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Giuseppe Maria di Savoia-Villafranca

1783–1825

Born
30 Oct 1783, Paris
Country of birth
Kingdom of France, today France
Died
15 Oct 1825, Paris
facts
5
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

  • Birth30 Oct 1783, ParisProbable1 source
  • Death15 Oct 1825, ParisProbable1 source

A life in time

  1. Born · Paris

    Birth, Paris

  2. Child born: Princess Maria Vittoria, Countess of Syracuse

    Birth, Boulogne-sur-Mer

  3. Died · Paris

    Death, Paris

What was it like?

The world around Paris, 1783: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Giuseppe was born around the same time as François Arago, Ludwig I of Bavaria, and Niccolò Paganini.

Born around the same time

  • François Arago

    1786 · French mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician (1786-1853)

  • Ludwig I of Bavaria

    1786 · King of Bavaria (1786-1868)

  • Niccolò Paganini

    1782 · Italian violinist and composer (1782–1840)

  • Carl Maria von Weber

    1786 · German Romantic composer (1786–1826)

  • Daniel François Esprit Auber

    1782 · French composer (1782-1871)

  • Friedrich Fröbel

    1782 · German educator

Fashion

Commoners often went barefoot and wore secondhand

Ordinary rural people in France often went barefoot during the warmer seasons and relied heavily on secondhand clothing, as buying new outfits was exceptional.

Around 1789–1799

Sans-culottes wore trousers as a badge of honor

During the French Revolution, working-class men known as sans-culottes distinguished themselves by wearing long trousers instead of the tight knee breeches worn by the nobility.

Music

Popular dances included minuet and contredanse

The minuet and the contredanse were the two most popular dances, with the latter being a favorite figure dance involving four couples. People frequently organized and enjoyed balls in the provinces during this period.

Wind instruments dominated outdoor civic festivals

Wind instruments, especially the bassoon-serpent, were highly prized for outdoor festivities and civic celebrations because they were loud enough to be heard by large crowds. During the Revolution, the government promoted powerful patriotic hymns like La Marseillaise, often played by wind ensembles to help mobilize and unify citizens.

Getting around

Dangerous conditions on poorly maintained roads

Travelers in carriages sometimes had to pay local peasants to walk alongside and support the carriage to prevent it from tipping over on flooded or muddy roads. In severe weather, travelers were occasionally forced to wait for days in miserable inns until conditions improved.

Fast winter mountain descent by sled

Adventurous travelers crossing the Alps at Mont-Cenis in winter could descend into France on a sled in a 15-minute thrill ride called the ramasse. The sleds were guided by a conductor who steered the craft down the snowy slopes at high speed.

Daily life

Limited rural schooling

In many rural areas, primary education was inconsistently provided by the local priest or his vicar, focusing only on basic reading, writing, and catechism.

Simple peasant housing

Most peasant homes were single-room structures built of mud with thatched roofs, lacking ceilings and window glass.

Food

Typical Peasant Diet in Rural France

Ordinary rural diets consisted of rye or oat bread, vegetable soups, and dairy, while meat was rarely eaten except for occasional pork.

Around 1775–1775

Bread Was the Staff of Life

In 1775, a French laboring family of four typically consumed 1.2 tons of grain per year, with urban workers spending half their salary on bread.

Prices and wages

Meat as a luxury item

Meat was considered a luxury product for workers; a master worker could afford 300 grams of meat per day, while in 1771 some bourgeois complained of meat prices rising to 12, 14, or 15 sous per pound.

The high cost of footwear

Heavy taxes on leather made shoes very expensive, often forcing poor peasants to own only one pair for their entire lives or rely on wooden shoes. A pair of wooden shoes cost 9 sous 6 deniers in the countryside in 1790.

Work

Common jobs in 18th-century France

Most ordinary people worked in manual agriculture or as urban day-laborers, while others labored in domestic industries like weaving and spinning. In cities, workers were often employed in construction, shipbuilding, or as unskilled laborers in factories and workshops.

The reality of the daily workday

The workday typically began at sunrise and could last up to 14 hours in summer, though it was often shorter in winter. Workers frequently had only two meals a day, with a common breakfast consisting of coffee with milk bought from street vendors for two sous.

News and letters

Mail transit times across France

In the late eighteenth century, a letter from Paris reached the surrounding region in two days, but took five days to reach distant departments like Finistère or Bas-Rhin and up to nine days to arrive in Perpignan or Aix-en-Provence.

Petites postes urban mail service

Small-scale urban mail systems called petites postes were established in cities like Paris to provide faster, cheaper local delivery than the royal post.

During their lifetime

  1. 1783

    First human flight in 1783

    King Louis XVI hosted the first successful human flight in a hot-air balloon at Versailles, lasting 25 minutes on November 21, 1783.

  2. 1789

    Storming of the Bastille in 1789

    On July 14, 1789, Parisian citizens stormed the Bastille prison, a pivotal event that signaled the start of the French Revolution and the collapse of royal authority.

  3. 1804

    The 1804 Civil Code enactment

    The Civil Code, enacted in 1804, established a new legal framework that standardized civil laws across France, significantly impacting daily life.

Family

Spouses

Children

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.