Daughters of the king

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Intendant Jean Talon , Bishop François de Montmorency-Laval and various settlers welcome the “daughters of the king”. Painting by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale .

The daughters of the king ( French filles du Roi or filles du Roy ) is a term that was used for around 800 young French women who emigrated to New France between 1663 and 1673 . The emigration program financed by King Louis XIV was supposed to stimulate population growth there. On the one hand, male immigrants should be encouraged to settle in New France, and on the other hand, promoting marriages should facilitate the establishment of families and the birth of children. Women and girls also emigrated to New France before and after this period, but are not considered filles du roi . The term only applies to those people who have been actively recruited by the government and whose passage and dowry have been financed by the king. Most of the women came from modest backgrounds and around four fifths from cities.

The causes of the emigration of young women to New France

More than half of the filles du Roi were 16 to 25 years old

New France , located in what is now Canada , was a man's world in the first decades of its existence - a province populated by soldiers, trappers and priests that had little to offer women. Over time, the colony also began farming , which opened up more opportunities for women. In the middle of the 17th century, however, there was still a large imbalance between single men and women. The few immigrant women had to pay for their own passage and only a few single women wanted to leave their familiar surroundings to settle in harsh New France. In order to stimulate population growth and increase the number of families, Intendant Jean Talon suggested that the king finance the passage of at least 500 women. King Louis XIV agreed and eventually financed around 800 crossings. The majority of the women were between 16 and 25 years old, around a tenth between 12 and 15 years, around a quarter 26 years or older.

Marguerite Bourgeoys was the first to use the term filles du Roi in her notes . A distinction was made between the “daughters of the king” who were transported to New France at the king's expense and received a dowry , and those women who emigrated of their own accord and at their own expense. A study by the historian Yves Landry found that between 1663 and 1673 between 770 and 850 filles du Roi settled in New France.

The royal dowry

The term "daughters of the king" denoted the patronage by the king, not royal or aristocratic origins. A fille du Roi received the support of the king in several ways. He paid the French East India Company a hundred livres for the crossing, and he also provided the woman with a chest that contained the trousseau : a winter coat, a jacket, a blouse, four petticoats, two pairs of stockings, a pair of shoes, a comb, and one Brush, scissors, two knives, ten sewing needles, four rolls of thread and hairpins and 50 livres in cash. Originally, a dowry of 400 livres was planned. Since the treasury was unable to advance the required amount, many of the women received donations in kind instead. For the wedding, the young couple also received a basic set of cattle: a cow, six sheep and twelve chickens.

The regional and social origins of the filles du Roi

Like most emigrants of that era, around 80% of the filles du Roi came from the Paris region , Normandy and the west coast (provinces of Aunis , Poitou and Saintonge ). The Paris Hôpital général , in particular the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière and the parish of St-Sulpice there, organized a particularly large number of filles du Roi . Because of this, most of these women were from the city. Some came from other European countries including Germany, England and Portugal.

The majority of these women were subjects from humble backgrounds. Many of the women were orphans with very little personal possessions and mostly poor literacy skills. Some came from impoverished noble families, others from families with “surplus” daughters. The authorities usually referred women from higher social classes directly to officers or to nobles living in New France. They hoped that the nobles would marry the young women and choose to stay in Canada instead of returning home.

The women selected as filles du Roi had to meet strict requirements. They had to be “morally sound” and healthy enough to survive the hard work expected of them as colonists. The colonial authorities sent several filles du Roi back to France because they did not meet the requirements set by the king and the intendant.

integration

The "Daughters of the King" went ashore in Québec , Trois-Rivières and Montreal . After their arrival, they took different lengths of time to find a suitable husband. Some got married after just a few months, others took up to two or three years. Most couples officially got engaged in church, in the presence of the pastor and witnesses. Some engaged couples then went to a notary to sign a prenuptial agreement. Marriage contracts offered engaged women a certain security. They were financially secure should something happen to them or their future husband. They were also free to cancel the marriage vows if the chosen spouse did not meet the expectations. The marriages were usually concluded by the pastor of the parish in which the wife's place of residence was located. Around 737 filles du Roi made the marriage covenant in New France. 230 of them came from the Salpêtrière , i.e. very poor backgrounds, or they were prostitutes, which today cannot be proven with complete certainty.

The end of the promotion

At the end of 1671, Jean Talon was of the opinion that in the following year it was no longer necessary to pay young women the crossing. The king shared this view and stopped funding. State-supported immigration continued for a short time in 1673 when the king sent another 60 women at the request of the new governor Louis de Buade de Frontenac . After that there were no more filles du roi and immigration became a private matter again.

Louisiana

In the French colony of Louisiana around 1700 the term filles à la cassette , i.e. casket girl, was common because of the original equipment that was preserved.

literature

  • Gustave Lanctot: Filles de joie ou filles du roi . Chantecler, Montreal 1952.
  • Yves Landry: Orphelines en France pionnières au Canada: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle . Leméac, Montreal 1992, ISBN 2-7609-5068-9 .
  • Louise Pothier, Bertrand Guillet, dir .: France - Nouvelle-France. Naissance d'un peuple français en Amérique. Ed. Musée du Château des ducs de Bretagne & Musée d'Archéologie et d'Histoire, Montréal, Pointe-à-Callière. Somogy, Paris 2005 ISBN 9782850569074 (exhibition catalog for the traveling exhibition 2004–2008 in Brittany and Canada), in particular Mickaël Augeron: Partir pour la Nouvelle-France. La place et le rôle des villes portuaires métropolitaines 1608 - 1763. P. 51–73 with num. Fig, bibliography

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gustave Lanctot: Filles de joie ou filles du roi . Pp. 9, 102.
  2. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. Pp. 19-21.
  3. ↑ a b Hans-Otto Meissner : Scouts at the St. Lorenzstrom . The adventures of Samuel de Champlain . Cotta, Stuttgart 1966, p. 233. Such a chest, more like a suitcase, which Marguerite Bourgeoys served, is shown in the exhibition catalog France - Nouvelle France, 2005, p. 60. Marguerite Bourgeoys is her own museum in the Chapelle Notre -Dedicated to Dame-de-Bon-Secours in Montréal .
  4. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. Pp. 73-75.
  5. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. P. 54.
  6. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. Pp. 57-58.
  7. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. P. 108.
  8. ^ Gustave Lanctot: Filles de joie ou filles du roi. Pp. 22, 103, 115, 117, 126.
  9. ^ Bill Marshall: France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2005, ISBN 978-1-85109-411-0 , pp. 439 .
  10. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. P. 51. There was a surplus of euphemism for a young woman who until a few decades ago was dubbed "fallen girl" in German, that is, women who had fallen for a marriage promise, had sexual intercourse with their fiancé and were then "left sitting" were. Balzac wrote a well-known novel about it, cf. La femme abandonnée
  11. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. P. 68.
  12. ↑ cf. however, the designation as a girl of joy on the contemporary engraving mentioned below
  13. ^ Gustave Lanctot: Filles de joie ou filles du roi. P. 212.
  14. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. P. 131.
  15. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. Pp. 145-146.
  16. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. P. 150.
  17. ^ Yves Landry: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle. P. 140.
  18. ↑ cf. Web link, Société des filles du Roi et soldats du Carignan
  19. ↑ Marcel Trudel: La seigneurie de la Compagnie des Indes occidentales, 1663–1674 . Éditions Fides, Montreal 1997, ISBN 2-7621-1868-9 , pp. 267 .
  20. ↑ In the section Prendre pays - prendre mari there is a full-page anonymous engraving from 1726, called Le triste embarquement des filles de joie de Paris , which depicts the departure from Paris in great detail, p. 63; an enlarged section will be repeated later (p. 71). The author of the engraving was therefore of the opinion that the people shipped here were prostitutes, cf. also the book title by Lanctot 1952.