Great Plague of Marseille (1720): Plague Ship and Plague Wall

The Great Plague of Marseille was an epidemic of bubonic plague that struck the French port of Marseille in 1720 and spread across Provence until 1722. Brought by a merchant ship from the eastern Mediterranean, it killed roughly half of Marseille’s population. It was the last major plague epidemic in western Europe, and it showed both the failures and the strengths of 18th-century public health.

The ship Grand-Saint-Antoine

Marseille was France’s main port for trade with the Ottoman Levant, and it had a strict quarantine system to keep plague out. A health board, the Bureau de la Santé, inspected arriving ships and could hold crews and cargo for weeks at offshore islands or at the lazaret, depending on the health of the port of departure and any illness on board. The system had kept the city free of plague since 1649. On 25 May 1720 the merchant ship Grand-Saint-Antoine, under Captain Jean-Baptiste Chataud, returned from Sidon, Tripoli and Cyprus. Several people on board, including a ship’s surgeon, had died on the voyage.

The ship carried valuable silks and cotton cloth that local merchants wanted to sell at the great fair of Beaucaire in July. Under pressure from them, the health authorities imposed a lighter quarantine than the deaths warranted, and goods were unloaded at the lazaret, the quarantine station. Historians still debate how far individual officials were to blame, but it is clear that rules were bent.

The epidemic in Marseille

In June people began to die in the old town, with one of the first recorded victims in the rue Belle-Table on 20 June. Doctors at first disagreed about the cause, and the authorities were slow to admit that it was plague. By late July the outbreak could no longer be denied, and on 31 July the Parlement of Aix cut Marseille off from the rest of Provence.

In August and September the city collapsed. At the peak, contemporaries reported around 1,000 deaths a day. Those who could afford to fled; bodies lay in the streets because there were too few people to bury them. Galley convicts from the port were forced to work as body carriers, and many died.

The Chevalier Nicolas Roze, a merchant and administrator, led the clearing of the Tourette esplanade, where about 1,000 decaying bodies were thrown into old bastion vaults in September 1720. Bishop Henri de Belsunce stayed in the city, visiting the sick and organising relief; on 1 November 1720 he consecrated Marseille to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The painter Michel Serre, who also worked among the victims, recorded these scenes in large canvases.

The Grand-Saint-Antoine itself was taken to the island of Jarre and burned in September 1720. Chataud was held for years while the authorities looked for someone to blame.

The plague wall

The royal government ordered a military cordon around the affected area. In 1721 the papal enclave of the Comtat Venaissin, together with the French authorities, built the Mur de la Peste, or plague wall: a dry-stone barrier about 27 kilometres long and around 2 metres high across the Monts de Vaucluse, with guard posts along it.

The wall did not stop the disease. Plague reached Avignon and the Comtat later in 1721, as well as towns such as Toulon, Aix and Arles. Sections of the wall survive today and have been restored by local volunteers.

Key people

• Jean-Baptiste Chataud: captain of the Grand-Saint-Antoine, later held responsible by many for the disaster, though the decisions on quarantine were taken by the health authorities.
• Henri de Belsunce (1671–1755): bishop of Marseille, whose care for the dying made him a hero of the epidemic.
• Nicolas Roze (1675–1733): the “Chevalier Roze”, who organised the burial of the dead in his district and at the Tourette.
• Charles-Claude Andrault de Langeron: the military commander sent by the crown to restore order in the city.
• Michel Serre (1658–1733): painter whose canvases are among the most important visual records of the epidemic.

Death toll and end

The epidemic in Marseille eased in late 1720 but flared again in spring 1722 before dying out. Historians usually estimate 40,000–50,000 deaths in the city, from a population of around 90,000, and about 90,000–120,000 across Provence. Toulon lost perhaps half its inhabitants.

Unlike earlier outbreaks such as the Great Plague of London or the Great Plague of Vienna, the Marseille epidemic was contained within one region of France, thanks in part to the cordon. Plague never again caused a major epidemic in France.

Timeline

• 1720, 25 May: The Grand-Saint-Antoine arrives at Marseille from the Levant.
• 1720, June: The first deaths occur in the old town.
• 1720, 31 July: The Parlement of Aix isolates Marseille.
• 1720, August–September: The epidemic peaks, with around 1,000 deaths a day reported.
• 1720, September: The Tourette esplanade is cleared; the ship is burned off Jarre.
• 1721: The plague wall is built across the Monts de Vaucluse; plague reaches Avignon.
• 1722, spring–summer: A final flare-up in Marseille before the epidemic ends.

Why it matters

The Marseille plague showed how trade, commercial pressure and weak enforcement could undo a quarantine system. It also marked the end of the great plague epidemics in western Europe and remains part of Marseille’s identity, remembered in paintings, street names and annual religious ceremonies. Later outbreaks, such as the one behind the Moscow plague riot, took place further east.