Looking back over what has been said, it emerges that a large proportion—about half—of the family names now found here did not exist here in earlier times. In the eighteenth century, to be sure, there was here the richest assortment of French and German names, of a kind not readily found in another little town of the same size.^¹¹ Most of them have disappeared; only a scant remnant remains. Meanwhile, new names have been added: D’Angelo, Benninger, Bigot, Cousandier, Doppler, Fauqueux, Flury, Hentsch, Kehres, Lovis, Ostertag, Prestenbach, Schneider, Schnepf, Seyfried, de Sury, Wagner, and Zwinger.

§ 6 The Town Authorities

1. The royal authorities. — Characteristic of the eighteenth century was the curtailment of municipal liberties by the so-called “Royal Praetor.” This official was to be found in the former Imperial Cities of Alsace. He was the ordinary judge in criminal and civil matters,^¹ possessed full police authority, and supervised the town’s administrative bodies; he attended the meetings of the town council and could annul its resolutions. The office was venal^g and had to be purchased from its incumbent or his heirs for a considerable sum.

As a small town of officials and military personnel, Fort-Louis also had a Royal Praetor. The first we encounter is Franz Chanterau, Seigneur de Bellefond;^² he came from Paris and, on 12 January 1688, married Claudine Belloc of Marsal here. It is striking that both this gentleman and all his successors were novices—young lawyers who can scarcely have been over twenty-five when they assumed office. Franz Chantereau died young, on 13 August 1707, and was buried in the parish church; in addition to several daughters, he left a fourteen-year-old son, Heinrich.

The office of Praetor was now to be reserved for the young Heinrich. His mother therefore sought a lawyer to serve as a deputy until Heinrich came of age and then step down again. Joseph Guerver of Haguenau, iuris utriusque licentiatus (licentiate of both laws) and a lawyer before the Conseil Souverain d’Alsace, agreed to this bargain. He took over the office and dignity without having to purchase them, initially for three years and thereafter continuously until Heinrich attained his majority. The widow reserved for herself the annual state subsidy of two hundred livres and half the net proceeds.^³

The very next year, Guerver married her daughter Anna Maria and thus became a member of the Chantereau de Bellefond family. Nevertheless, as agreed, he resigned in October 1718; he was guaranteed certain honorary privileges and an annual pension for life.^⁴ Guerver left Fort-Louis, entered the service of the Lord of Fleckenstein, and settled in nearby Rœschwoog as his treasurer.^⁵

The town council used this change in the office of Praetor to press for greater freedom of action: the mayor and council demanded that the Praetor cease taking precedence over them and surrender the police authority to them. The Conseil Souverain d’Alsace, however, would make no change to the chief magistracy and rejected the town council’s petition on 17 May 1718.^⁶

It is to the credit of the town council, as the elected representatives of the townspeople, that during the first years of Heinrich Chantereau de Bellefond’s tenure it continued to fight for its freedom, albeit in vain. For on 25 February 1723 the Conseil Souverain d’Alsace confirmed Heinrich in the full extent of his original rights:^⁷ the council was to sit every Tuesday, and he was to take part; extraordinary meetings of the town council were to be reported to him in good time; he was to open all mail addressed to the town in the mayor’s presence; he was to hold the whole administration and police authority in his hands and to be the judge of first instance.^⁸

Heinrich remained in his inherited post for more than forty years; he died on 22 March 1762 and was buried before the altar of Our Lady in the parish church. The influence of the Chantereau de Bellefond family ended with his death. On 6 August 1762, his daughters sold the office of Praetor to the lawyer Franz Joseph Fürst of Reichshoffen. The purchase price was eighteen thousand livres, of which Fürst had to pay eight thousand down and settle the balance in two short installments.^⁹

During the first years of his tenure, disputes arose among Fürst, Royal Prosecutor La Chapelle, and the town council; these were again submitted to the Conseil Souverain d’Alsace. On 16 June 1766, it ruled that the Praetor could neither introduce new regulations nor dismiss municipal officials without the consent of the town council. All letters and parcels intended for the town, however, were to continue to be opened by the Praetor in the mayor’s presence.^¹⁰

Probably because of financial worries, Fürst concurrently held the office of bailiff in Beinheim.^¹¹ He was therefore simultaneously in the service of the King of France and the Margrave of Baden—further evidence of the lively relations then existing between the two banks of the Rhine. Other officials from Fort-Louis acted similarly. In 1773, he gave up his post here and settled permanently in Beinheim as bailiff.

He was succeeded in Fort-Louis by the approximately twenty-nine-year-old lawyer Johann Jakob Thannberger, secretary and interpreter at the Conseil Souverain d’Alsace.^¹² He came from Blotzheim, where his father had likewise been Praetor. On 11 June 1773, the purchase price of the office was set at sixteen thousand livres.^¹³ Fürst, however, probably received no more than six thousand livres, for Thannberger was indebted far beyond his means to the local Jews and other citizens.^¹⁴ He therefore also lacked the independence indispensable to a magistrate in his position.

Twice the Conseil Souverain d’Alsace had to settle a dispute between him and the town. In 1779, a public celebration was held on the occasion of the Queen’s safe delivery. The mayor refused to hand the Praetor the torch with which to light the celebratory bonfire; as the elected representative of the townspeople, he claimed this honor for himself. Both sides invoked ancient customs. When no agreement could be reached, Thannberger submitted a complaint to the Conseil Souverain d’Alsace: it had always been customary, he maintained, for the Praetor to enjoy precedence in every honor over the mayor, and in particular to be served the blessed bread first and to be permitted to light the bonfire at public festivities. The outcome of the case is unknown.^¹⁵

In a second case, however, Praetor Thannberger’s conduct was censured. In 1785, he had interfered in the appointment of a herdsman, which was, after all, a purely local matter without any political character. He was reprimanded on this occasion: such little offices were not to be filled by fiat of the Praetor, but only at a general assembly of the citizens.^¹⁶

Johann Jakob Thannberger died on 14 August 1787 at the age of about forty-three, leaving two minor children. He had not had sufficient time to exploit his office. He thus left assets of seven thousand livres and debts of thirty thousand livres.^¹⁷ A notarial settlement of his financial position had to be postponed until the office of Praetor could be sold. Yet on the eve of the great Revolution, it appears that no buyer could be found, and thus the financial ruin of the Thannberger family was finally sealed. About thirty years later, a police report states that his only son was living an unsettled life as a vagrant.^¹⁸

The Royal Praetor was assisted by the Royal Prosecutor. The following gentlemen held this office:

Somny Viktor, first mentioned in 1699; he was a member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament and died in 1715.

Dumont Bernhard was a pharmacist at the military hospital while still a very young man and held the secondary office of Royal Prosecutor from 1715 until his death in 1753; he was buried in the parish church.

Gabriel Rabin de La Chapelle, son of the town clerk Wilhelm Rabin de la Chapelle, a Breton; he bore the title of lawyer before the Conseil Souverain d’Alsace and is attested here as prosecutor from 1755 to 1779.

Beunat Johann Jakob, son of Johann, who had long been active in the municipal administration. Johann Jakob remained in office until the Revolution.

The little town of Fort-Louis was further distinguished by having a notarial office. The following gentlemen are known to have served as notaries:

Jacques du Bosc-Bosnal, 1692–1720, from Notre-Dame-de-Bernay near Lisieux. He was the founder and greatest benefactor of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament and died here in 1720.

Boucher René, from 1720 until his death in 1768. Although he retained his residence in Fort-Louis, he concurrently served as bailiff in Beinheim and Trimbach and was a margravial court councilor in Rastatt.

Beunat Peter Joseph, from 1768 to 1778, a brother of the prosecutor. Around 1778, he resigned as notary and once again devoted himself solely to administering the town treasury. His sons Ludwig and Joseph went abroad as émigrés, and their shares of the family property were confiscated.

Wagatha Johann Baptist, from 1779 to 1794. He came from Stundwiller and had previously worked in the municipal administration of Lauterbourg. When Fort-Vauban was evacuated in January 1794, he good-naturedly took all the notarial records with him across the Rhine and died soon afterward. His widow would return the records only upon reimbursement of her expenses.^¹⁹

After the fall of the little town, the townspeople proposed Hurter, Wagatha’s brother-in-law, as notary. Fort-Vauban had meanwhile become so insignificant, however, that it permanently lost its notarial office.^²⁰

2. The town council. — Alongside the Royal Praetor, the town’s elected representatives did not count for much. Their particular sphere was financial administration, which in Fort-Louis was especially thankless.

From the outset, a mayor and four councilors appear alongside the Praetor as representatives of the town. They, together with the town clerk and town treasurer, had to be elected every three years. Voting rights, however, were restricted to citizens^h. Thus, in 1750, when the population numbered about eighteen hundred civilians, 142 votes were cast;^²¹ the mayor, too, was elected directly by the citizens.^²²

From occasional entries in the parish registers, the names of individual mayors can still be established. They are variously designated there as proconsul (proconsul), civium magister (master of the citizens), civitatis praesul (head of the town), and tribunus plebis (tribune of the people).

Overview of the Mayors, 1690–1789:

Thiebauld Johann, L’Ecrivain, 1690; he was unable to writeⁱ. Joannis Joseph, called Provençal,^²³ innkeeper, 1691. François Johann of Verdun, 1693. Remonda Anton, 1695. Cromer Dietrich, cloth merchant, 1698–1700; see below.

Clad Stephan of Saarburg^j, 1701–1706. He bore a bear on his coat of arms,^²⁴ was a baker, and kept the Bear inn. In the records he is sometimes called Etienne Claude or Glade; he signed in a forceful hand, “Steffen Clad, Mayor.” The entry that the Recollect Father Romain wrote in the death register does him great honor:

L’an de N. S. Jésus-Christ 1706, 27 novembre est mort après avoir reçu avec dévotion les Sacrements de l’Eglise Mr. Etienne Glade étant actuellement en charge de Bourgmeistre et conseiller de cette ville. Sa droiture, son équité, en un mot le caractère d’honnête homme dont il était doué l’ont fait regretter généralement de tout le monde. Il a été enterré au pied de la croix du cimetière comme il avait témoigné le souhaiter en son vivant.

In the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1706, on 27 November, Mr. Etienne Glade, then serving as mayor and councilor of this town, died after devoutly receiving the sacraments of the Church. His uprightness, his fairness—in a word, the character of an honorable man with which he was endowed—caused him to be mourned by everyone. He was buried at the foot of the cemetery cross, as he had expressed the wish during his lifetime.

The notarial instrument dividing his estate runs to nearly one hundred folio pages.

Barris Franz, pharmacist, 1706–? He too bore a family coat of arms.^²⁵ Under the date 26 November 1712, Father Salvian, superior of the local Recollects and town pastor, dedicated the following words of pious remembrance to him in the death register:

J’ai inhumé dans l’église paroissiale du Fort-Louis près la grande porte de l’église le Sieur François Barris bourgmaistre en charge de la dite ville, confrère de la confrérie du T. S. Sacrement, décédé, après avoir reçu les sacrements avec une piété exemplaire, dans les sentiments d’un véritable chrétien et regretté généralement de tout le monde de Fort-Louis et des environs de cette place.

I buried in the parish church of Fort-Louis, near the great door of the church, Sieur François Barris, then serving as mayor of the said town and a brother of the Confraternity of the Most Blessed Sacrament, who died after receiving the sacraments with exemplary piety, in the dispositions of a true Christian, and mourned by everyone in Fort-Louis and the surrounding area.

Barris Johann Victor.

Rivier Claude, pharmacist and director of the military hospital.

Cromer Dietrich, merchant from Saverne, for the second time, 1714–1717. In 1711, he had purchased the Pfeilhof estate in the district of Offendorf, including seventy-four fields and thirty meadows, for 2,700 guilders,^²⁶ not in order to farm it himself, but to resell it at a profit. At his death, he was buried in the nave of the present parish church. The endowment of the poorhouse goes back to his children.

Duchatellier Robert, 1717–1720 and again later, before 1730. He was paymaster of the garrison and was buried in the nave of the parish church in 1730.

Drolenvaux Heinrich Simon, 1720–1723 and several times after 1730. He had immigrated from Liège and kept the Red Star inn. In 1748, he was buried in the nave of the church.

Desportes Johann Philipp, 1747–? He was chief surgeon at the military hospital and led the town as mayor several times.

Cromer Joseph Dietrich, around 1750; Dittlin, 1753; Fischer Jakob, 1764 and 1768; finally Pronsal Lorenz, 1770–1789. Nothing is known about the last of these, since he was not born here, did not marry here, and died elsewhere. In any event, he was related by marriage to the local engineer officer and later fortress commander de Chambarlhiac, whose wife, Louise Victorine Pronsal, was born in Strasbourg on 18 May 1756.

The only surviving register of town-council meetings affords us a good view of the work of the municipal administration.^²⁷ It begins with the election of M. Drolenvaux on 26 December 1720 and ends three years later with his resignation. It gives us the impression that the councilors encountered many difficulties with certain groups in the town that had vested interests—the Jews, bakers, butchers, and innkeepers. They were nevertheless animated by the best of intentions, administered the economic and market police, and combated every form of dishonesty among bakers and butchers.

The town-council elections took place on 26 December 1720; both Mayor Duchatellier and his four councilors had to step down. Heinrich Simon Drolenvaux became mayor; the cloth merchant Jakob de La Vie, Johann Maillet, Petrus Bachellier, and Michael Dillmann now served at his side. The Norman Johann Lhanneur, a lawyer at the Parlement of Paris, secured election as town clerk; Philipp Carlier was retained as cashier, although he was unable to write.

A few days later, the Praetor swore the elected gentlemen into office: they pledged to serve the King faithfully and to support the Praetor in administering justice and exercising police authority. Despite an invitation from the Praetor, the five outgoing members of the council took no part in this ceremony.

Clerk Lhanneur was immediately granted citizenship. He soon realized, however, that his professional work would not permit him to remain in Fort-Louis for any length of time. The former town clerk, the Breton Wilhelm Rabin de La Chapelle, was therefore reinstated.

On 1 April 1721, an audience de police (police court session) was held. Together with the Praetor, the council exercised police authority^k and decided the following cases: the innkeepers Ludwig Kümich, Mathias Hommel, and Jakob Duche, called La Tulipe, served beer to soldiers during High Mass on a Sunday. The first was acquitted; the latter two were each fined three livres. — A baker’s widow was fined five livres because her loaves were found to be three ounces—or ninety grams—underweight. The baker Weisskopf received the same sentence.

Seeking better control over meat products, the town had built a slaughterhouse. It stood “sur la flaque entre le Fort et la Ville” (“on the pond between the fort and the town”), that is, by the lake at the Contades parade ground. All butchers, including the Jews, had to slaughter their animals there; only the household slaughter of pigs remained permitted.

22 April 1721, audience de police. The council appointed two citizens as field wardens. From May to the end of September, they were to watch over the cultivated property of the local townspeople in the district of Rœschwoog and were each to receive fifteen livres per month. For every animal grazing at large that they caught, its owner had to pay them a penalty of thirty sols. — Slaughtering had to be reported in advance to the magistrat du quartier (ward magistrate). In summer, the slaughterhouse was open from four in the morning until nine in the evening; from 1 November through 30 April, however, it was open only from seven in the morning until five in the evening.

On 1 July 1721, an audience de police was held. The baker Dillius was fined thirty sols because his bread was found underweight; he had claimed that an oversight by his apprentice was to blame. — Two innkeepers served drinks during High Mass on Palm Sunday; each paid a penalty of two livres. — Seven innkeepers served drinks on the first Sunday in May during Vespers held before the exposed Most Blessed Sacrament; each paid a fine of thirty sols. One of them committed the same offense on the first Sunday in June and received the stiffer penalty of three livres. — Johann Lion, innkeeper at the Pewter Pot, engaged fiddlers several times during prohibited hours, for which a fine of forty sols was imposed.

29 July 1721: Two complaints were lodged against the Jew Conseler. A dead goat that was fouling the air was found on a street corner, and he was believed responsible. No certain proof could be produced, and he was therefore acquitted. He did, however, buy up louis d’or and silver coins and, despite repeated prohibitions, take this money abroad. A penalty of thirty livres was demanded from him.

The Auxiliary Bishop and Vicar General of Strasbourg was here on 15 October 1721 for a visitation. In a letter to the municipal administration, he called attention to several police regulations in force in France that ought to be observed more closely here as well. The council therefore enacted the following ordinances: after the evening bell, the inns were no longer to remain open; all butcher shops had to be closed on Sundays; all instrumental music had to cease at curfew.

The Jews bought up the best fish before the sellers reached the market. It was therefore expressly stipulated that fish could be purchased only at the market—at seven in the morning during the summer half of the year and, beginning on 1 November, at nine in the morning.

30 October 1721: The Jew Salmon secretly slaughtered a billy goat. He paid thirteen livres for it: ten livres to the farmer of the municipal excise (octroi), whom he had attempted to defraud, and three livres because he had kept the meat from being inspected at the slaughterhouse.

2 January 1722: On the day before Christmas, the bread from every bakery was inspected. At Bartholomäus Grotmange’s, twenty to twenty-five six-pound loaves were found, each two ounces underweight. A fine of ten livres. — The innkeeper Joseph Müller bought a goose in the street: a fine of ten sols. — Nine butchers were each fined twenty sols for selling meat on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. — The merchant Thomas Lagarde bought goods before they reached the market: a fine of three livres.

10 February 1722: Despite a special public notice, eleven people did not clean the street before their houses. A fine of twenty sols each was imposed. One of the women, who had insulted the magistrat du quartier on this occasion, was, however, permitted to pay three livres.

6 May 1722: Despite repeated warnings from the town, a certain citizen took a woman of ill repute into his house. The municipal prosecutor threatened to revoke his citizenship; the councilors set a fine of three livres.

La Tulipe served drinks at night—a fine of twenty sols. Innkeeper Karteifer kept fiddlers in his establishment after curfew—a fine of thirty sols.

23 June 1722: On Sundays, fiddlers were not to perform in the inns until after Vespers.

10 September 1722: Johann Jakob Storm of Betschdorf brought nineteen pounds of butter to that day’s Friday market; Johann Wertz of Rittershoffen delivered thirty pounds, and Anna Margareta Arnst, likewise of Rittershoffen, twelve pounds. Although butter was exempt from the octroi, the new octroi farmer, Claudius Couturier, invariably demanded fees for its importation. The town council ordered the farmer to repay the named individuals twice the amounts he had previously collected from them unlawfully.

27 October 1722: The meat sold here was not to be inferior in quality to that sold in the town of Strasbourg, nor was ordinary beef to be passed off as ox meat. The master butcher Johann Kretz was therefore appointed the town’s meat inspector. — All citizens had to clean the street before their houses every Saturday and on the eve of feast days, and they were not to leave manure sitting before the door for more than forty-eight hours.

10 November 1722: The Jew Salomon brought in meat without the octroi farmer’s knowledge. He therefore paid the farmer a fine of ten livres.

2 March 1723: At the end of December of the previous year, the Jews Sendner and Schlum secretly brought in and slaughtered two cows; each paid a fine of five livres.

A municipal watchman was appointed to inspect the inns. On Sundays, he had to make the rounds of the inns during High Mass and in the evenings after the final bell, for the abuse of innkeepers serving drinks past curfew had to stop. He received ten livres per month. The choice of a suitable person for the position was apparently not a happy one, since the watchman had to be dismissed after only three months.

20 April 1723: Wine smuggling was punished with a fine of twenty livres because the octroi farmer had been defrauded. Karl Colas was to serve as field warden again that summer through the end of September, for a total of ninety livres.

11 September 1723: Two innkeepers were punished for having served drinks on the first Sunday of the month during sacramental Vespers.

20 September 1723: The Jew Consele slaughtered another cow that day—in the slaughterhouse, it is true, but without prior notice; his wife immediately carried off the lungs and heart in order to hinder the inspection. The meat was found to be inferior and was therefore to be thrown into the Rhine in the presence of a councilor. The hide was awarded to M. Kretz, the sworn inspector who had reported the case. The Jew was also served with a penalty order for ten livres.

The register of council meetings breaks off on 16 November 1723, five weeks before the town council was to be renewed.

In the town-council elections of 1768, all the outgoing gentlemen had been reelected. Through the intervention of the Intendant, the King declared the election invalid;^²⁸ the reelection of every councilor, he held, could be explained only by illicit maneuvers. The elections, he further decreed, were to continue to take place every three years, and outgoing councilors were not to become eligible again until they had been off the town council for three years. The town clerk and town treasurer, however, could be reelected immediately to the same offices. On this occasion, the decree of 23 August 1717 was also recalled, under which no councilors could be related by blood to one another within the first three degrees of kinship. This ordinance does not appear to have been observed for long, since Lorenz Pronsal, the town’s last mayor before the Revolution, probably held office without interruption from 1770 to 1790.

The information above does not, to be sure, provide complete clarity about Fort-Louis’s municipal administration in the eighteenth century. It points unequivocally, however, to a great evil that existed at the time: the severe curtailment of municipal freedom. The office of Royal Praetor evidently could not satisfy the townspeople.^²⁹ The local population’s love of liberty rightly led it to strive repeatedly for change. The mayors and councilors were consistently mature men worthy of trust. The Praetors, by contrast, were often novices—young lawyers over whose appointment the town had not the slightest influence. A Praetor therefore had to display great circumspection and uncommon prudence if he wished to supervise or oppose the town council. Moreover, the office of Praetor was held for life; the removal of an unpopular Praetor could neither be demanded nor legally enforced. On the other hand, the method of remuneration was also deficient. The local Praetor had been promised a state subsidy of two hundred livres annually. At Thannberger’s death, it was established that he had never received this amount during his fifteen years in office. Such an injustice to an official should not occur in a well-ordered state; it causes the official to lose his independence, as evidently happened in Thannberger’s case.

From the town the Praetor drew a salary of three hundred livres, the Procureur du Roi (Royal Prosecutor) one hundred eight livres, the mayor two hundred eighteen livres, and each councilor one hundred five livres. They considered these rates very low and therefore created a secondary source of income for themselves by dividing among themselves the customary fees charged when citizenship was granted.^³⁰ In the “Cahier des doléances, plaintes et remontrances des habitants du Tiers-Etat de la ville de Fort-Louis dressé à l’assemblée tenue en la dite ville le 20 mars 1789” (“Book of Grievances, Complaints, and Remonstrances of the Inhabitants of the Third Estate of the Town of Fort-Louis, Drawn Up at the Assembly Held in the Said Town on 20 March 1789”), 149 citizens, each signing by name, therefore demanded under item 9 that the fees for granting citizenship be paid into the town treasury.

Although the noble Chantereau de Bellefond family guided the town’s fortunes for some sixty years, only commoners of Alsatian origin appear as Praetors during the intervening periods and afterward. Both languages were always represented on the town council. We find German-speaking mayors, even at a very early date, as well as military officials from France proper who held that office. In this respect, then, there was no cause for complaint.

The popular assembly mentioned above, held on 20 March 1789, did, however, make a further demand under item 11: in June 1787, four newly elected councilors had not been confirmed, and despite the elections, all the previous officeholders had remained in office. The Third Estate of Fort-Louis now demanded that the newly elected men be installed for the remainder of the current term.

§ 7 Public Health

The foregoing discussion has already given ample warning that judgment must be exercised with caution. Readers have already encountered many peculiar conditions in Fort-Louis and have had to adjust their judgment accordingly. They will therefore no longer be surprised that in matters of health, too, no appreciable standards can be expected of this little town.^¹

Fortunately, at least the streets had been laid out broadly from the beginning, as in a modern metropolis. Thus, what had been planned solely for military reasons benefited the public health. The main street is more than fifteen meters wide, and even the narrowest lane, the Rue Pralon, measures more than five meters. This military provision for the efficient movement of traffic thus became an essential benefit to public health.

The streets are laid out in straight lines and intersect at right angles. Five run from south to north and three from west to east. In addition, there are two lanes on either side of the cemetery.

The longitudinal streets are named as follows:

Rue Neuve, from the Seyfried house along the Batiston property to the Russenstrasse^l. In the present-day registers of the mayor’s office, the northern part of this street is designated rue Saint-Claude—by what right? Our drawing from 1743 knows no street of that name.

Rue Dubourg, from the Bigot house to the Russenstrasse. It is six toises wide (one toise, the span of both arms, equals 1.94 meters), or about twelve meters. Leonore-Marie Du Maine, comte Du Bourg, 1655–1739, was a Marshal and Governor of Alsace.

Rue Saint-Louis, the street leading from the parish church to the main fort. It is eight toises wide.

Rue du Sel, from the Sitter house along the parish garden to the d’Angelo house; it is about twelve meters wide. It is certainly possible that the street bore this name from the outset. More probably, however, the name is merely a corruption of that of Marshal d’Huxelles, under which the street is still listed today in the files of the mayor’s office.

Rue Permangle, from the Benninger house to the Dandes house. We have already encountered the governor of this name in the section on the garrison.

Rue Portail, the eastern side lane along the cemetery wall; so called because, like the Rue Du Bourg, it led to the Porte d’Allemagne (German Gate). It is 7.76 meters wide.

Rue Pralon, the western side lane along the cemetery wall. We have already encountered M. de Pralon in the section on the garrison, as fortress commander of Fort-Louis.

The cross streets are named as follows: Rue d’Orléans, which passes the portal of the parish church; Rue Bourbon, between the Zwinger and Dandes houses; and Rue Conti, between the entrance to the Batiston château and the d’Angelo house.^²

These fine streets, however, were lined with poor and unhealthy dwellings. The island was small. There was, moreover, an ordinance under which private houses could not be built too close to a fort. The town’s former extent was therefore certainly no larger than it is today; indeed, it was somewhat smaller. For parts of the Rue Neuve, Rue Pralon, and Rue Permangle were withheld from the townspeople. Nineteen hundred people once crowded into the space now occupied by two hundred, and some of them still wished to practice agriculture and raise livestock. Not a single free corner remained.

Moreover, all these dwellings were cramped, small, and makeshift. If the rectory was already dilapidated and uninhabitable in 1737, one can hardly maintain that the majority of the other houses were more durable or solidly constructed. This is also indicated by the fact that the parish church and the Capuchin monastery are the only surviving witnesses to the old town. It will not do to attribute the destruction of all the other dwellings to the bombardment of November 1793.

The many bodies of water were quite harmful. First, the two branches of the Rhine passed by the town. Other, weaker branches of the unregulated Rhine were gradually cut off from the river. This created the so-called backwaters, several of which already existed at the time in the Stattmatten Forest and the Barrage. Moreover, out of particular concern for the security of the fortress, the military had cut a rampart ditch along the bank around the entire island. This ditch was about five kilometers long and ten meters wide, and in places even twenty meters wide.^³ It contained only standing water.

The many pools that lay within the rampart ditch and closely encircled the town must have given it a rather neglected appearance. Much of the earth needed to construct the ramparts and entrenchments was taken wherever it happened to be found within the island.^⁴ This created marshy hollows and puddles that remained open for decades. According to contemporary plans, they were distributed through the settlement as follows:^⁵

From the cemetery to the Flury house, about 150 meters long and 50 meters wide; between the Benninger house and the Moder, 50 × 40 meters; by the Seyfried and Lang houses, two pools measuring 50 × 6 meters in all^m; the entire Batiston property—stables, courtyard, house, and park—was one great water hole, 200 meters long and 50 meters wide; between Karl Dandes’s property and the Moder, 80 × 50 meters; above all, the entire parade ground together with Contades, 340 × 80 meters. The Rue Saint-Louis crossed it on a wooden bridge.

Thus, within the immediate vicinity of the little town lay five hectares of pools filled with stagnant water. Added to these were the rampart ditch and the Rhine, with the backwaters somewhat farther away. During the winter half of the year, Fort-Louis no doubt lay shrouded in banks of fog often enough, and in summer swarms of mosquitoes^⁶ could breed undisturbed.

The condition of the streets was also harmful to health. For the most part, they had neither a grade nor gutters. Rainwater therefore could not drain away, but formed pools in the streets for weeks, until it either seeped into the ground or evaporated in the sun. Rainwater and wash water from the individual homesteads likewise had no outlet. Thus filth and mud accumulated everywhere. After twenty-four hours of rain, it was no longer possible to walk through the streets with dry feet.

The houses were, it is true, properly constructed on their gabled sides, so their street fronts did not look unattractive.^⁷ They sat too deep in the ground, however. When the Rhine rose, groundwater penetrated even into the rooms, and the walls did not readily dry out again.

It is no wonder, then, that the air in our little town was polluted in many waysⁿ and that the height of summer could become especially dangerous. When the town was founded, the authorities had confined themselves to laying out ditches, ramparts, and entrenchments and had blithely disregarded the rules of hygiene. A careful examination of the death registers showed that, throughout the eighteenth century, thirty to forty children up to the age of twelve died here every year; young children consistently accounted for about half of all deaths. In 1754, no fewer than seventy children died out of a total of 119 deaths.^⁸

The first serious attempts to improve the situation were made in 1742. Great care had been taken in building the parish church: the structure had been raised far enough above the ground that the lowest step of the church portal was level with the highest attainable waterline. Concerned about dry dwellings and healthy storage conditions for their food, some townspeople now wished to place their cellars higher when erecting new buildings as well. Yet the foundations had to be raised substantially if a cellar was to remain free of water even under ordinary conditions. And even then, they were still not protected at times when groundwater pressure was exceptionally high.

Dwellings situated at a higher level, however, cannot be entered directly at street level; stone steps must instead lead up to the entrance, and, as is well known, the bases of stairways project far into the street. The local military authority now intervened. Although it did not dispute the need for steps, it also wished to have an official limit set on how far private individuals could extend their stairways into the street without obstructing military traffic.

In its decision of 5 February 1743, the Ministry of War in Paris proved more accommodating than the officers stationed in the town. Marshal Dasfeld^o prescribed limits for only three streets of military importance. On both sides of the Rue Saint-Louis, stairways could project four and a half feet, approximately 1.5 meters. If more steps were required, the stairway was to be fitted with a railing and provided with flights at the sides. The principal route between the fort and the Rhine Gate passed through the Rue du Bourg. On each side of that street, three feet—about one meter—was allowed for the construction of stairways. The Rue du Portail was likewise important to the military. Three feet was allotted for building stairways along its one inhabited side.

The question of draining the streets and eliminating the many useless bodies of water proved far more difficult. It was the subject of a comprehensive project considered from every angle during the years 1746–1752. The Intendant showed the greatest interest in it, while the townspeople, strikingly enough, consistently adopted a wait-and-see attitude in view of their finances. The plan was as follows:

1. Only the four large pools along the southern side of the town were to be filled in. The material required was to be taken from the Rhine at low water or obtained outside the town from land belonging to the town. The neighboring communities were to be called upon for corvée labor.

2. All the remaining pools were to be kept (that is, precisely the ones with the greatest volume), for they were to receive the rainwater from the streets and the wastewater from the homesteads. They would, however, be connected with one another and, through channels and sluices, with the Rhine on both sides. In this way, at least from time to time, the stagnant water would be replaced by fresh water from the Rhine. The Génie, the military engineering corps, would have to build the sluices.

3. All the streets had to be constructed so that they sloped toward one of the pools. In general, they descended from south to north—the Rue Neuve, Rue du Bourg, Rue Saint-Louis, Rue du Sel, and Rue Permangle—or toward the east—the Rue des Bourbons and Rue Conty. In some places, the streets therefore had to be raised by as much as thirty-two centimeters to give them the desired grade.

4. All the streets were to be paved with large paving stones, best obtained from Achern in Baden, since the local stones carried down by the Rhine were not durable enough. Approximately 12,000 square meters would have to be paved, at a total cost of 60,000 livres, or about five livres per square meter. The town treasury and the townspeople would have to bear these costs. The town was free to have a two-meter-wide strip of sidewalk laid along the rows of houses at the expense of the individual homeowners. With several other savings, the cost under this item to the town treasury would thus fall to 38,000 livres.

5. In the future, garbage collection had to function properly and take place several times a week. The town, after all, had several dump carts available for this purpose. The annual budget also had to provide 500 livres for street maintenance.

We know this plan in precise detail, yet we know very little about its execution. As for the pools, it is certain that those named under no. 1 were filled in while the town still existed. Even so, the large water hole behind the cemetery, measuring 150 by 50 meters, was only half filled. It has descended to us in that condition as an inheritance from our forefathers and now bears the name Der Grosse Kies (“the Great Gravel”). Thus, of all the pools that lay around the settlement, at most one-fifth had been filled in before 1800.

What, then, became of the street-paving plan set out under no. 4? At nine o’clock on the morning of 30 July 1748, the bell summoned the entire citizenry to the town hall; the Royal Praetor and the town council were also present. The Intendant’s proposal was read aloud and then explained in German. In view of the town’s finances, the deliberation was a very simple matter. The plan did not receive a single vote; every citizen opposed it. They thanked the Intendant for his interest in keeping the town clean but pointed to two circumstances. Business in Fort-Louis had been at a complete standstill for five or six years because of the reduced strength of the garrison. Moreover, there was no bridge across the Great Rhine, nor did they have access to any other source of income. As things stood, they could raise the poll tax and the fixed-sum assessment for the dixième only with difficulty. The town was consequently in no position at present to assume these enormous extraordinary expenses. In addition, the plan would harm their poorer fellow citizens. On every street stood two or three older dwellings whose rooms already lay one, two, or three feet below ground level; raising the streets would make them completely uninhabitable. The Intendant should therefore await the return of peace and an improvement in business.

The entire fine plan for paving the streets was certainly not carried out; the town was too poor. In 1751, fourteen aqueducts, or drainage conduits, were built. In the spring of 1753, the drainage of the homesteads and streets was regulated, and paved street gutters were laid. Finally, we learn that in 1772 the town borrowed 9,999 livres from the Strasbourg banker Malabert in order to repair its streets.^⁹ We shall encounter this loan again later. Although it burdened the town’s finances for decades, it nevertheless made possible a substantial improvement in the condition of the streets and the town’s public health.

Finally, the town also undertook to relocate the cemetery. Until then, the clergy, the councilors, and the officers, together with their families, had been buried in the parish church; the other faithful were interred outside the church in the adjoining churchyard. From the standpoint of public health, this burial ground may not have been entirely unobjectionable, for it lay near the pool at the Grosse Kies and was, at least in part, quite low, so that during floods the coffins often stood in water. The Intendant, the military, and the diocese therefore worked together to provide the little town with another cemetery. By a notarial act of 28 December 1784, War Commissary Gaucher de Praslin gave the town half of the military cemetery, and, with effect from 1 September 1785, the bishop prohibited burials around the church.^¹⁰

Despite everything, throughout the eighteenth century no energetic man emerged to take charge of improving public health. The high child mortality that afflicted the townspeople for more than a hundred years was apparently even accepted as a matter of course. For it is mentioned nowhere in the records; not a single complaint about it is known. Only through a close examination of the death registers did I become aware of this grave plight. How little understanding the townspeople had of public health is demonstrated by the rebuff they gave the Intendant on 30 July 1748, as we have seen. Yet the town council and the local military authority should have promoted the common welfare more effectively. With goodwill, much could have been improved. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Christoph Batiston alone did more to improve health conditions than the entire town council together with the Royal Praetors had done before him.

There was no shortage of physicians here, as we have seen. Since they were not yet as specialized as they are today, this profession was evidently overcrowded. In addition to the military pharmacy, two other pharmacies—and, for a time, three—had also been open since the town was founded.

The Poorhouse. The so-called hospital for the poor must be carefully distinguished from the military hospital. Its origins are unknown. Around 1775, it consisted of a house on the Rue Neuve, opposite the present-day Batiston stables. Ignaz Walter, who later became the octroi farmer and a town councilor, was its administrator at that time and continued in that role after 1800.

Beside this building, toward the Rue Conti and forming an angle with it—thus opposite the present courtyard gate of the Batiston château—stood the Cromer house. We have already become acquainted with the two mayors Dietrich Cromer and Joseph Dietrich Cromer.

On 9 March 1776, the entire Cromer property, consisting of a dwelling, outbuildings, courtyard, and garden, passed into the ownership of the poorhouse by notarial gift. The donors were Joseph Dietrich Cromer’s widow, née Maria Esther Schnöringer of Gambsheim, and Katharina Cromer, widow of De Montlaur.^¹¹ In gratitude, the hospital for the poor was to have two Holy Masses celebrated each year, attended by the residents of the institution.

The poorhouse thus had at its disposal two dwellings as well as 120 ares of land for the benefit of the poor. One of the houses was destroyed in the bombardment of the little town. By about 1820, however, the other was also dilapidated. At the urging of Mayor Christoph Batiston, the Council of State approved the auction of the house and courtyard on 3 November 1825 for 2,400 francs. Christoph Batiston acquired the property, incorporated it into his orchard, and built the present-day so-called Hospital on the Rue Permangle.

In 1779, another pious foundation was added for the benefit of the sick poor. The widow Katharina Stempel, née Dück, a native of Lauterbourg, owned a pharmacy here. Since she was childless, on 2 October 1779 she bequeathed 2,000 livres for the benefit of the sick poor, to remain as a mortgage on the pharmacy. In lieu of the interest on this capital, amounting to 100 livres, the pharmacist was to provide medicines to the poor free of charge each year, provided only that these needy persons produced a certificate from the parochial vicar, a Capuchin.

Mme Stempel died shortly thereafter, and the pharmacy passed in March 1780 to Franz Lièvre, later mayor of Lauterbourg, and as early as 1781 to the pharmacist Pistorius. Instead of 9,500 livres, however, only 7,500 livres was paid out; the remaining sum stayed as a mortgage on the house for the benefit of the poor.

The donor’s pious intention was fulfilled until 1793. Then the pharmacy fell victim to the flames; the documents and the memory of the encumbrance on the house were lost; Pistorius died; and the courtyard property passed to Ignaz Walter without the mortgage being taken into account—that is, Walter paid the full price. The circumstances did not come to light until 1818, when a niece lodged an objection. Despite Christoph Batiston’s vigorous efforts, however, nothing could then be recovered from the Pistorius family; the money was lost.

After 1800, a hospital board appointed by the municipality administered the poorhouse and its landed property. A small room and fuel for the winter were provided to local poor people and indigent patients; that was all. Under a resolution of 4 October 1823, except in special emergencies, the authorities intended to admit only persons who had been born here, had resided here for five years, and were sixty years old.

After 1800, the income from the endowment was often used only to cover the burial costs of poorer inhabitants. Around 1840 and again in 1905, there were plans to open a nursery school in the building; the dwelling would then at least have been put to a worthy use. The wording of the endowment, however, stood in the way.

Today nothing but the name remains; the municipality rents out the house. The institution never attained any greater importance, especially after 1800.

§ 8 The Financial Burdens of the Townspeople

In this section, let us become somewhat better acquainted with the town treasurer and have him instruct us about the financial burdens of the townspeople and the town. Unfortunately, most of his records have been lost, and on this question too, as so often, we are largely dependent on incidental information. This much, however, is certain: during the first decades, the town’s burdens were still manageable and normal, but around the middle of the eighteenth century they grew to a level no longer commensurate with its revenues and brought it to the brink of collapse. We shall discuss first the state taxes and then the town’s expenditures.

1. The Royal Taxes. On 21 June 1688, the King granted a ten-year exemption from taxes: people who settled in Fort-Louis were exempt from billeting, war taxes, and every other tax, whether in kind or in money. This privilege was granted to them in consideration of the expenses associated with their settlement.^¹

It was not implemented, however. War broke out shortly thereafter; the townspeople were called upon for various forms of corvée labor on both sides of the Rhine, had to lodge officers free of charge, and had to pay every other levy and war tax.^² The government was therefore compelled to extend our little town’s charter of liberties, at first for successive periods of ten or twenty years, and in 1756 in perpetuity.^³

There was not, however, to be complete exemption from taxation. In 1736, the two war taxes known as the capitation (poll tax) and the dixième (tenth tax) were permanently imposed on Fort-Louis as well. This demand cannot be called excessive or inequitable. Around 1750, for example, the town paid a total of 1,038 livres in taxes, apportioned among 263 citizens, and at that time the strength of the garrison was still approximately normal.^⁴

The year 1756 proved disastrous. The town’s liberties once again had to be renewed. On this occasion, the royal government imposed no fewer than four taxes on the little town: the capitation, the dixième, the vingtième (twentieth tax), and the deux sols pour livre (two sols per livre)^p. It was added, however, that these taxes would be collected only for as long as they existed and that the townspeople were exempt from every other tax. In addition, the various privileges—such as the octroi, markets, and limited tax exemption—were now granted in perpetuity in order to calm tempers.^⁵

The tax bill now rose rapidly. In the years 1760 through 1763, the state taxes paid here amounted to 5,213, 5,699, 6,147, and 6,809 livres, respectively.^⁶ Various taxes were newly introduced under different names and, in defiance of every right, were extended to Fort-Louis without compunction. Thus, in 1785, the year’s total tax burden amounted to 8,236 livres.^⁷

Naturally, in several petitions to the Intendant, the town council resisted this unjust tax burden. It was able to demonstrate, on the one hand, that some taxes had been imposed on the little town without justification and, on the other, that considerable arbitrariness prevailed in the calculation of tax rates. Previously, 263 citizens, with the garrison at its normal strength, had collectively paid 1,038 livres, whereas now 120 citizens with extremely meager incomes had to raise more than five times that amount in state taxes. — Haguenau, they argued, was ten times larger than Fort-Louis, and it was well known that a single businessman there had a larger annual turnover than all the businessmen here combined. Nevertheless, Haguenau paid 1,100 livres in business tax and Fort-Louis 599. — The house tax, too—the vingtième—could be seriously challenged. Some houses had fallen into ruin and been demolished. The fiscal authorities appeared not to know this, for the assessment on the buildings was still the same as it had been years ago. The administration evidently made matters very easy for itself: even after thirty years, it continued to use the population of 1750 as the basis for its calculation and accordingly prescribed a lump-sum tax assessment for the little town; the town was then to apportion that sum as a tax demand among the townspeople.^⁸

One senses in everything that we stand on the eve of the French Revolution. Our little town’s much-vaunted exemption from taxation had completely evaporated and had caused bitter disappointment. We can understand why, in 1780, two-thirds of the previous year’s taxes still remained unpaid.^⁹ On 20 March 1789, the citizenry therefore made two demands concerning taxation:^¹⁰

1. Fort-Louis should enjoy limited exemption from taxation in accordance with the royal lettres patentes of 1756.
2. For the purpose of apportioning taxes among the individual families, a committee of six citizens should be elected, one-third of whose members would retire each year.

2. The Town’s Expenditures. As so often, in assessing the town’s financial administration we are once again dependent on incidental information. Much of it is drawn from complaints and therefore cannot claim complete reliability.

Both ordinary and extraordinary expenditures must be considered. The ordinary expenditures consisted above all of the salaries of the following officials and employees:

Office or position	Salary
Royal Praetor¹¹	300 livres
Royal Prosecutor¹¹	108 livres
Mayor¹¹	218 livres
Four councilors,¹¹ 105 each	420 livres
Town clerk	? livres
Town treasurer	? livres
Physician¹²	? livres
Town pastor¹³	600 livres
Pastor’s housing allowance	90 livres
Sacristan¹⁴	100 livres
Teachers,¹⁵ 250 each	500 livres
Municipal messenger	? livres
Field wardens	? livres
Meat inspector	? livres
Street sweeper¹⁶	? livres
Chimney sweep¹⁶	? livres

Several of the gentlemen named above probably also had to be granted a housing allowance. Thus, approximately 5,000 livres was paid in salaries.

To this were added the recurring expenses for maintaining the public buildings—the town hall, parish church, school, and slaughterhouse—the streets, bridges, and dikes, the municipal weighhouse, the church clock, the town’s wagons, the public wells,^¹⁶ and the breeding animals—the bull and the boar.^¹⁶

Accordingly, the ordinary budget could easily amount to 7,000–8,000 livres.

The principal extraordinary expenditures to be considered were repairs to the dikes after a breach and the interest payments on the town’s loans.

In 1733, the royal government had the town’s financial burdens examined. The Council of State then regulated all salaries and set a ceiling on expenditures: the little town was not to spend more than 7,500 livres a year.^¹⁷ This official regulation could have brought the town great advantages. By prudently observing the limits that had been set, the town council could in time even have set aside substantial reserve capital from the octroi receipts. Instead, the town’s finances fell into great disorder at an early date. The town always lived from hand to mouth. Whenever the octroi farmer was granted an extension for payment, the various officials certainly had to wait months for their salaries as well. It assuredly casts no favorable light on the town’s financial management that Pastor Brousse still had outstanding claims at his death; that Pastor Ott had to wait an entire year for payment of his salary and Mass stipends; and that, in 1789, fully 12,000 livres in municipal salaries stood on the liabilities ledger.^¹⁸ Certainly, in the final years before the Revolution, the proceeds of the octroi were evidently insufficient to cover current expenditures, but savings should have been made earlier.

There were also substantial loans. Thus, among other things, we learn that in 1748 the town owed 5,000 livres to the widow of M. de Saint-Germain.^¹⁹ In 1764, Pastor Bernauer of Seltz pressed the town for payment of 1,587 livres.^²⁰ We have already encountered the Malabert loan of 1772, amounting to 9,999 livres. The latter was secured by attachment of the Kühweid (“cow pasture”). These were evidently not the only debts, for in 1789 the town had to cover 18,000 livres in loans alone.^²¹ Was the Malabert loan included in this amount? That, at any rate, is not certain.

Fort-Louis entered the new era of the great Revolution with the following balance sheet:

Octroi receipts ............... about 5,000 livres
   In 1790 the octroi was abolished everywhere.

Expenditures
   current .............................  9,000
   salary arrears ...................... 12,000
   earlier loans ....................... 18,000

We cannot escape the impression that prudent, selfless administration of the town’s assets could have averted financial ruin. In any event, the Third Estate of this town had particular cause to demand, on 20 March 1789, among other things, that the annual accounts be examined by the town council and six trusted representatives and submitted to the Etats provinciaux (Provincial Estates)^q.^²²

Here too, men were lacking who would selflessly have placed the common welfare first. After 1807, the impoverished municipality discharged the Malabert debt within a short time through prudence and thrift. During the years 1860–1880, the village of Fort-Louis built a rectory and a schoolhouse and, in addition, acquired 114 hectares of military land as common land. In light of these facts, the little town’s financial administration appears to us not to have been above reproach.

Sources

§ 4 The Founding of the Town

1. Mentioned in the Lettres patentes of 1698; see De Boug, Ordonnances d’Alsace, vol. 1, Colmar 1775, p. 275. ↩
2. Kocher, Uffriedt, p. 47. ↩
3. Arch. Dép. C 336. ↩
4. Ordonnances d’Alsace 2, p. 475. In 1780 the Jew Nathan of Buchsweiler applied for citizenship, since he wished to marry a daughter of Aron Elie, resident here, and to settle here. Praetor Thannberger granted the request, but on the strength of an old police ordinance restricted his trade to iron, metal, and cattle. As the fee he demanded a hundred livres, which he shared with the councilors. The Intendant intervened and granted the petitioner complete freedom to practice a trade; only, he was not to open a new shop. He called the town council to account for acting on its own authority and condemned it to repay fifty livres. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225, four documents. ↩
5. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 336. ↩
6. Ibid. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 336. ↩
7. Ibid. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 336. ↩
8. Ibid. C 337. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 336. ↩
9. Almanach du Bas-Rhin, Strassburg 1792. ↩
10. National- und Universitäts-Bibliothek Strassburg, Handschrift 608. ↩
11. Ch. Hoffmann, L’Alsace au dix-huitième siècle, vol. 1, Colmar 1906, p. 48. ↩
12. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225. Many documents on the dispute between the apothecaries Pistorius and Spisser lie there. The privilege of freedom to practice a trade is affirmed in them more than once. ↩
13. See note 11. ↩
14. Baptismal record of 4 July 1787; cf. marriage record of 8 February 1786. Baptismal record of 8 January 1743. ↩
15. Death record of 18 April 1779. ↩
16. Death record of 5 April 1741. ↩
17. Marriage record of 18 August 1710 (Eberle); baptismal record of 28 September 1705 (Knoll); death record of 6 April 1778 (Sitter). ↩
18. Baquol-Ristelhuber, L’Alsace ancienne et moderne, Strassburg 1865, appendix. L. Schönhaupt, Wappenbuch der Gemeinden des Elsass, Strassburg 1900, p. 40; there, on p. 42, the boundary stones of Fort-Louis are reproduced. ↩
19. Armorial de la généralité d’Alsace, recueil officiel, Paris 1861. Published by M. A. de Barthélemy. See pp. 3, 13, 17, 78, 130, 137, 139, 186, 189, 194, 195. Each name is followed by a brief description of the arms. ↩

§ 5 The Population

1. See P. A. Sieffert, Die Familie Batiston. Ein Beitrag zur Stadt- und Familiengeschichte von Fort-Louis am Rhein, in: Jahrbuch der Elsass-Lothringischen Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, vol. 5, 1932, pp. 189–204. ↩
2. Mémoire instructif pour servir de justification au Citoyen Charpentier contre son jugement prononcé le 8 Frimaire an II au tribunal militaire du premier arrondissement de l’armée du Rhin. Strassburg, n.d. 10 pages in 4º. National- und Universitäts-Bibliothek Strassburg M 122 884. ↩
3. The biographical details in common circulation about Baron Germain Charpentier go back to a small obituary by L. Levrault, Le colonel Charpentier, Strassburg 1861. The work is very meager; it is stressed in it more than once that the Baron, unlike other soldiers, did not tell much of his war experiences. The work was reissued in 1898, but without any addition whatever. Even the date of birth and the year of death are given incorrectly. The Baron’s parents died as rentiers in Paris, the mother, Rosine Nessel, on 13 Brumaire VII, the father on 9 March 1807. ↩
4. Use was made of the records of the municipal archive, especially the parish registers, as well as of Archives administratives du ministère de la guerre, Paris, dossier Massesy. ↩
5. Rom, Generalarchiv der Kapuziner, Katalog der Elsässischen Provinz vom 18. April 1755, Hs. P. Armel d’Etel, Les Capucins d’Alsace pendant la Révolution, Strassburg-Kœnigshofen 1923, p. 329. ↩
6. Ibid. The family name is attested by the Father’s own signature in the parish records here of 14 February and 15 March 1748. = Rom, Generalarchiv der Kapuziner, Katalog der Elsässischen Provinz vom 18. April 1755, Hs. P. Armel d’Etel, Les Capucins d’Alsace pendant la Révolution, Strassburg-Kœnigshofen 1923, p. 329. ↩
7. P. Armel, pp. 132, 134, 267. ↩
8. Dép. Arch. Strassburg, E Notariatsakten von Fort-Louis 1762, n. 67. ↩
9. Archivalische Beilage zum Ecclesiasticum Argentinense 1890, p. 127. ↩
10. Gabriel Rabin de La Chapelle, a son of the town clerk here, born 1721, did not attain the priesthood. In 1745 he signed a baptismal record as “clericus Argentinensis” (cleric of Strassburg). In 1762 we meet him again as “advocatus in suprema curia Alsatiae, in hac urbe procurator regius” (advocate at the supreme court of Alsace, royal prosecutor in this town). ↩
11. That some misunderstandings occurred in the spelling of names is evident. Only a few may be noted here: the word “Lièvre” is found also as “Lieber,” “Rainault” and “Regenold,” “Cladt” and “Glade,” “Vogel” and “Faugle,” “Weiss” and “Veisse,” “Eberlin” and “Oberlé,” “Schlizweg” and “Schlizveque.” The Recollect Father Plazidus Kranich once remarked that his honest name, Frenchified, could be written “Kranique,” and the surgeon here, Georg Knöpffler, in the baptismal record of 20 May 1725 actually chose the form “George quenepffler.” This, however, is the only signature of the kind of which he made himself guilty, once, in a weak moment; in thirty years he signed often enough as baptismal or marriage witness, yet always Georg Knöpffler. Place names too were distorted: thus haulon près d’Aguenau, Gaville, Kylechette, Molsemme en Alsace. In the marriage register in 1708 a Recollect even writes “Forlouis du rains.” ↩

§ 6 The Town Authorities

1. “Les prévôtés des villes d’Ensisheim, de Huningue, de Neuf-Brisach et de Fort-Louis étaient présidées par un prévôt royal gradué en droit, qui jugeait en matière civile avec l’assistance des bourgmestres et conseillers de la ville, mais il était seul chargé des actes de la juridiction gracieuse et des informations et des jugements criminels. A chaque prévôté étaient attachés un procureur du Roi, un greffier-notaire royal et un huissier royal” (The provostships of the towns of Ensisheim, Huningue, Neuf-Brisach, and Fort-Louis were presided over by a royal provost holding a degree in law, who judged in civil matters with the assistance of the mayors and councilors of the town, but he alone was charged with the acts of noncontentious jurisdiction and with criminal investigations and judgments; to each provostship were attached a royal prosecutor, a royal clerk-notary, and a royal usher) (Krug-Basse, L’Alsace avant 1789, p. 119). ↩
2. His family arms are described in: Armorial de la généralité d’Alsace, Recueil officiel, Paris 1861, p. 137. ↩
3. Dép. Arch. Strassburg, E Notariat Fort-Louis. ↩
4. Ibid. = Dép. Arch. Strassburg, E Notariat Fort-Louis. ↩
5. See the baptismal records of 9 April 1718 and of 15 May 1719. ↩
6. Ordonnances d’Alsace, vol. 1, Colmar 1775, p. 523. I did not find any earlier decision on the institution of the Royal Praetor in Fort-Louis; at this point there is a printing error in the table of contents of the Ordonnances d’Alsace. ↩
7. Ordonnances d’Alsace 1, p. 523. ↩
8. The records of the court of justice are for the most part still preserved (15 registers and 18 bundles of petitions and complaints). In contrast to the police records, they are in each case signed by the Praetor alone. Dép. Arch. Strassburg, E Notariat Fort-Louis. Proportionally the most frequent are police offenses of the Jews here. They also stood quite often before the court of justice here, whether as plaintiffs or as defendants. ↩
9. Dép. Arch. Strassburg, E Notariat Fort-Louis. ↩
10. Ordonnances d’Alsace 1, p. 523. ↩
11. As bailiff of Beinheim, Fürst was thus the successor of the notary here, René Boucher. ↩
12. A good account of the Thannberger family is given by A. Postina, Dr. Franz Xaver Thannberger, Pfarrer von Sufflenheim 1751–1837, in: Jahresberichte des Hagenauer Altertumsvereins, nos. 4 and 5, Hagenau 1914, pp. 187–192. Two brothers of the Praetor were Catholic priests: Georg, canon of Jung St. Peter at Strassburg, and Franz Xaver, seminary professor at Strassburg, later cantonal parish priest in Sufflenheim. As uncles on the mother’s side are listed the Jesuits PP. Jakob and Johann Baptist Kaifflin as well as the Capuchin provincial P. Casimir Kaifflin of Bartenheim. Cf. also Revue catholique d’Alsace 1932, p. 327. ↩
13. Arch. Dép. Strassburg, E Notariat Fort-Louis. ↩
14. Stadt Arch. Hagenau JJ 47. ↩
15. The correspondence lies in Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225. Thannberger was subject to the Conseil Souverain d’Alsace in Colmar and filed his complaint there; he could do so the more readily as one Leodegar Thannberger was a procurator at the Conseil Souverain. The town council, on the other hand, was subject to the Intendant of Alsace in Strassburg. Thus any local lawsuit could all too easily lead to a conflict of jurisdiction between the two highest authorities of the province, the Conseil Souverain and the Intendant, who in any case lived in constant tension. ↩
16. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225. ↩
17. Stadt Arch. Hagenau JJ 47. ↩
18. Gem. Arch. Fort-Louis, report of Mayor Batiston to the Prefect from the year 1820. ↩
19. Arch. Dép. Strassburg 1 L 1542. ↩
20. Ibid. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg 1 L 1542. ↩
21. Ibid. C 224. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg 1 L 1542. ↩
22. Thus in December 1750 Johann Philipp Desportes received 91 of 148 votes as mayor. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224. ↩
23. In 1697 he had his family arms entered in the official register. Armorial de la généralité d’Alsace, p. 139. ↩
24. Ibid., p. 194. = In 1697 he had his family arms entered in the official register. Armorial de la généralité d’Alsace, p. 139. ↩
25. Ibid., p. 139. = In 1697 he had his family arms entered in the official register. Armorial de la généralité d’Alsace, p. 139. ↩
26. A. Kocher, Die Aemter Offendorf und Bischweiler, Strassburg 1907, p. 69. ↩
27. Arch. Dép. Strassburg E Registre de réceptions des bourgeois et des affaires concernantes le greffe et le secrétariat de la ville du Fort-Louis du Rhin, Hs. in-folio, without further archive number. ↩
28. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225. ↩
29. It may be noted that the four-volume work of Ch. Hoffmann, L’Alsace au dix-huitième siècle, Colmar 1906–1917, passes over the questions treated here almost completely. ↩
30. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225, letter of the town council of 5 July 1780. ↩

§ 7 Public Health

1. The documentary material used in this section lies in Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224 (many documents and plans). ↩
2. On 8 March 1749, at the age of 100 years and 6 months, died Maria Magdalena Cornet, widow of Philipp Jakob Levant. And exactly 100 years later, on 4 August 1848, another centenarian died, Jakob Ludwig de Massesi. Printed under marker 2 in the appendix — the markers of notes 2 and 8 are transposed in print; corrected here (TQ-0039). ↩
3. See the drawings, Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224. ↩
4. “Cette place est dans une île du Rhin fort plane, laquelle était ordinairement couverte des eaux lorsqu’il débordait. Les fortifications qui l’environnent dans tout son circuit n’ayant pu être formées de l’excavation faite des fossés, l’on a été obligé de prendre le restant des terres nécessaires à cet effet dans l’intérieur de la dite île en faisant plusieurs trous où les eaux de filtration et de pluies se rassemblent depuis…” (This fortress stands on a very flat island of the Rhine, which was ordinarily covered by the waters when the river overflowed. As the fortifications surrounding it on its whole circuit could not be formed from the excavation of the moats, it was necessary to take the rest of the earth needed for this purpose from the interior of the said island, making several pits, in which the seepage and rain waters have gathered ever since…). Mémoire sur le Fort-Louis, du 21 août 1748. Ibid. ↩
5. Ibid. = “Cette place est dans une île du Rhin fort plane, laquelle était ordinairement couverte des eaux lorsqu’il débordait. Les fortifications qui l’environnent dans tout son circuit n’ayant pu être formées de l’excavation faite des fossés, l’on a été obligé de prendre le restant des terres nécessaires à cet effet dans l’intérieur de la dite île en faisant plusieurs trous où les eaux de filtration et de pluies se rassemblent depuis…” (This fortress stands on a very flat island of the Rhine, which was ordinarily covered by the waters when the river overflowed. As the fortifications surrounding it on its whole circuit could not be formed from the excavation of the moats, it was necessary to take the rest of the earth needed for this purpose from the interior of the said island, making several pits, in which the seepage and rain waters have gathered ever since…). Mémoire sur le Fort-Louis, du 21 août 1748. Ibid. ↩
6. On the mosquito plague on the Rhine islands near Sesenheim and Fort-Louis, see briefly Gœthe, Aus meinem Leben, Dichtung und Wahrheit, part 3, book 11. ↩
7. “Les maisons qui ont été bâties… ont été assez régulièrement allignées et forment d’assez belles rues” (The houses that have been built… have been aligned fairly regularly and form quite handsome streets). Mémoire sur le Fort-Louis du Rhin 21 août 1748, Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224. ↩
8. The Princes de Conti were Bourbons by birth and related by blood to the ruling house as well as to the Prince de Condé. Printed under marker 8 in the appendix — the markers of notes 2 and 8 are transposed in print; corrected here (TQ-0039). ↩
9. This loan is attested many times in the budgets and comptes of the municipality of Fort-Louis after 1800. From the period before the Revolution only an occasional brief reference survives. Probably the promissory note passed into the hands of the banker Malabert only later. Cf. Arch. Dép. Strassburg 1 L 970. ↩
10. Gem. Arch. Fort-Louis, death records 1785. Ibid., later records from the period after 1800. The soldiers’ cemetery, still called the “Welscherkirchhof” today, lay in the district of Röschwoog, about 300 meters north of Fort d’Alsace, and thus a good distance away from the parish church. On 7 May 1785 Archpriest Bernauer of Selz conducted an examination on the spot and declared the parish cemetery used hitherto unsuitable, for which reason, on 8 June 1785, Vicar General Toussaint laid it under interdict; from 1 September the parish was to use the part of the soldiers’ cemetery given to it, to enclose it with a board fence, and to erect a hall so that the faithful could seek shelter in it in bad weather. ↩
11. Katharina Cromer was the daughter of the mayor Joseph Dietrich Cromer and of Maria Esther Schnöringer. In 1753 she married here Antoine de Montlaur of Castelnaudary (Aude), who lay in garrison here as an officer, capitaneus in legione Talarn (captain in the Talarn regiment). She was, however, early left a widow. Her son Joseph-Antoine de Montlaur is resident in Strassburg around 1819 as chef de bataillon en retraite, chevalier de l’Ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis (retired battalion commander, knight of the Royal and Military Order of Saint-Louis). ↩

§ 8 The Financial Burdens of the Townspeople

1. Ordonnances d’Alsace 1, p. 275. ↩
2. Ibid. = Ordonnances d’Alsace 1, p. 275. ↩
3. 1698 (ibid.), 8 April 1715, 15 October 1736 (ibid. 2, p. 475). ↩
4. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 661: Mémoire of 20 April 1788 and of 29 November 1789. ↩
5. Ordonnances d’Alsace 2, pp. 475 ff. Copy, Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225. ↩
6. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224, n. 55. ↩
7. Ibid. C 225, petition to the Minister of War Maréchal de Ségur. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224, n. 55. ↩
8. Ibid. Petition to the Intendant from the year 1782. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224, n. 55. ↩
9. Ibid. C 661, petition to the Intendant of 18 March 1788. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224, n. 55. ↩
10. Later copy in private ownership. ↩
11. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225, letter of the town council of 5 July 1780. ↩
12. Ibid. C 225, n. 1, letter of the Intendant to the town council of 7 December 1765. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225, letter of the town council of 5 July 1780. ↩
13. See below, § 14. ↩
14. See below, § 14, note 17. ↩
15. See below, § 18. ↩
16. On 15 February 1766 the following municipal tasks were publicly let out for one year (Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225):
    1. The removal of refuse every Saturday and on the eves of high feasts — to the carter Nikolaus Martz for 73 livres 10 sols.
    2. The complete upkeep of the public wells in the little town and on the common pasture, as well as at the Capuchins’ — to the locksmith Dietrich Ridy for 80 livres.
    3. Upkeep (including oil) and regular tending of the tower clock — to the clockmaker Anton Greiner for 63 livres.
    4. Light and heating for the audience hall of the town hall — to the town beadle Sebastian Trutzig for 55 livres.
    5. Chimney cleaning three times in the town hall, rectory, school, and guardroom — to the master mason Peter Richert for 25 livres.
    6. The keeping of a breeding bull and a boar — to the butcher Xavier Rauber for 112 livres; he was in addition entitled to the customary fee from the townspeople and was to receive a hundredweight of salt each year. ↩
17. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 225, n. 15, mentioned at the outset. ↩
18. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 661, letter of 29 November 1789. Also mentioned in the Cahier des doléances… 1789. Later copy in private ownership. ↩
19. Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224 n. 14. ↩
20. Ibid. C 633. = Arch. Dép. Strassburg C 224 n. 14. ↩
21. See note 18. ↩
22. Cahier des doléances…, later copy in private ownership. ↩

Translator’s notes

1. Prêteur is the period spelling of préteur royal, the Royal Praetor, the crown’s magistrate set over the town (see § 6); it does not mean “lender.” ↩
2. The Official (officialis) was the bishop’s judicial vicar, who presided over the diocesan court (officialité); his decree was a church-court ruling on the register entry. ↩
3. Eulogius Schneider (1756–1794), an ex-Franciscan turned Jacobin, was public prosecutor of the Strasbourg Revolutionary Tribunal in 1793, notorious for his terror in Alsace; he was guillotined in Paris in April 1794. ↩
4. Sieffert says only “the Lily”. Probably the Décoration du Lys, the badge Louis XVIII gave in 1814 to those who rallied to the Bourbons; the identification is the translator’s and is still being researched. ↩
5. The contradiction is Sieffert’s own: he says one hundred, then gives ninety-nine years and four months; both figures are reproduced as printed. ↩
6. A “crown of priests” (Priesterkrone) is a Catholic idiom for the priests a parish has given the Church, counted among a village’s glories. ↩
7. Under the Ancien Régime many royal offices were purchasable, heritable property (offices vénaux); the buyer recouped his outlay from fees and perquisites—hence the sale prices, the widow’s bargain, and the talk of “exploiting” the office. ↩
8. “Citizens” (Bürger) here are holders of formal burgher rights, a legal status obtained by fee or descent, not all inhabitants—hence only 142 votes among some eighteen hundred civilians. ↩
9. L’Ecrivain means “the writer” or “the clerk”; Sieffert’s dry point is that a mayor so named could not write. ↩
10. Sieffert’s Saarburg may be Sarrebourg in Lorraine or Saarburg near Trier; he does not say which, and the identification is left open. ↩
11. In Ancien Régime usage “police” meant the whole regulation of town life—markets, bread weights, prices, sanitation, Sunday observance, morals—not merely crime; hence bakers, innkeepers, and street-cleaning come before the audience de police. ↩
12. Sieffert gives the road only its local German name, “the Russians’ road”; the source does not say what it is called today, and no modern name is supplied here. ↩
13. So printed by Sieffert; the measurement looks like a misprint (perhaps for 50 × 60, since it is given “in all” for two pools) and is reproduced as he gave it, not corrected. ↩
14. Sieffert’s verpestet (“pestilential”) reflects the older miasma theory—foul air from stagnant water and refuse was thought to breed fever—alongside the newer knowledge that mosquitoes carry malaria; hence his stress on fog, puddles, and mosquitoes. ↩
15. Sieffert’s ‘Dasfeld’ is evidently Claude-François Bidal, marquis d’Asfeld (1665–1743), Marshal of France and director-general of fortifications, whose Paris office ruled on the stairways a month before his death. ↩
16. A surtax of two sols on each livre—that is, ten percent—levied on top of one of the other royal direct taxes; a common eighteenth-century device for raising a tax without renaming it. ↩
17. Alsace had no provincial estates under the Ancien Régime; the demand presupposes the creation of such a representative assembly for the province, a wish voiced in many Alsatian cahiers of 1789. ↩