Provence-Beyond (Beyond the French Riviera) ®
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The Plague (La Peste) arrived in Gaul for the first time in the year 543, probably via Marseilles. This first visitation was only a preview of the famous "black death" that was to follow.
In 1346 The Plague arrived in Marseilles, on a boat from the Middle East. The plague devastated Europe, killing 25 million people. The survivors fled the villages, defenseless against this agressor, and left them abandoned for a century and a half. (The word quarantine came from the Italian, to describe the 40-day period boats arriving at Venice had to wait before passengers could disembark.
Between 1451 and 1503, seven epidemics of The Plague wiped out two-thirds of the population of Sisteron.
During the middle of the 16th century, the cause of the plague was still completely unknown. One common "method" used was blood letting. This, however, tended to weaken the patients even more, and had the added effect of infecting the doctors and medical staff with the desease. It was during this time that Nostradamus was having a renowned success treating plague victims, using such controversial methods as cleanliness.
An epidemic of The Plague in 1588-1589 and 1629 caused widespread death in a number of Provencal villages, including Mazan in the Vaucluse. In Cairanne, another Vaucluse village, a chapel was built outside the protective village walls expressly to house the plague victims and protect the rest of the population.
The Great Plague, 1720 occured in the early 18th century. A ship from Syria landed at Marseilles, with several known cases of the plague on board. At that time, Marseilles was a very important port. It had a huge stock of imported goods in its warehouses, partly from its trade monopoly with the Levant, and was preparing to begin trading with the New World and the West Indies.
Upon arrival, the ship's captain informed the port authorities of the onboard sickness. Powerful city merchants, who wanted the silk and [cotton] to trade at the great medieval fair at Beaucaire (beside Tarascon, above Arles) influenced the authorities to lift the quarantine.
The epidemic broke out in the city in just a few days. The hospitals were quickly overwhelmed, and people panicked, with families driving the sick from their homes. Mass graves were dug, but when the number of dying overcame the number of galley slaves available to carry the bodies, they lay where they fell, until thousands of corpses lay scattered and in piles around the city.
In a two-year period, 50,000 of Marseille's 90,000 population died, and an additional 50,000 people died as the plague spread north, eventually reaching Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Apt and Toulon.
Mur de la Peste. Attempts to stop the Great Plague included an Act of Parliament (of Aix) that levied the death penalty for any communication between Marseilles and the rest of Provence, and a plague wall (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:
One section is 2 km east of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. The GR97-6 leads in to the wall from Fontaine-de-Vaucluse and from Lagnes, about 5 km south of the wall. There's a nice hike (described on the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse page) that follows long sections of the wall, some of it in pretty good shape, but not as high as it once was.
Another section of the wall is just to the left of the D177 road between Venasque and Gordes, about 4 km north of the Abbaye de Senanque.
Another section of the wall accessible by road or hiking runs west from the Col de la Ligne on the D15 road. The D15 runs between Murs (about 8 km south of the pass) to Monieux, at the top end of the Gorges de la Nesque (about 12 km north). You can also drive in on the D5 road from the village of Méthamis, which is about 6 km south of Villes-sur-Auzone. There's an information panel about the Mur at the Col de la Ligne.
There are some very low sections of the wall near the Col de Murs, described on the Murs page. This part of the wall is very ruined, but the hike is nice.
