ABSTRACT
Here we analyse the total baptisms in this mid-size town of a single parish before and after the advent of the Sun King. War, famine and disease ravaged all of Aquitaine until the end of the 1650s, a decade of hunger and strife whose severity was reflected in the number of baptisms and the sex ratios of the infants involved. Numerous years throughout the century were marked by commoner male sex ratios too high to constitute random variation. In the tragic 1690s it is possible to detect female infanticide among elite families too. The incidence of twins and of bastards was also so low as to authorise suspicion that these were eliminated without the benefit of baptism in many cases. Infanticide appeared to be an instrument of population control.
