Great Plague of Marseille

The Great Plague of Marseille was one of the most significant European outbreaks of bubonic plague in the early 18th century. Arriving in Marseille, France in 1720, the disease killed 100,000 people in the city and the surrounding provinces. However, Marseille recovered quickly from the plague outbreak. Economic activity took only a few years to recover, as trade expanded to the West Indies and Latin America. By 1765, the growing population was back at its pre-1720 level.

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Outbreak and fatalities

This epidemic was not a recurrence of the European Black Death, the devastating episodes of bubonic plague which began in the Fourteenth Century. In 1720, the plague bacillus yersinia pestis arrived at the port of Marseille from Syria. With several known cases of the plague on board, the merchant ship was promptly placed under quarantine by port authorities. Due largely to a trade monopoly with the Levant, this important port had a large stock of imported goods in warehouses and was actively expanding its trade with other areas of the Middle East and emerging markets in the New World. Powerful city merchants needed the silk and cotton cargo of the ship for the great medieval fair at Beaucaire and pressured authorities to lift the quarantine.

A few days later, the disease broke out in the city. Hospitals were quickly overwhelmed, and residents panicked, driving the sick from their homes and out of the city. Mass graves were dug but were quickly filled. Eventually the number of dead overcame city public health efforts, until thousands of corpses lay scattered and in piles around the city.

Attempts to stop the spread of plague included an Act of Parliament of Aix that levied the death penalty for any communication between Marseille and the rest of Provence. To enforce this separation, a plague wall, the Mur de la Peste, was erected across the countryside. The wall was built of dry stone, 2 m high and 70 cm thick, with guard posts set back from the wall. Remains of the wall can still be seen in different parts of the Plateau de Vaucluse.

During a two-year period, 50,000 of Marseille's total population of 90,000 died, and an additional 50,000 people succumbed as the plague spread north, eventually reaching Aix- en-Provence, Arles, Apt and Toulon. Estimates indicate an overall death rate of between 25%-50% for the population in the larger area, with the city of Marseille at 40%, the area of Toulon at above 50%, and the area of Aix and Arles at 25%.

Recent research

In 1998, an excavation of a mass grave of victims of the bubonic plague outbreak was conducted by scholars from the Universite de la Mediterranee. The excavation provided an opportunity to study more than 200 skeletons from an area in the second district in Marseille known as the Monastery of the Observance. In addition to modern laboratory testing, archival records were studied to determine the conditions and dates surrounding the use of this mass grave. This multidisciplinary approach revealed previously unknown facts and insights concerning the epidemic of 1722. One body revealed the first historical evidence of an autopsy. The reconstruction of the skull of a 15-year-old boy indicates an autopsy was performed during the spring of 1722. The anatomic techniques used appear to be identical to those described in a surgical book dating from 1708.

References

Related events

• List of Bubonic plague outbreaks
• Plague of Justinian
• Popular revolt in late medieval Europe
• Plague Riot
• Third Pandemic
• Peasants' Revolt