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Madeleine de La Motte

1699–1745

Born
12 Mar 1699, Paris
Country of birth
Kingdom of France, today France
Died
1745, Paris
facts
7
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

  • Birth12 Mar 1699, ParisProbableDisputed1 competing claim1 source
  • Death1745, ParisProbableDisputed1 competing claim1 source

A life in time

  1. Born · Paris

    Birth, Paris

  2. Child born: Abel-François Poisson

    Birth, Paris

  3. Died · Paris

    Death, Paris

What was it like?

The world around Paris, 1699: 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.

Madeleine was born around the same time as Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and Charles Jennens.

Born around the same time

  • Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli

    1700 · Italian architect (1700-1771)

  • Giovanni Battista Sammartini

    1700 · Italian composer

  • Charles Jennens

    1700 · English landowner and art patron (1700–1773)

  • Margherita Durastanti

    1700 · Italian singer

  • Daniel Bernoulli

    1700 · Swiss mathematician and physicist (1700-1782)

  • Johann Christoph Gottsched

    1700 · German writer, dramaturge, linguist and literary theorist as well as professor of poetics, logic and metaphysics (1700–1766)

Fashion

Cost of Footwear

Shoes for men were a significant expense, as they could cost twice as much as those worn by women.

Essential Women's Clothing

Urban working women typically wore a five-item ensemble: a top (casaquin or corset), a skirt (jupe or jupon), an apron for work, a shawl or neckerchief, and a cloak for cold weather.

Music
Around 1700–1721

Teaching Dance via Written Notation

Dance masters used specialized choreographic notation created by Raoul Auger Feuillet to distribute and teach new dance steps between Paris and the provinces. By 1721, collections contained dozens of dances composed by masters like Pécour and Balon for the French court.

Dancing and Music in Court Apartments

At the royal apartments in Versailles, ordinary court life included regular music and dancing in the Grand Apartment, where attendees could freely enjoy playing games, eating snacks, and dancing to violins and oboes.

Getting around

Parisian carriage hire options

In Paris, travelers could hire a private carriage known as a Remise for about three crowns per day. For budget travelers, the vinegrette was a peculiar two-wheeled vehicle dragged by a man and pushed by a woman or boy.

Barque de poste canal travel

In 1674, the barque de poste service was introduced, allowing passengers to travel from Toulouse to Castelnaudary in one day. The journey included scheduled stops for meals and overnight rests.

Daily life

Crowded and multi-purpose living spaces

Ordinary homes were often crowded, with a single room used for cooking, eating, sleeping, and child care, requiring furniture to be rearranged throughout the day.

Demanding daily household labor

Water had to be hauled manually from fountains or courtyards, and heating required constant manual labor to manage wood, fire, and ash disposal.

Food
Around 1709–1709

Famine food made of fern

During the 1709 famine, bread became so expensive that people made desperate loaves out of fern, which turned their skin yellow and left them too weak to stand.

Daily Bread Consumption Requirements

To meet daily calorie needs, men typically consumed three pounds of bread per day, while women consumed two pounds and children one pound.

Prices and wages
Around 1700–1707

Worker wages in the early 1700s

In the early 18th century, a rural manual worker earned about 9 sols per day, but could only find work for about 180 days out of the year.

Cost of shoes and bread

A servant paid 10 livres and 5 sous for a new pair of shoes in May 1703, while bread prices fluctuated significantly, such as when he paid 7 livres 9 sous 9 deniers for bread in May 1705.

Work

Common jobs in 17th-century France

Common occupations in 17th-century France included artisans like bakers, tailors, and masons, as well as day laborers, domestic servants, and various river workers like boatmen. These individuals often worked in small shops, homes, or on the streets rather than large centralized workplaces.

Memorable facts of everyday work life

Laborers commonly adopted coffee with milk for breakfast as an economical way to sustain energy until the evening. Additionally, many workers in that era enjoyed about 80 to 85 days of complete rest per year due to various religious and local feast days.

News and letters

Encryption slowed down letter delivery

Diplomatic and private letters were often encrypted to ensure confidentiality, though coding and decoding the messages added significant time to the delivery process.

Around 1700–1724

Average daily speed of mail transport

Mail was typically transported by post chaise at an average speed of about 30 to 40 kilometers per day.

During their lifetime

  1. 1709

    The Great Winter of 1709

    The Great Winter of 1709 brought extreme cold and severe famine to France, marking one of the century's worst economic crises.

  2. 1716

    Foundation of Law's Bank in 1716

    John Law established the Banque Générale in 1716, which later issued paper bank notes guaranteed by the king to stimulate the economy.

  3. 1720

    The Great Plague of Marseilles

    The Great Plague of Marseilles, the last major plague epidemic in France, devastated the region between 1720 and 1721.

  4. 1738

    Introduction of road labor corvee

    In 1738, the crown introduced the corvee, a system of forced labor requiring peasants to build and maintain the royal roads.

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.