Patterns of Crime in Fourteenth-Century Paris

Paris during the late fourteenth century has been depicted as a hotbed of crime and public disorder. Large groups of migrants poured into the city in search of safety and food, vagrants and prostitutes crowded the streets, and the whole capital was overpopulated and underpoliced.1 The Hundred Years' War had been in progress for half a century, and though most of the actual fighting had concentrated in western and southern France, the free companies of soldier-brigands ranged as far east as Burgundy, spreading destruction all over the countryside.2 By the 1380s, exhaustion and internal problems had forced both sides to cease fighting. Consequently, the Paris magistrates were faced with two distinct waves of immigration. First, the refugees from the war zones, and subsequently the former soldiers, forced out of brigandage by truce and by Charles V's measures, trickled into the city. Both types excited suspicion and hatred, especially after the Maillotin revolt, in which vagrants played a considerable role.3 This picture, based mainly upon contemporary legislative and narrative sources,4 has yet to be checked against the judicial records.