Carrosses à cinq sols

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Carrosses à cinq sols
Basic information
city Paris
opening March 18, 1662
Shutdown around 1680
business
Lines 5
Line length 23 kilometers
Clock in the peak hours 7.5 minutes
Cruising speed approx. 9 km / h
vehicles approx. 50 horse-drawn carriages
Network plan
The five routes of the carrosses à cinq sols

The carrosses à cinq sols ( French , German car for five sols ) formed the world's first local public transport system . The concept for this came from the philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal .

From March 18, 1662, five lines served by horse-drawn buses connected several districts of Paris . Conditions of the Parlement de Paris and tariff increases meant that the company went under again around 1680.

history

Until the 19th century, the cities were mostly so compact that the introduction of local public transport was not worthwhile. In Paris, however, the first attempts in this direction were made as early as the 17th century, after horse-drawn cabs (French fiacres ) had prevailed up to that point and could be rented by the hour or by the day.

On October 29, 1661, the Duke of Roannez Artus Gouffier de Roannez , the Marquis de Sourches and the Marquis de Crenan Pierre de Perrien applied to King Louis XIV to be allowed to operate carriages within the city of Paris that connect the individual districts .

On November 6th, the Duke of Roannez and the Marquis de Crenan founded a joint venture with Blaise Pascal and Simon Arnauld de Pomponne , the Marquis de Pomponne. The Duke of Roannez held three shares, the other shareholders one share each. The company's goal was to operate cars that regularly connect the districts with one another at specified times and always on the same route and where each passenger only has to pay the fixed fare of five sols , even if he is the only passenger. The original idea for this came undoubtedly from Blaise Pascal. His concept also envisaged offering poorer people a lower fare of two sols, but this was not implemented.

The capital of Louis XIV already had over 530,000 inhabitants and was the fifth largest city in the world. It had more than 500 streets, 100 squares, nine bridges and 22,000 houses. The wagons were approved by a resolution of the Conseil du Roi on January 19, 1662. King Louis XIV signed the application and thus allowed it to operate and consented to the resulting monopoly. After some tests were carried out on February 26th, operations gradually started.

Commemorative plaque for the 350th anniversary of the commissioning of the carrosses à cinq sols

From March 18, 1662, the first seven-car line connected the Porte Saint-Antoine with the Palais du Luxembourg . On April 11th, a second line was added, running from Rue Saint-Antoine via Rue Saint-Denis to Rue Saint-Honoré near the Church of Saint-Roch . The third line connected the Palais du Luxembourg with the Rue Montmartre from May 22nd . The fourth line went into operation on June 24th. This was a circuit , which was therefore also called the Route du Tour-de-Paris . This line also represented an innovation in that a partial route tariff was introduced in which a different price had to be paid depending on the number of sections. There were six sections and whenever a passenger had passed two further section boundaries , the so-called bureaux , he had to pay another five sols. Finally, on July 5th, the fifth and last line was added, which ran from the Palais du Luxembourg via Notre-Dame to the Rue de Poitou . Pascal had originally planned three more lines. It cannot be completely ruled out that these were actually put into operation later. However, there are no documents on this.

The operating time was from 7:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. in winter and from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. in summer.

The wagons, on which the coat of arms of the city of Paris was affixed, had eight seats and were pulled by two horses. They were driven by a coachman and a lackey . Everyone wore a blue smock with braids that had different colors depending on the line. The company was introduced with great pomp and welcomed by the population. However, on February 7, 1662, the Parlement de Paris issued a decree which, in contrast to the king's decree, contained restrictions on passengers. Soldiers, lackeys, pages, people in livery and other groups of people were not allowed to get into the cars in order to allow the bourgeoisie and other people with merit to enjoy more comfort and freedom. These restrictions sparked hostility among the affected population and even led to violent demonstrations. The later increase in the fare from five to six sols and, in recent years, the increasingly negligent maintenance of the cars also contributed to the fact that the cars became more and more unpopular. In order to restore peace, a police ordinance threatened anyone who disrupted the orderly business with lashes and the greatest possible punishment.

The exact decommissioning date of the carrosses à cinq sols is not documented, but it is assumed that this was between 1677 and 1680.

meaning

The carrosses à cinq sols already had the essential properties of modern local public transport in the 17th century. Initially, the cars were accessible to everyone and drove according to a fixed timetable with departures at regular intervals, on all lines every seven and a half minutes. So there was already regular traffic , with the eighth hour being a common time unit at the time. There was also a fixed tariff depending on the distance traveled and an orderly complaint management system .

Blaise Pascal

This innovative system was too advanced for its time: after initial successes, the social hierarchy of the time (and the restrictions imposed) led to declining passenger numbers. Well-heeled people used private cabs, the poor, for whom the system was ultimately intended, saved the fare and continued on foot. The result was a stretching of the cycle and car breakdowns as well as empty and half-empty cars, which led to constant criticism and ultimately to the shutdown of the system. The majority of the population also lived directly at the place of work, so that there was no need for a public transport system of this kind, the frequency of which was probably too high for the conditions at the time. It was not until a century and a half later that the need for transport became so acute that it was reintroduced: in 1823 the bus began operating in Nantes and in 1828 that in Paris. In the period in between there was no public city transport, so that private transport , collective taxis and rental cars had to carry the traffic alone.

Blaise Pascal himself could not enjoy the implementation of his idea for long, as he died on August 19, 1662, shortly after the opening of the fifth line. The opening run of the first line is said to have been the reason for his last exit in Paris. The fact that the wagons were actually “en vogue” in their time is shown by the fact that they were the subject of a three-act comedy (“L'intrigue des Carrosses à cinq sols”) ; it premiered in 1662 at the Théâtre du Marais and was printed in 1663.

One of Pascal's motivations was certainly to give the poor sections of the population a means of transport. He was already thinking of organizing other systems in France and abroad. Pascal was a great philanthropist and helped the poor wherever he could. His partnership in the Carrosses à cinq sols also served this purpose, as he wanted to distribute the profits from the company to the hungry in Blois and the Paris orphanage . In order to be able to provide help more quickly, he even wanted to pledge his stake in the company .

literature

  • de Grouchy: Les Carrosses à cinq sols ou Les omnibus du XVII e siècle . In: H. Champion (ed.): Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France . 19 e année. Société de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France, Paris 1892, p. 167-170 ( bnf.fr ).
  • Éric Lundwall: Les carrosses à cinq sols. Pascal entrepreneur . éd. Science infuse, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-914280-00-9 .
  • Alfred Martin: Étude historique et statistique sur les moyens de transport dans Paris, avec plans, diagrams et cartogrammes . Paris 1894, p. 68-79 ( archive.org ).
  • Louis-Jean-Nicolas Monmerqué: Les carrosses à cinq sols, ou Les omnibus du dix-septième siècle . Paris 1828 ( google.fr ).
  • Henry Charles Moore: Omnibuses & Cabs - Their Origin & History . London 1902, p. Chapter I ( wikisource.org ).
  • Yves Mathieu, Josiane de Ridder: Gazette du carrosse a cinq sols. 333 ans de qualité au sein des transports publics . Brussels 1995 ( webcitation.org [PDF; 3,9 MB ; accessed on May 9, 2013]). Archived from the original on April 7, 2013, retrieved on July 23, 2017.
  • Des carrosses à cinq sols à la naissance de la Compagnie Générale des Omnibus (1662-1855) . In: RATP - Service des relations exterieures (ed.): Le réseau routier. Historique general et statistiques d'éxploitation . Chapitre I. Paris August 1969, p. 1–5 ( gouv.fr [PDF; 3.6 MB ; accessed on July 23, 2017]).
  • FM: The Parisian Omnibus of the Seventeenth Century . In: Sylvanus Urban (Ed.): The Gentleman's Magazine . Vol. III. London 1835, p. 475-480 ( google.de ).
  • Patrick d'Hauthuille: carosse à 5 sols . 2008 ( carosse à 5 sols ( memento from July 1, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) [accessed on May 9, 2013]). Archived from the original on July 1, 2013, retrieved on July 23, 2017 (artistic but well-researched depiction of one of the wagons)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Seven wagons were used on the first line, which with a line length of 3.5 kilometers and a 7.5-minute cycle extrapolated to all lines results in the specified number (see also RATP, footnote 1 on p. 2) .
  2. ↑ Omnibus . loomings-jay.blogspot.de, March 18, 2013, accessed on May 1, 2013.
  3. ↑ a b de Grouchy, p. 167f
  4. ↑ According to RATP, p. 3, five sols had roughly the purchasing power of 3 francs in 1969. Taking into account inflation and the changeover to the euro, this would be roughly the equivalent of 3.20 euros today. The fare was therefore rather a deterrent for a large part of the population; see also Anne Courtillé: Les carrosses à cinq sols de Blaise Pascal. annecourtille.net, September 12, 2012, archived from the original on July 1, 2013 ; Retrieved March 18, 2017 (French).
  5. ↑ de Grouchy, p. 168
  6. ^ Henri Sauval : Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris , Paris 1724, p. 192.
  7. ↑ a b Les carrosses de Blaise Pascal . chrisagde.free.fr, 2003, accessed on March 18, 2017 (French).
  8. ↑ In 1700 the five largest cities were: Constantinople (700,000 inh.), Beijing (over 600,000), Isfahan (600,000), London (550,000) and Paris (530,000). Source: Tertius Chandler, Gerald Fox: 3000 Years of Urban Growth . New York / London 1974, p. 321. Quoted from Dirk Bronger, Lutz Trettin: Megastädte - Global Cities TODAY: The Age of Asia? Berlin 2011, p. 138.
  9. ^ A b Marc Gaillard: You Madeleine-Bastille à Meteor, histoire des transports parisiens . Martelle éditions, 1991, p. 10.
  10. ↑ RATP, p. 1.
  11. ^ Philippe Mellot: Paris au temps des fiacres . De Borée, 2006, ISBN 2-84494-432-9 , pp. 8 .
  12. ↑ OGM, p. 11
  13. ^ Memorial plaque in Clermont-Ferrand
  14. ↑ Martin, p. 78.
  15. ↑ OGM, p. 17.
  16. ↑ OGM, p. 13
  17. ^ Jean Robert, Les tramways parisiens , 1992. p. 29
  18. ↑ However, the sources are very contradictory here. One source even claims that the company did not finally cease operations until 1691.
  19. ↑ See Martin: In the galley proofs reproduced there with the individual line descriptions, there are always places equivalent to “tous les demy-quarts d'heure” or in the description of the fourth line the statement “Et sur les dites routes il passera des carrosses allant” et venant aussi fréquement que dans les autres. "
  20. ↑ RATP, p. 3.
  21. ↑ Henry Charles Moore: Omnibuses and Cabs - Their Origin & History , Chapman & Hall, London 1902, pp 6-7.
  22. ↑ Urban, p. 480.
  23. ↑ CERHAC / Center International Blaise Pascal: Connaissez-vous Blaise Pascal? ( Memento of June 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) , 3 ème partie: Le formulaire - Les carrosses à cinq sols - La maladie et la mort ( Memento of August 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on May 1, 2013)
  24. ↑ Émile Boutroux: Pascal ( Memento from June 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 25.9 MB) , Manchester 1902. p. 145
  25. ↑ HF Steward: The Holiness of Pascal , Cambridge 1915. p. 15
  26. ^ Jean Mesnard: Pascal et la pauvreté . In: C. Biondi, C. Imbroscio, M.-J. Latil et al. (Ed.): La Quête du bonheur et l'expression de la douleur dans la littérature et la pensée françaises , Geneva 1995, p. 195.