Life in a rural world of sparse pop

Life in a rural world of sparse population was also shaped by the difficulty of travel and communication. The upper classes enjoyed a life of relative mobility that included such pleasures as owning homes in both town and country or taking a “grand tour” of historic cities in Europe. Journeymen who sought experience in their trade, agricultural laborers who were obliged to migrate with seasonal harvests, and peasants who were conscripted into the army were all exceptions in a world of limited mobility. Geographic obstacles, poor roads, weather, and bandits made travel slow and risky. For most people, the pace of travel was walking beside a mule or oxdrawn cart. Only well-to-do people traveled on horseback, fewer still in horse-drawn carriages (see illustration 18.1). In 1705 the twentyyear old Johann Sebastian Bach wished to hear the greatest organ-ist of that era perform; Bach left his work for two weeks and walked two hundred miles to hear good music.

Travelers were at the mercy of the weather, which often rendered roads impassable because of flooding, mud, or snow. The upkeep of roads and bridges varied greatly. Governments maintained a few post roads, but other roads depended upon the conscription of local labor. An English law of 1691, for example, simply required each parish to maintain the local roads and bridges; if upkeep were poor, the government fined the parish. Brigands also hindered travel. These bandits might become heroes to the peasants who protected them as rebels against authority and as benefactors of the poor, much as Robin Hood is regarded in English




Illustration 18.1

Coach Travel. Horse-drawn carriages and coaches remained the primary form of public transportation in Europe before the railroad age of the nineteenth century. Postal service, business, and government all relied upon a network of highways, stables, and coaching inns. In this illustration, travelers in the Pyrenees wait at a coaching station and hotel while a wheel is repaired.

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folklore, but they made travel risky for the few who could afford it.

The fastest travel, for both people and goods, was often by water. Most cities had grown along rivers and coasts. Paris received the grain that sustained it by barges on the Seine; the timber that heated the city was floated down the river. The great transportation projects of the Old Regime were canals connecting these rivers. Travel on the open seas was normally fast, but it depended on fair weather. A voyager might be in En-gland four hours after leaving France or trapped in port for days. If oceanic travel were involved, delays could reach remarkable lengths. In 1747 the electors of Portsmouth, England, selected Captain Edward Legge of the Royal Navy to represent them in Parliament; Legge, whose command had taken him to the Americas, had died eighty-seven days before his election but the news had not yet arrived in Portsmouth.

Travel and communication were agonizingly slow by twenty first century standards. In 1734 the coach trip between Edinburgh and London (372 miles) took twelve days; the royal mail along that route required forty-eight hours of constant travel by relay riders. The commercial leaders of Venice could send correspondence to Rome (more than 250 miles) in three to four days, if conditions were favorable; messages to Moscow (more than twelve hundred miles) required about four weeks. When King Louis XV of France died in 1774, this urgent news was rushed to the capitals of Europe via the fastest couriers: It arrived in Vienna and Rome three days later; Berlin, four days; and St. Petersburg, six days.