A fiacre is a form of
hackney coach, a horse-drawn four-wheeled carriage for hire. In Vienna such cabs are called .
Origin
The earliest use of the word in English is cited by the ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
'' as from 1699 ("
Fiacres or Hackneys, hung with Double Springs"). The name is derived indirectly from
Saint Fiacre
Fiacre (, ) is the name of three different Irish saints, the most famous of which is Fiacre of Breuil (c. AD 600 – 18 August 670), the priest, abbot, hermit, and gardener of the seventh century who was famous for his sanctity and skill in ...
; the
Hôtel de Saint Fiacre in Paris rented
carriage
A carriage is a two- or four-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle for passengers. In Europe they were a common mode of transport for the wealthy during the Roman Empire, and then again from around 1600 until they were replaced by the motor car around 1 ...
s from about the middle of the seventeenth century. Saint Fiacre was adopted as the cab drivers' patron saint because of the association of his name with the carriage.
In Paris
In 1645, Nicholas Sauvage, a coachbuilder from Amiens, decided to set up a business in Paris hiring out horses and carriages by the hour. He established himself in the Hôtel de Saint Fiacre and hired out his four-seater carriages at a rate of 10 sous an hour. Within twenty years, Sauvage's idea had developed into the first citywide public transport system: ''les carosses à 5 sous'' ("5-sou carriages"). These 8-seater carriages, forerunners of the modern bus, were put into service on five "lines" between May and July 1662, but had disappeared from the streets of Paris by 1679, almost certainly because of the spiralling cost of fares.
[Mellot and Blancart (2006), p. 7.]
Although the public transport system had suffered a temporary demise, private hirers were quick to fill the gaps with carriages including the "vinaigrette", a two-wheeled chair powered and guided by two people; the cabriolet, a dangerous two-wheeled buggy pulled by a single horse; and the more traditional four-wheeled fiacres. By the time of the Revolution there were more than 800 fiacres operating in Paris.
In 1855,
Napoléon III
Napoleon III (Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the first president, second emperor, and last ...
instigated a monopoly control of the fiacres of Paris via the ''Compagnie Impériale des Voitures à Paris (CIV)'', which by 1860 operated 3,830 fiacres and owned 8,000 horses; in this year the ''CIV'' carried over 10 million passengers. Fiacre drivers earned about three francs a day, plus two francs in tips. In 1866 the ''CIV'' lost its monopoly status and became a
Société Anonyme
The abbreviation S.A. or SA designates a type of limited company in certain countries, most of which have a Romance languages, Romance language as their official language and operate a derivative of the 1804, Napoleonic, civil law (legal syste ...
. It began to use motorized vehicles in 1898 but was still operating 3500 horse-drawn vehicles in 1911.
In the 1890s the Parisian music-hall singer
Yvette Guilbert
Yvette Guilbert (; born Emma Laure Esther Guilbert, 20 January 1865 – 3 February 1944) was a French cabaret singer and actress of the Belle Époque.
Biography
Emma Laure Esther Guilbert was born in Paris on 20 January 1865 to a modestly w ...
introduced a popular song, ''Le fiacre'', in which an aged husband sees his wife in a fiacre with her lover.
In Vienna
In Vienna such cabs are called .
[Through Vienna in a horse-drawn carriage](_blank)
''Vienna Tourist Board'', accessed 11 July 2014 They featured in popular music, such as
Gustav Pick's song, the "
Fiakerlied". Fiaker and their drivers also featured in operas of
Johann Strauss II
Johann Baptist Strauss II (; ; 25 October 1825 – 3 June 1899), also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger or the Son (), was an List of Austrian composers, Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas as well ...
and in
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; ; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer and conductor best known for his Tone poems (Strauss), tone poems and List of operas by Richard Strauss, operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Roman ...
's opera ''
Arabella
''Arabella'', Op. 79, is a lyric comedy, or opera, in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration.
Performance history
It was first performed on 1 July 1933 at the D ...
'' (where the second act takes place at the fiaker-drivers' ball).
''Arabella'' synopsis
on Vienna State Opera website, accessed 16 July 2014.
Today
Fiacres still survive in Vienna and other European travel centres as tourist attractions.
See also
* Steering undercarriage
Turning radius was a longstanding problem with wagons, dictated by the distance between the front wagon wheels and the bed of the wagon—namely, the point where the rotating wheels collide with the side of the wagon when turning. Many earlier des ...
References
Notes
Sources
* Finley, Mitch (2010).
The Patron Saints Handbook
', accessed on Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...
, 9 July 2014. Frederick, Maryland: The Word Among Us
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...
. .
* Mellot, Philippe and Blancart, Hippolyte (2006).
Paris au temps des fiacres
',(in French), accessed on Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...
, 9 July 2014. Paris: Editions de Borée. .
* Papayanis, Nicholas (1985). "The Coachmen of Paris: A Statistical Profile", in ''Journal of Contemporary History
The ''Journal of Contemporary History'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the study of history in all parts of the world since 1930. It was established in 1966 by Walter Laqueur and George L. Mosse. Originally published by ...
'', Vol. 20/2, April 1985, pp. 305–321.
* Rearick, Charles (1988). "Song and Society in Turn-of-the-Century France" in ''Journal of Social History
A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to:
*Bullet journal, a method of personal organization
*Diary, a record of personal secretive thoughts and as open book to personal therapy or used to feel connected to onesel ...
'', Vol. 22/1, Autumn 1988, pp. 45–63.
External links
*
{{Authority control
Carriages
Vehicles for hire
Transport in Vienna
Tourist attractions in Vienna
Transport in Paris