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Vittorio Francesco, Marquis of Susa

1694–1762

Born
10 Dec 1694, Turin
Country of birth
Duchy of Savoy, today Italy
Died
20 Mar 1762
facts
7
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

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A life in time

  1. Born · Turin

    Birth, Turin

  2. Died

    Death

What was it like?

The world around Turin, 1694: 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.

Simple peasants wore sturdy, locally-made garments of brown or white wool and stiff cloth for everyday tasks.

Fashion

Everyday peasant clothing

Simple peasants wore sturdy, locally-made garments of brown or white wool and stiff cloth for everyday tasks.

Feast day attire

For feast days and Sundays, people increasingly wore finer, brightly colored fabrics that were imported rather than produced in the village.

Music

Hunting horns in religious and public life

Hunting horns were used for communication and public celebration, with performances traditionally occurring during mass on Saint Hubert's Feast Day. This ancient sound helped connect the congregation and audience to nature during these open-air events.

Hurdy-gurdy as a popular folk instrument

The hurdy-gurdy was a common instrument used by ordinary people for centuries to accompany singing, dancing, and popular entertainment. It was also famously associated with Savoyard street performers and children who traveled across Europe with their music and puppets.

Getting around

Horse relay postal systems

Organized postal routes allowed authorized travelers or couriers to use relay stations to swap tired horses for fresh ones, significantly increasing their travel speed.

Mountain travel and daily distances

Alpine crossings required switching to mules or porters because carriage roads often ended at the base of the mountains. Travelers covering long distances usually managed about 20 to 40 kilometers per day.

Daily life

Forced lodging of soldiers

Ordinary families often had to provide their own heating, bedding, salt, and cooking materials for quartered soldiers. Soldiers could forcefully enter these homes, sometimes destroying doors with muskets.

Education and social life

While public education systems were introduced by 1661, daily social interaction for the rural population primarily took place in stables during the evening, which served as a shared space for work and exchange.

Food

Survival Diet During War and Famine

During times of war and famine around the 1690s, the rural poor in mountainous provinces were sometimes forced to survive on ground shells and nuts mixed with small amounts of oats or barley.

Simple Daily Meals and Rare Meat

For many ordinary people, the daily meal was simple and focused on survival, often consisting of dark bread, wine, and soups made with vegetables like cabbage, turnips, or onions. Meat was a rare luxury, eaten mostly during festivals or when money allowed.

Prices and wages

Daily wages and food costs in Turin

Ordinary workers in Turin earned daily wages of just a few dozen soldi, making a single measure of wheat cost as much as six to ten days of labor during price spikes.

Around 1700–1724

Controlled bread prices and production

City authorities in Turin strictly regulated the bread market, setting prices based on the cost of wheat and using official baking tests to determine production costs.

Work

Common jobs in the Duchy of Savoy

Common occupations included domestic servants, laborers, masons, bakers, and shoemakers for immigrants, while native city dwellers often worked in tailoring, weaving, or bureaucracy. Women frequently worked as domestic servants, washerwomen, seamstresses, or shopkeepers.

Hardships of the common people

During times of famine and war, survival for the poorest was so dire that they lived on ground shells and nuts mixed with a small amount of oats or barley. Additionally, during military occupations, peasants were often forced to provide heating, bedding, salt, and cooking materials for quartered troops.

News and letters

Slow mail and high-stakes information delivery

Communication was physically limited by geography and weather, as letters between Turin and Paris took about a week to arrive. Because information only moved as fast as a person could travel, a intercepted letter could be more valuable than the money a traveler carried.

State-controlled postal relay networks in Savoy

In the Duchy of Savoy, the state had claimed an exclusive right to the postal service since 1604, although it was managed through contracts until 1718. Ordinary travelers and official couriers moved at different speeds, with official messages prioritized via dedicated relays of horses.

During their lifetime

  1. 1695

    Hospice for the Poor established in 1695

    In 1695, Duke Rinaldo I established the Hospice for the Poor to manage the large influx of beggars and unemployed people in the city of Modena.

  2. 1702

    French forces occupied Modena in 1702

    French troops occupied Modena in August 1702, forcing Duke Rinaldo and his court to flee to Bologna during the War of the Spanish Succession.

  3. 1707

    Duke Rinaldo returns to Modena, 1707

    Duke Rinaldo returned to Modena in February 1707 after the French withdrawal, following an intense bombardment of the city.

  4. 1720

    Company of Charity founded in 1720

    In February 1720, Lodovico Antonio Muratori founded the Company of Charity in his parish to support the sick and needy of Modena.

  5. 1734

    French forces re-occupy Modena in 1734

    In July 1734, French and Piedmontese troops occupied Modena, causing Duke Rinaldo to retreat to Bologna for three years until 1736.

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.