Fiacre (carriage)
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A fiacre is a form of
hackney coach A hackney or hackney carriage (also called a cab, black cab, hack or London taxi) is a carriage or car for hire. A hackney of a more expensive or high class was called a remise. A symbol of London and Britain, the black taxi is a common ...
, 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 first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'' as from 1699 (" Fiacres or Hackneys, hung with Double Springs"). The name is derived indirectly from
Saint Fiacre Saint Fiacre ( ga, Fiachra, la, Fiacrius) is the name of three different Irish saints, the most famous of which is Saint Fiacre of Breuil (c. AD 600 – 18 August 670), the Catholic priest, abbot, hermit, and gardener of the seventh century ...
; the Hôtel de Saint Fiacre in Paris rented
carriage A carriage is a private four-wheeled vehicle for people and is most commonly horse-drawn. Second-hand private carriages were common public transport, the equivalent of modern cars used as taxis. Carriage suspensions are by leather strapping an ...
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 the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...
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 language as their official language and employ civil law. Originally, shareholders could be literally anonymous and collect div ...
. 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 Born in Paris into a poor family as Emma Laure Esther Guilbert, Guilbert be ...
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
''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 (german: links=no, Sohn), was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed ov ...
and in
Richard Strauss Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...
'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 Dr ...
'' (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 desig ...


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 Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
, 9 July 2014. Frederick, Maryland: The Word Among Us. . * 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 Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
, 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 Wei ...
'', 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 ''The Journal of Social History'' was founded in 1967 and has been edited since then by Peter Stearns. The journal covers social history in all regions and time periods. Articles in the journal frequently combine sociohistorical analysis between ...
'', 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