Cour des miracles was a French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 term which referred to slum

Slum

A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...

 districts of Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 where the unemployed migrants from rural areas resided. They held "the usual refuge of all those wretches who came to conceal in this corner of Paris, sombre, dirty, muddy, and tortuous, their pretended infirmities and their criminal pollution." The areas grew largely during the reign of Louis XIV (1654 – 1715) and in Paris were found around the Filles-Dieu convent, Rue du Temple, the Court of Jussienne, Reuilly Street, Rue St. Jean and Tournelles Beausire, Rue de l'Echelle and between the Cairo Street and Rue Reaumur. The latter served as inspiration for Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

s Les Misérables

Les Misérables

Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...

and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

Name

In pre-modern Paris a large portion of the population relied on begging for its survival. Since those with a clear handicap could expect more alms, a number of beggars faked terrible injuries and diseases. By the time they came back to their homes in the slum, they dropped their characters. A beggar who had pretended to be blind or crippled the whole day could see or walk again once back in the slum. This phenomenon gave the generic name to these areas where so many "miracles" occurred every day: courts of miracles.

Culture

Regularly the people of the Court of Miracles were thought to have organized a counter-society devoted to crime and thievery with its own hierarchy and institutions. But this is a common theme at the time and is likely to have been little else than a literary fantasy. For instance the archissupots were meant to be former students in charge of teaching the local slang (argot) to the new recruits. The relationship between outlaws and the student world in the 17th century – a time of crisis – has however commonly been observed. The 17th century historian Henri Sauval claimed that the area was "a great cul-de-sac which was stinking, muddy, irregular and unpaved." He argued that the area had its own language and a subculture of crime and promiscuity: "everyone lived in great licentiousness; no one had faith or law and baptism, marriage and the sacrements were unknown."

Clearance

As crime and destitution worsened, Parisian authorities sought to reduce these areas. Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie

Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie

Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie is considered to be the founder of the first modern police force.-Early career:Born in 1625 in Limoges, France to a poor family, Gabriel Nicolas made a wealthy marriage in 1645 and took the name of Reynie, a minor lordship with an annual income of 200 pounds. He was a...

 was tasked in 1667 with utilising the fledgling Prefecture of Police

Prefecture of Police

The Prefecture of Police , headed by the Prefect of Police , is an agency of the Government of France which provides the police force for the city of Paris and the surrounding three suburban départements of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val-de-Marne...

 to curb the growth of crime in the areas. By 1750, a new tactic of improving health and social care became prominent over law enforcement, and as great areas of the slums were demolished they were taken over by fishmongers and blacksmiths. The last vestiges of the old cour des miracles were eliminated with the redevelopment of the Filles-Dieu convent site during the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 and the Haussmannisation

Haussmann's renovation of Paris

Haussmann's Renovation of Paris, or the Haussmann Plan, was a modernization program of Paris commissioned by Napoléon III and led by the Seine prefect, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870...

of the area in the 19th century."