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Marie-Antoinette of Austria-Este

1784–1786

Born
Oct 1784, Milan
Country of birth
Duchy of Milan, today Italy
Died
1786
facts
7
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

A life in time

  1. Born · Milan

    Birth, Milan

  2. Died

    Death

What was it like?

The world around Milan, 1784: 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.

Marie-Antoinette was born around the same time as Niccolò Paganini, Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, and Carl Maria von Weber.

Born around the same time

  • Niccolò Paganini

    1782 · Italian violinist and composer (1782–1840)

  • Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily

    1782 · Queen consort of the French from 1830 to 1848

  • Carl Maria von Weber

    1786 · German Romantic composer (1786–1826)

  • Daniel François Esprit Auber

    1782 · French composer (1782-1871)

  • Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

    1786 · French poet and novelist

  • Friedrich Fröbel

    1782 · German educator

Fashion

Coral jewelry for festive occasions

On feast days, ordinary women often adorned themselves with coral jewelry, which was meticulously categorized into fourteen different shades, ranging from blood-red to black. This industry was so significant that it drew the interest of foreign travelers who observed the detailed production process in Livorno.

Everyday dress for peasant men

Peasant men typically dressed in coarse-fabric jackets, knee-length breeches, and waistcoats. While these garments were not refined in cut, there was a noticeable attention to detail and a sense of good taste in the pairing of colors.

Music

Handel's music in Florence

Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo supported Handel's vocal music, and his collection included manuscript scores of works like Alexander's Feast and Judas Maccabaeus.

Pergolesi's Stabat Mater tradition

During Lent in Florence, a popular and recurring musical event was the performance of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, which became a hallowed tradition.

Getting around

Extra animals for steep terrain

Travelers often needed extra horses or mules to navigate steep or sandy mountain terrain, paying extra fees for these additional animals.

Rare river travel by boat

Travel by boat on the Arno River was possible but rare, as travelers often preferred carriages out of fear of heavy rains and the river's unpredictable water levels.

Daily life

Peasant Cooking and Meals

Peasant families frequently cooked large pots of vegetable soup, especially on Fridays when meat was avoided. Leftovers were repurposed by reboiling the soup in a pan with bread on subsequent days.

Rural Homes and Living Conditions

In rural areas, many families lived on the upper floors of small stone buildings, keeping their pigs and chickens on the ground floor. Water was obtained from wells or cisterns that collected rainwater, while candles provided light during long winter nights.

Food

Acquacotta: The Peasant Stone Soup

Ordinary people often ate acquacotta, a simple dish literally meaning cooked water, made from water, stale bread, and onions.

Leftover Bread Soup Traditions

Peasants commonly prepared large pots of vegetable and bread soup, specifically adhering to meatless diets on Fridays. Leftover soup was often reboiled with bread in the following days to create ribollita.

Prices and wages

Fixed Price Bread in Florence

In Florence, the price of a loaf of bread was fixed at eight soldi for most of the eighteenth century, with authorities adjusting the loaf's weight rather than the price itself to manage market fluctuations.

Self-Sufficiency and Rural Debt

Many rural families produced their own food and clothing instead of buying them, often paying artisans like cobblers or tailors with their own farm products rather than using money. In some areas, sharecropping families were frequently deeply indebted to their landlords, with average debts reaching 82 scudi.

Work

Peasant Wisdom and Clever Survival

Peasants often used folk proverbs to guide their daily labor, such as the saying that one should prune olive trees with a fool at the base and a wise man at the top. They also relied on clever tactics, like hiding beans from landlords to cook as acqua cotta, to survive and maintain their own household needs.

The Mezzadria Sharecropping Life

Peasant farmers, known as mezzadri, lived and worked on land under a sharecropping system, often balancing their master's requirements with small personal gardens and livestock. They were considered inattuali servants who lived with their own families in separate homes rather than in the master's house.

News and letters

Local mail messengers called procaccia

In the 18th century, some smaller towns had a procaccia, a messenger who traveled to a city like Siena to collect and deliver mail for multiple surrounding villages.

Around 1781–1781

The express staffetta service

Urgent messages were sent by a special service called a staffetta, where couriers were ordered to ride day and night without delay, under threat of severe punishment.

Family

Parents

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.