The Black Death (in reference to the black plates which develops on the skin around the punctures of Xenopsilla cheopsis or chip of the rat).
It devours the lungs, emaciates the bodies and causes irreversible fevers. " It was enough to touch a pesteux body to contract the contagion " says one.
All had started in front of the port of Théodosia, in the Crimea. The Tartars besieged the city. However, a strange disease decimated these Tartars and this disease it was the plague. To conquer the city, the Tartar heads had a " clever " idea. Instead of bombarding the town of stone balls using their catapults, they preferred to send to it the corpses of their dead combatants of the terrible disease. They were not unaware of naturally that this disease proves to be one of most contagious which is. There was in the town of many Italian traders. They managed to regain their ships and to flee towards their country, thus taking along with them the plague.
At All Saints' day of 1347, the plague touched Marseilles as well as the valley of the Rhone. The population, weakened by the permanent state of food shortage, resists the disease badly.
The plague is caused by a bacillus, conveyed by the chip of the rat. The rats are attracted by the refuse and poured waste in the open air, more particularly in the streets of the cities. Air of the empeste city rot and the corpse. This total lack of hygiene supports, naturally, the propagation of the epidemic.
At the beginning of 1348 it devastates Languedoc, Burgundy, the Island of France, Normandy then Brittany. In Nimes, half of the population disappears. In the villages one flames the houses of the families which have a patient, sometimes even those of the neighbors One gathers in the cities pestiférés in old people's homes, isolated from all. Devoting itself " to assist dying them and to bury deaths ", clergy is particularly touched.
The plague, in 1349, will pass to England and Germany. The Black Death seems to have killed in Europe either the quarter, or half of the population. Probably 25 million inhabitants. In France, certain areas saw disappearing until two thirds from the population. Froissart affirms that Marseilles counted 16 000 victims, Avignon 30 000, Lyon 45 000, Strasbourg 26 000, Paris 80 000. France in 1348 had almost become a dead kingdom. In the majority of the provinces, one neither had harvested, neither plowed, nor sown, starting into 1349 a terrible famine. The plague returns regularly during this end of century by the ports or the passage of the armies.
Since the Black Death of 1348, the South appears vulnerable by its two maritime frontages: the epidemics radiate starting from Bordeaux and especially with Marseilles.
This pandemia will perdura until the XVIII° century and was marked by many tragedies among which the plague of Marseilles in 1720.
