An inquiry into the causes of the Black Death will not be without
important results in the study of the plagues which have visited the
world, although it cannot advance beyond generalisation without entering
upon a field hitherto uncultivated, and, to this hour entirely unknown.
Mighty revolutions in the organism of the earth, of which we have
credible information, had preceded it. From China to the Atlantic, the
foundations of the earth were shaken--throughout Asia and Europe the
atmosphere was in commotion, and endangered, by its baneful influence,
both vegetable and animal life.
The series of these great events began in the year 1333, fifteen years
before the plague broke out in Europe: they first appeared in China. Here
a parching drought, accompanied by famine, commenced in the tract of
country watered by the rivers Kiang and Hoai. This was followed by such
violent torrents of rain, in and about Kingsai, at that time the capital
of the empire, that, according to tradition, more than 400,000 people
perished in the floods. Finally the mountain Tsincheou fell in, and vast
clefts were formed in the earth. In the succeeding year (1334), passing
over fabulous traditions, the neighbourhood of Canton was visited by
inundations; whilst in Tche, after an unexampled drought, a plague arose,
which is said to have carried off about 5,000,000 of people. A few
months afterwards an earthquake followed, at and near Kingsai; and
subsequent to the falling in of the mountains of Ki-ming-chan, a lake was
formed of more than a hundred leagues in circumference, where, again,
thousands found their grave. In Houkouang and Honan, a drought prevailed
for five months; and innumerable swarms of locusts destroyed the
vegetation; while famine and pestilence, as usual, followed in their
train. Connected accounts of the condition of Europe before this great
catastrophe are not to be expected from the writers of the fourteenth
century. It is remarkable, however, that simultaneously with a drought
and renewed floods in China, in 1336, many uncommon atmospheric
phenomena, and in the winter, frequent thunderstorms, were observed in
the north of France; and so early as the eventful year of 1333 an
eruption of Etna took place. According to the Chinese annuals, about
4,000,000 of people perished by famine in the neighbourhood of Kiang in
1337; and deluges, swarms of locusts, and an earthquake which lasted six
days, caused incredible devastation. In the same year, the first swarms
of locusts appeared in Franconia, which were succeeded in the following
year by myriads of these insects. In 1338 Kingsai was visited by an
earthquake of ten days' duration; at the same time France suffered from a
failure in the harvest; and thenceforth, till the year 1342, there was in
China a constant succession of inundations, earthquakes, and famines. In
the same year great floods occurred in the vicinity of the Rhine and in
France, which could not be attributed to rain alone; for, everywhere,
even on tops of mountains, springs were seen to burst forth, and dry
tracts were laid under water in an inexplicable manner. In the following
year, the mountain Hong-tchang, in China, fell in, and caused a
destructive deluge; and in Pien-tcheon and Leang-tcheou, after three
months' rain, there followed unheard-of inundations, which destroyed
seven cities. In Egypt and Syria, violent earthquakes took place; and in
China they became, from this time, more and more frequent; for they
recurred, in 1344, in Ven-tcheou, where the sea overflowed in
consequence; in 1345, in Ki-tcheou, and in both the following years in
Canton, with subterraneous thunder. Meanwhile, floods and famine
devastated various districts, until 1347, when the fury of the elements
subsided in China.
The signs of terrestrial commotions commenced in Europe in the year 1348,
after the intervening districts of country in Asia had probably been
visited in the same manner.
On the island of Cyprus, the plague from the East had already broken out;
when an earthquake shook the foundations of the island, and was
accompanied by so frightful a hurricane, that the inhabitants who had
slain their Mahometan slaves, in order that they might not themselves be
subjugated by them, fled in dismay, in all directions. The sea
overflowed--the ships were dashed to pieces on the rocks, and few
outlived the terrific event, whereby this fertile and blooming island was
converted into a desert. Before the earthquake, a pestiferous wind
spread so poisonous an odour, that many, being overpowered by it, fell
down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies.
This phenomenon is one of the rarest that has ever been observed, for
nothing is more constant than the composition of the air; and in no
respect has nature been more careful in the preservation of organic life.
Never have naturalists discovered in the atmosphere foreign elements,
which, evident to the senses, and borne by the winds, spread from land to
land, carrying disease over whole portions of the earth, as is recounted
to have taken place in the year 1348. It is, therefore, the more to be
regretted, that in this extraordinary period, which, owing to the low
condition of science, was very deficient in accurate observers, so little
that can be depended on respecting those uncommon occurrences in the air,
should have been recorded. Yet, German accounts say expressly, that a
thick, stinking mist advanced from the East, and spread itself over
Italy; and there could be no deception in so palpable a phenomenon. The
credibility of unadorned traditions, however little they may satisfy
physical research, can scarcely be called in question when we consider
the connection of events; for just at this time earthquakes were more
general than they had been within the range of history. In thousands of
places chasms were formed, from whence arose noxious vapours; and as at
that time natural occurrences were transformed into miracles, it was
reported, that a fiery meteor, which descended on the earth far in the
East, had destroyed everything within a circumference of more than a
hundred leagues, infecting the air far and wide. The consequences of
innumerable floods contributed to the same effect; vast river districts
had been converted into swamps; foul vapours arose everywhere, increased
by the odour of putrified locusts, which had never perhaps darkened the
sun in thicker swarms, and of countless corpses, which even in the well-
regulated countries of Europe, they knew not how to remove quickly enough
out of the sight of the living. It is probable, therefore, that the
atmosphere contained foreign, and sensibly perceptible, admixtures to a
great extent, which, at least in the lower regions, could not be
decomposed, or rendered ineffective by separation.
Now, if we go back to the symptoms of the disease, the ardent
inflammation of the lungs points out, that the organs of respiration
yielded to the attack of an atmospheric poison--a poison which, if we
admit the independent origin of the Black Plague at any one place of the
globe, which, under such extraordinary circumstances, it would be
difficult to doubt, attacked the course of the circulation in as hostile
a manner as that which produces inflammation of the spleen, and other
animal contagions that cause swelling and inflammation of the lymphatic
glands.
Pursuing the course of these grand revolutions further, we find notice of
an unexampled earthquake, which, on the 25th January, 1348, shook Greece,
Italy, and the neighbouring countries. Naples, Rome, Pisa, Bologna,
Padua, Venice, and many other cities, suffered considerably; whole
villages were swallowed up. Castles, houses, and churches were
overthrown, and hundreds of people were buried beneath their ruins. In
Carinthia, thirty villages, together with all the churches, were
demolished; more than a thousand corpses were drawn out of the rubbish;
the city of Villach was so completely destroyed that very few of its
inhabitants were saved; and when the earth ceased to tremble it was found
that mountains had been moved from their positions, and that many hamlets
were left in ruins. It is recorded that during this earthquake the wine
in the casks became turbid, a statement which may be considered as
furnishing proof that changes causing a decomposition of the atmosphere
had taken place; but if we had no other information from which the
excitement of conflicting powers of nature during these commotions might
be inferred, yet scientific observations in modern times have shown that
the relation of the atmosphere to the earth is changed by volcanic
influences. Why then, may we not, from this fact, draw retrospective
inferences respecting those extraordinary phenomena?
Independently of this, however, we know that during this earthquake, the
duration of which is stated by some to have been a week, and by others a
fortnight, people experienced an unusual stupor and headache, and that
many fainted away.
These destructive earthquakes extended as far as the neighbourhood of
Basle, and recurred until the year 1360 throughout Germany, France,
Silesia, Poland, England, and Denmark, and much further north.
Great and extraordinary meteors appeared in many places, and were
regarded with superstitious horror. A pillar of fire, which on the 20th
of December, 1348, remained for an hour at sunrise over the pope's palace
in Avignon; a fireball, which in August of the same year was seen at
sunset over Paris, and was distinguished from similar phenomena by its
longer duration, not to mention other instances mixed up with wonderful
prophecies and omens, are recorded in the chronicles of that age.
The order of the seasons seemed to be inverted; rains, flood, and
failures in crops were so general that few places were exempt from them;
and though an historian of this century assure us that there was an
abundance in the granaries and storehouses, all his contemporaries, with
one voice, contradict him. The consequences of failure in the crops were
soon felt, especially in Italy and the surrounding countries, where, in
this year, a rain, which continued for four months, had destroyed the
seed. In the larger cities they were compelled, in the spring of 1347,
to have recourse to a distribution of bread among the poor, particularly
at Florence, where they erected large bakehouses, from which, in April,
ninety-four thousand loaves of bread, each of twelve ounces in weight,
were daily dispensed. It is plain, however, that humanity could only
partially mitigate the general distress, not altogether obviate it.
Diseases, the invariable consequence of famine, broke out in the country
as well as in cities; children died of hunger in their mother's
arms--want, misery, and despair were general throughout Christendom.
Such are the events which took place before the eruption of the Black
Plague in Europe. Contemporaries have explained them after their own
manner, and have thus, like their posterity, under similar circumstances,
given a proof that mortals possess neither senses nor intellectual powers
sufficiently acute to comprehend the phenomena produced by the earth's
organism, much less scientifically to understand their effects.
Superstition, selfishness in a thousand forms, the presumption of the
schools, laid hold of unconnected facts. They vainly thought to
comprehend the whole in the individual, and perceived not the universal
spirit which, in intimate union with the mighty powers of nature,
animates the movements of all existence, and permits not any phenomenon
to originate from isolated causes. To attempt, five centuries after that
age of desolation, to point out the causes of a cosmical commotion, which
has never recurred to an equal extent, to indicate scientifically the
influences, which called forth so terrific a poison in the bodies of men
and animals, exceeds the limits of human understanding. If we are even
now unable, with all the varied resources of an extended knowledge of
nature, to define that condition of the atmosphere by which pestilences
are generated, still less can we pretend to reason retrospectively from
the nineteenth to the fourteenth century; but if we take a general view
of the occurrences, that century will give us copious information, and,
as applicable to all succeeding times, of high importance.
In the progress of connected natural phenomena from east to west, that
great law of nature is plainly revealed which has so often and evidently
manifested itself in the earth's organism, as well as in the state of
nations dependent upon it. In the inmost depths of the globe that
impulse was given in the year 1333, which in uninterrupted succession for
six and twenty years shook the surface of the earth, even to the western
shores of Europe. From the very beginning the air partook of the
terrestrial concussion, atmospherical waters overflowed the land, or its
plants and animals perished under the scorching heat. The insect tribe
was wonderfully called into life, as if animated beings were destined to
complete the destruction which astral and telluric powers had begun. Thus
did this dreadful work of nature advance from year to year; it was a
progressive infection of the zones, which exerted a powerful influence
both above and beneath the surface of the earth; and after having been
perceptible in slighter indications, at the commencement of the
terrestrial commotions in China, convulsed the whole earth.
The nature of the first plague in China is unknown. We have no certain
intelligence of the disease until it entered the western countries of
Asia. Here it showed itself as the Oriental plague, with inflammation of
the lungs; in which form it probably also may have begun in China, that
is to say, as a malady which spreads, more than any other, by contagion--a
contagion that, in ordinary pestilences, requires immediate contact, and
only under favourable circumstances of rare occurrence is communicated by
the mere approach to the sick. The share which this cause had in the
spreading of the plague over the whole earth was certainly very great;
and the opinion that the Black Death might have been excluded from
Western Europe by good regulations, similar to those which are now in
use, would have all the support of modern experience, provided it could
be proved that this plague had been actually imported from the East, or
that the Oriental plague in general, whenever it appears in Europe, has
its origin in Asia or Egypt. Such a proof, however, can by no means be
produced so as to enforce conviction; for it would involve the impossible
assumption, either that there is no essential difference between the
degree of civilisation of the European nations, in the most ancient and
in modern times, or that detrimental circumstances, which have yielded
only to the civilisation of human society and the regular cultivation of
countries, could not formerly keep up the glandular plague.
The plague was, however, known in Europe before nations were united by
the bonds of commerce and social intercourse; hence there is ground for
supposing that it sprang up spontaneously, in consequence of the rude
manner of living and the uncultivated state of the earth, influences
which peculiarly favour the origin of severe diseases. Now we need not
go back to the earlier centuries, for the fourteenth itself, before it
had half expired, was visited by five or six pestilences.
If, therefore, we consider the peculiar property of the plague, that in
countries which it has once visited it remains for a long time in a
milder form, and that the epidemic influences of 1342, when it had
appeared for the last time, were particularly favourable to its
unperceived continuance, till 1348, we come to the notion that in this
eventful year also the germs of plague existed in Southern Europe, which
might be vivified by atmospherical deteriorations; and that thus, at
least in part, the Black Plague may have originated in Europe itself. The
corruption of the atmosphere came from the East; but the disease itself
came not upon the wings of the wind, but was only excited and increased
by the atmosphere where it had previously existed.
This source of the Black Plague was not, however, the only one; for far
more powerful than the excitement of the latent elements of the plague by
atmospheric influences was the effect of the contagion communicated from
one people to another on the great roads and in the harbours of the
Mediterranean. From China the route of the caravans lay to the north of
the Caspian Sea, through Central Asia, to Tauris. Here ships were ready
to take the produce of the East to Constantinople, the capital of
commerce, and the medium of connection between Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Other caravans went from India to Asia Minor, and touched at the cities
south of the Caspian Sea, and, lastly, from Bagdad through Arabia to
Egypt; also the maritime communication on the Red Sea, from India to
Arabia and Egypt, was not inconsiderable. In all these directions
contagion made its way; and, doubtless, Constantinople and the harbours
of Asia Minor are to be regarded as the foci of infection, whence it
radiated to the most distant seaports and islands.
To Constantinople the plague had been brought from the northern coast of
the Black Sea, after it had depopulated the countries between those
routes of commerce, and appeared as early as 1347 in Cyprus, Sicily,
Marseilles, and some of the seaports of Italy. The remaining islands of
the Mediterranean, particularly Sardinia, Corsica, and Majorca, were
visited in succession. Foci of contagion existed also in full activity
along the whole southern coast of Europe; when, in January, 1348, the
plague appeared in Avignon, and in other cities in the south of France
and north of Italy, as well as in Spain.
The precise days of its eruption in the individual towns are no longer to
be ascertained; but it was not simultaneous; for in Florence the disease
appeared in the beginning of April, in Cesena the 1st June, and place
after place was attacked throughout the whole year; so that the plague,
after it had passed through the whole of France and Germany--where,
however, it did not make its ravages until the following year--did not
break out till August in England, where it advanced so gradually, that a
period of three months elapsed before it reached London. The northern
kingdoms were attacked by it in 1349; Sweden, indeed, not until November
of that year, almost two years after its eruption in Avignon. Poland
received the plague in 1349, probably from Germany, if not from the
northern countries; but in Russia it did not make its appearance until
1351, more than three years after it had broken out in Constantinople.
Instead of advancing in a north-westerly direction from Tauris and from
the Caspian Sea, it had thus made the great circuit of the Black Sea, by
way of Constantinople, Southern and Central Europe, England, the northern
kingdoms, and Poland, before it reached the Russian territories, a
phenomenon which has not again occurred with respect to more recent
pestilences originating in Asia.
Whether any difference existed between the indigenous plague, excited by
the influence of the atmosphere, and that which was imported by
contagion, can no longer be ascertained from facts; for the
contemporaries, who in general were not competent to make accurate
researches of this kind, have left no data on the subject. A milder and
a more malignant form certainly existed, and the former was not always
derived from the latter, as is to be supposed from this circumstance--that
the spitting of blood, the infallible diagnostic of the latter, on the
first breaking out of the plague, is not similarly mentioned in all the
reports; and it is therefore probable that the milder form belonged to
the native plague--the more malignant, to that introduced by contagion.
Contagion was, however, in itself, only one of many causes which gave
rise to the Black Plague.
This disease was a consequence of violent commotions in the earth's
organism--if any disease of cosmical origin can be so considered. One
spring set a thousand others in motion for the annihilation of living
beings, transient or permanent, of mediate or immediate effect. The most
powerful of all was contagion; for in the most distant countries, which
had scarcely yet heard the echo of the first concussion, the people fell
a sacrifice to organic poison--the untimely offspring of vital energies
thrown into violent commotion.