The article deals with domestic conflicts in the French Quarter of Saint Petersburg under Peter the Great, namely: quarrels, brawls, showdowns with insults that arose among foreign artists and artisans who inhabited the settlement. The theoretical foundation of the research is such classical tools of sociology and cultural anthropology, as the concept of “Social fields” and the theory of “Social construction”. Based on archival sources and many published materials, the author solves questions about the causes of conflicts, the conditions of their occurrence, and the differences between domestic quarrels among the French and similar incidents common among Russian citizens. The author found out that in disputes, French masters primarily defended their personal dignity, translating Western European ideas of honor. Their high self-esteem inevitably led to conflicts, which usually occurred in the process of jointly spending leisure time. The article reveals that the French craftsmen not only sworn, but also used irony, which was almost unknown in Russia as an implement of social competition. It is clear that the most important factor in aggressive behavior was the contradictions between the ambitions of the masters, their social expectations, on the one hand, and the social reality of Petersburg, as the French imagined it, on the other.