Feu fiscal facts for kids
The word "feu" comes from the French word for "fire." In the Middle Ages, it first meant a fireplace or hearth. Soon, it also came to mean a family home or even the family itself.
People quickly started using "feu" as a way to count and collect taxes. This was called the "feu fiscal" or "fire tax."
How Taxes Were Used in the Middle Ages
To collect taxes, the government would divide the total tax needed by the number of "fires" (families). This meant they had to count all the "fires," which was called a "réel" census.
Counting "fires" in a city was fairly easy. But it was much harder in the countryside or across an entire kingdom. For example, the King of France only did one "fire" census in his land in 1328. Even that count was not complete. It left out big areas like Guyenne and Flanders. Also, the terrible Black Death soon made the numbers wrong.
In 1426, the Duke of Brittany made a "reformation of taxes." He wanted to limit who could avoid paying taxes. Noble families, for instance, had to prove they were truly noble.
There were no perfect records of "fires" for towns or regions. Provinces often asked the government to lower their tax amounts. They would say things like famine or sickness had reduced their population. So, the total number of "fires" was often decided after a lot of arguing.
Also, the poorest families in a village were sometimes counted as just one "fire." This meant they paid taxes together. This made the counts less accurate and not always true to reality.
The "feu fiscal" became more of a made-up number than a real count. It was different from the "feu allumant," which meant an actual family home. The value of a "feu fiscal" could change each year. It could also be different for people with different social statuses, even in the same city. Sometimes, it was just set without a clear reason. For example, in 1426, the Duke of Brittany said that one "fire" meant three "estagiers" (heads of households).
Tax lists, called "Taille roles," were updated often. This was done during "visites de feu," or "fire visits."
Using "Fires" to Count People in History
For most of the "Ancien Régime" (the old system in France before the French Revolution), population counts were based on "fires," not actual people. The French monarchy kept counting by "fires" until 1726.
To guess how many people lived in an area based on the number of "fires," some people used a simple math trick. They would multiply the number of "fires" by 5. So, if there were 34 "fires," they would guess there were 170 people (34 x 5 = 170).
However, historians still debate the best number to use for this multiplier. For example, the "State of fires in 1328" counted 61,098 "fires" for Paris. But calculations for Paris's population based on this ranged from 80,000 to 240,000 people! The number 5 was more of an average guess than a strict rule.
The multiplier changed depending on the region and the time period. For instance, for the area that is now the Loire department during the time of Louis XIV, a historian named Serge Dontenwill used a multiplier of 4.5.
See also
In Spanish: Fumazgo para niños
