240 MIASTO
at the end of Dtuga Street. They soon fell into disrepair. The earthworks of 1770
were inspired by the threat of plague, and were intended as a basis for police and
sanitary controls. They encircled the city on a circumference of some sixteen
kilometres on both banks of the river, enclosing Zoliborz in the north, Lazienki
in the south, and Praga across the river. In the Rising of 1794 they were pressed
into service as the city's last line of defence. In the nineteenth century, they acted
as a natural dividing line within which the railway tracks, power stations, gas-
works, and cemeteries, were not able to penetrate. Their thirteen Gates or
rogatki kept the nondescript modern suburbs apart from the historic city centre.
Attempts to regulate the City's administration were constantly obstructed.
From 1665, the Economic Offices of the Old Town and New Town were
empowered to levy rates, to present their budget, and to administer municipal
enterprises. From 1742, the Komisja Brukowa (Street Commission) under
Marshal Bielinski addressed itself energetically to the task of paving the streets,
laying drains, and building footbridges over numerous uncovered streams. But
large districts and sectors of the population lay beyond the city's control. Only
in the terminal years of the Republic was the old order overturned. Thanks to
the labours of the Old Town's Mayor, Jan Dekert (1738-90), the City magis-
trates joined with representatives of all the cities of Poland, and insisted on rad-
ical reform. In 1767, Warsaw was incorporated into a single municipality,
within seven wards. On 21 April 1791, a law of the Four Years' Diet extended
the liberties of the burgher class.
Schemes for co-ordinating the City's economic activities enjoyed earlier suc-
cess. In 1691-5, a grandiose Market Hall, modelled on the Palais Royal in Paris,
was intended to bring the retail trade of luxury and imported goods under one
roof. It was named 'Marieville' (Marywil), like Marymont, after Sobieski's
Queen. In 1720, another Trade Hall was founded by two French emigres,
Malherbe and Pellison. Their business, which obtained several lucrative mono-
polies, eventually passed into the hands of the banker, Peter Tepper (d. 1794).
The fortunes of royal Warsaw were not unmixed, however. Natural disasters
competed with man-made tragedies. The fires of 1544 and 1607, which
consumed the Old Town Square, the plagues of 1624-5, 1652-3, 1707-8, the
hurricane of 1602, which destroyed the cathedral tower, all caused grave loss,
both human and material. The incessant scandals and tumults of the Court -
such as that in 1652 when the royal guards of the King's mistress, Elzbieta
Radzie-jowska, the wife of the Vice-Chancellor of the Crown, successfully
defended her from the regiments of an irate husband - engendered an atmos-
phere of violence and insecurity. The royal Elections, which occasioned an
influx of fifty thousand or even a hundred thousand armed noblemen with their
retinues, were invariably attended by months of intrigue, crime, and violence.
Foreign armies occupied the city on repeated occasions - the Swedes in 1655,
1656, 1704,1705 and 1708; the Transylvanians in 1657; the Saxons in 1704 and
1713; the Russians in 1706, 1717, 1733-5, 1763 ~41, 1767~73, 1792~3, 1794; the
Prussians in 1794—1806; the French in 1807—13.