Tea at Trianon: The Great Plague of Marseille, 1720

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

The Great Plague of Marseille, 1720

From Geri Walton at Madame Gilflurt's salon:

For a time nothing stopped the plague: no amount of city intervention—walls, troops, or burials—nor regal or priestly intervention slowed it, and it terrified Europe. As the Marseille plague raged on, it touched everyone living in Marseille and beyond. One eighteenth century newspaper reported in October 1720 (the height of the plague) that "Marseilles is entirely ruin'd, above 80000 Persons have died there, and abundance die daily still, so mortal and so stubborn a Plague was never seen." However, the newspaper appears to have exaggerated the death toll. Although the plague devastated the city, today's estimates are that about 50,000 Marseille inhabitants died, which was more than 50% of it 90,000 inhabitants. Moreover, another 50,000 people died as the plague moved northward through France.

When at last Marseille was declared free of contagion (which took about two years), one person wrote, "We owe our deliverance, the cessation of this terrible scourge, to the mercy of the Lord, who was pleased to relent in his anger at the prayers of our bishop...to the zeal of the magistrates and citizens who assisted his efforts...and, above all, to the liberality of the illustrious prince who governs us...Happy will it be the remembrance of our past misfortunes serve us as a warning for the future, and inspire us with wisdom to use all human means to guard against the renewal of a catastrophe so deplorable...and to entertain a just fear of exciting once more the anger of the Lord against us, and drawing down on our heads a judgment yet more dreadful." (Read more.)