Death’s Arbitrary Empire †McManners Essay

On this day 220 socio-economic classs ago, a group of French insurgents stormed a national arms house, the Bastille, and set sullen the events of the French Revolution. This changed France forever, saving an end to the monarchy that had dominated the political landscape for years, bringing about the Napoleonic period and ultimately, Democratic France that we see today. Perhaps the hotheaded force behind the movement could be pointed at the period of subjugation rained down on the French peasantry by the nobility in the seventeenth and 18th centuries.In a clipping period dominated by French excesses and lavish animateness by the nobility, most notably during the harness of the Sun King Louis XIV, much than 85% of the population was living in shackles of poverty. The social stratum was shaped comparable a pyramid with the plastered elite occupying the top of the triangle. Most of the community spent their lives mired in the lowest level, and social movement was in truth unli kely. The richest members of this night club had a 10-17 year living advant historic period over those who lived in extreme poverty.Economic art meant a better diet, better nutrition, and thus a better boilers suit quality of life. Elite bourgeois dined on fine cheeses and meats and drank expensive bottles of booze from the Chateau region while peasants drank contaminated water and ate grain oft harvested from diseased crops. Water for the peasants was often dug from sh all(prenominal)ow easilys and poured by means of linen for sanitary purposes. Most French noblemen knew better, and kept a wine-only imbibing policy. Diseased crops were fed to peasants in metre of paucity, and often caused the deaths of many from diseases like tuberculosis and dysentery.Also, the more status and economic power one had, the more likely it was the patriarch would be able to carry out the family name. Peasants scarcely had children and when they did, 9 out of 10 did not live past the age of ten. Surgeons and midwives were often responsible for the mangling of a child at birth. Many mishandlings resulted from these archean medical practitioners, leaving children maimed, humpbacked, or even worse, dead. Women were encouraged not to cat for the fear of the childbirth experience. The wealthy were able to hire the lift out of midwife and birthing assistants to see that their children were particularly cared for. Hospitals also becamebreeding grounds for disease as all the children who made it through childbirth were kept in the equivalent quarters oftentimes.Another perk of being of high society was that most likely, one would avoid the unsanitary conditions of the inner cities in the time period. Human excrement lined the streets and human corpses were often found establish out with the trash. Crowded households jam-packed with many poor families often had corpses in beds the same day they were slept in later that night. These terribly unsanitary conditions lead to t he immense spread of disease and the death once the disease overwhelmed an area.The center of both French town in the time period contained a cemetery, and they were certainly busy. Disease and Deaths dark armies lurked in the streets of Paris all the way out to the countryside. It was just a part of passing(a) life in the 1600s and 1700s. Families could have 5 to 7 children buried at the topical anaesthetic cemetery, none of which lived past the age of ten. Death was everywhere, and it was out of control imputable to the habits of the population. Feces lined the streets from Paris to even the gilded halls of Versailles.A very interesting point can be illustrated by the study of this time period. The terrible living conditions and disease and famine were directly brought about by the behavior of the French citizens. The modern concept of the accident in daily life like a technology failure, mixed-up signal, etc. had not even been invented yet. Daily life was a free-for-all, wit h almost no rules judicature the areas in which the peasants lived, and no one around to enforce them. Vagabonds littered the streets, mendicancy or stealing anything they could find, and in turn, creating garbage and spreading disease. Until the French citizens got themselves downstairs control, life would still continue to be a daily fight down for most.It is decidedly easy to be critical of the Frenchs take in this time period. The population was directly responsible for the situation it was in, and the habits of people caused this disease and death ravaged atmosphere. However, the efforts of the early physicians, like the surgeons andmidwives, cannot be unheeded for their attempts to reverse the spread of these terrible diseases and death plagues, no matter how in vain they were. A physician of the time period put it best when relating the cause of a disease in patients a patient with an already poor base in nutrition was much more pliable to disease and the resulting de ath. Although it has been proven in current third world countries that a small diet can maintain the nutritionally balanced be chemistry that might starve someone from America, these peasants lacked even the bare essentials for a diet. They lived mostly on bread and poor water, some cheese if they were lucky. The prescription drug for most diseases was hot meat stew, oftentimes not doing anything.Certainly the French citizens living in poverty needed to escape their terrible living situations, and eventually began to organize against the monarchy and nobility that had oppressed them for so many years. Groups divine by the American triumph ten years before began to push through promising a better life for the poor French, and the movements gained strength. A conclave of about one thousand French peasants were mobilized on July 14th, 1789, as they stormed the monarchys arms house, the Bastille. Seven prisoners were released, but the shockwaves from the event hit even the farther reaches of the country, thus changing the French political landscape forever, as well as the rest of Western European history, and the effect on the increasingly connected world.Works CitedDeaths Arbitrary Empire By John McManners