Tea at Trianon: Cholera in France in the 1800's

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

Sunday, May 7, 2017

Cholera in France in the 1800's

I am reminded of the death of Charles X from cholera as told in the novel Madame Royale. From Geri Walton:

Even before victims died, they looked like corpses and suffered from a wide range of symptoms. Symptoms included fevers, profuse diarrhea, cramps, chest pains, headaches, and vomiting. As the pandemic spread across Paris, the death count grew until the city seemed to exude a death-like odor. Ultimately, 20,000 Parisians from a population of 650,000 lost their lives within the first six months. Throughout France, a total of 100,000 people died from the dreaded disease.

Cholera soon spread beyond France. It arrived in 1832 in New York, Quebec, and Ontario before finally marching across North America and settling on the Pacific coast in 1834. As cholera spread from one country to the next, outbreaks of cholera began to recur in cities that had already been decimated. For instance, Paris suffered a new outbreak in 1849. (Read more.)