The Human Battle For Survival

The human battle for survival was fought on at least two fronts. Against the scarcity and shortage of the food supply, and against the sinister forms of disease that lay in wait. On both fronts, humanity was in a perilous situation during the ancient regime. Before the nineteenth century, anywhere you lived, you could count on a short life expectancy, with extra years if you were rich.

Sir George Staunton wrote: ‘Despite the baneful luxuries in which the European rich indulge, and the disorders of repletion, inactivity, and vice to which they are subject, the mean duration of their lives exceeds about ten years that of their inferiors, whom excessive fatigue has contributed to wear out before their time; whom poverty has deprived of the means of proportional comfort and subsistence.’

This distinct demography for the rich is lost in the ratio of medians. In the Beauvaisis in the seventeenth century, 25 to 33 % of new-born children died within twelve months. Only 50% reached their twentieth year. Thousands of details reveal the shakiness and brevity of life in those times.

Michel Mollat wrote: ‘No one was surprised to see the young Dauphin Charles govern France at the age of seventeen in 1356 and disappear in 1380 at forty-two with the reputation of a wise old man.’

Anne de Montmorency, who died on horseback at the battle of Porte Saint-Denis at the age of seventy-four was an exception. The emperor Charles V was an old man when he resigned at Ghent in 1555 at the age of fifty-five. His son, Philip II, who died at seventy-one, had stirred the animated hopes and fears among his contemporaries at each danger signal during his twenty-year period of fading health.

None of the royal families of the period evaded the alarming rate of infant mortality.