One of the most remarkable facts in connection with the great plague is this—that it was the last in England. The great fire of 1666 is supposed to have extinguished the plague, but this cannot be said to be true. The disease continued to a slight extent in 1666 and isolated cases were reported as late as 1679, but after that date it disappeared completely and from that time until this year England has been absolutely free from the plague. The sudden extinction of the plague in England after it had become domesticated, so to speak, for nearly three centuries, is indeed difficult to explain. Creighton sees an inhibiting influence in the growth of the practice of burial in coffins. But the absence of famine, together with the cessation of domestic wars and strife and the abeyance of want and misery, had not a little effect. As will presently be seen, the extinction of the plague in England was no more remarkable than its disappearance from Western Europe.
The history of plague in the seventeenth century does not close with the London epidemic. From 1675–1684 the disease ravaged Northern Africa, Turkey, and from thence invaded Austria and even reached Southern Germany. The Vienna outbreak of 1679 can be said to have been no less terrible than that of Milan or of London. The deaths from the plague in Vienna in that year have been variously estimated at from 70,000 to double that number.
From Vienna the plague reached Prague, where in 1861 it is said to have caused no less than 83,000 deaths. It is not to be wondered at that a nation scourged by thirty years of relentless warfare, by religious persecution and finally tried thus severely by the plague should inscribe upon the equestrian statue of their patron saint the heart-rending appeal, ‘Lord, grant that we do not perish.’
The close of the seventeenth century saw the disappearance of the plague from Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, however, the disease continued to exist even during the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, a change had taken place for the better, and as the years went on the retrogression of the plague became more and more distinct.
During the first two decades of the eighteenth century the plague was widely distributed in Eastern Europe. It was present especially in Constantinople and in the Danubian provinces. From the latter it extended to Russia (Ukraine), and from thence to Poland. The disastrous invasion of Russia by Charles XII. of Sweden, ending in his defeat at Poltawa in 1709, led to its further dissemination to Silesia, Eastern Prussia, the Baltic provinces and seaports, and even to Scandinavia. It was during this epidemic that Dantzic, in 1709, lost 33,000, and Stockholm 40,000 by the plague. During the years 1709 and 1710 the plague mortality in the Baltic provinces exceeded 300,000. Three years later, in 1713, the plague spread up the Danube and reached Vienna, Prague and even Bavaria.
During these two decades Western Europe was entirely free from the dread disease. In 1720 the disease suddenly developed in Marseilles and extended from thence to neighboring towns and the country districts of Provence. Terrible as was this visitation it is of interest, inasmuch as it was the last occurrence of the plague on French soil, and the last in Western Europe until the recent outbreak in Portugal.
The plague was said to have been imported into Marseilles by a merchant vessel, the ‘Grand Saint Antoine’, from Syria. On its way to Marseilles several deaths occurred on shipboard, but the cause was overlooked. On the 25th of May, 1720, two days after the arrival of the vessel, another death occurred among the crew. The disease was still not believed to be the plague, and although quarantine was instituted, new cases appeared among the crew and the dock laborers employed in unloading the vessel, and it was not until the disease reached the city that its true nature was recognized. The germs of the disease had then been scattered broadcast. Unsanitary a city as Marseilles is to-day, it must have been vastly more so in 1720. The result of the addition of plague germs to the want, misery and filthy condition was at once evident. During August the mortality averaged four and even five hundred per day. In September the daily mortality rose to 1,000. So great was the terror of the populace that it became impossible to secure bearers of the dead, to obtain nurses and attendants. The dead were left in heaps upon the streets, so that it became necessary to transfer to the city 700 galley slaves, who were required to remove the bodies. These same galley slaves were even pressed into service as nurses. The diseased were abandoned by friends and relatives, and under such conditions it need not be wondered at that they received little or no attention from others. Food and water were denied to the unfortunates, and when food was administered to the pesthouses it was thrown into the windows by machinery.
The disease continued in Marseilles until December, 1721, but isolated cases persisted until April, 1722. During the fifteen months of its duration it carried off 40,000 of the population. According to Defoe, there died of the plague in Marseilles and within a league of its walls 60,000.
From Marseilles the plague reached Aix, and in the winter of 1720 and 1721 it carried off 18,000 of its people. It also reached Arles, where, in 1721, out of a population of 23,000, 10,000 died (forty-five per cent). The same year, in Toulon, which had a population of 26,000, the plague attacked 20,000 of the population, and of these 13,000, or about one-half of the original population, died.
The country districts about Marseilles were likewise invaded. Out of a population of 248,000, there died of the plague 88,000, or fully thirty-five per cent.