All this time the empire, by the incursions of barbarians, by usurpations, civil wars, and the general licentiousness of the people, had been in a situation not to be described. The invasion of the Hunns, a new and more formidable enemy than they had ever experienced, now completed the ruin of the Romans. The whole western part of the empire became one continued scene of carnage and desolation. The common epithet bestowed upon Attila, the king of these barbarians, was, “TheScourgeofGod, theDestroyerofArmies.” As a specimen of his behaviour, we shall select the account of his taking of Aquileia in 452. That city, “being well fortified, and defended by the flower of the Roman troops, held out, in spite of his utmost efforts, for three months; at the end of which it was taken by assault, pillaged for several days together, and laid in ashes; not a single house being left standing, nor one person alive that fell into the enemy’s hands. The cities of Trevigio, Verona, Mantua, Cremona, Brescia and Bergamo, underwent the same fate; the barbarians raging every where with such fury as can hardly be expressed or conceived, and putting all to the sword, without distinction of sex, age, or condition.”39
Every one must own that this was a very effectual method of preventing the plague in those cities. It did not, however, prevent that, or some other diseases, from destroying such numbers of the tyrant’s troops, that he was for that time prevented from taking Rome itself.From this time, to the total extinction of the western empire, we do not hear of any remarkable infection taking place. The barbarians still continued their wars with one another, while the emperors of Constantinople were likewise at continual variance with the Persians. At last, in the year 532, they concluded what they called aperpetualoreternalpeace, which lastedeight years! Other treaties and truces were concluded; notwithstanding which, the war was almost continual in the east; while, by the second conquest of Italy, and the invasion of the Gothic territories, new desolations overspread the west. Thus, for a great number of ages, mankind had been preparing themselves for the dreadful pestilence which was about to ensue. Whatever infection could be communicated to the air by multitudes of carcases rotting above ground had been done in an ample manner. Whatever debility could be communicated to the human frame by famine, exposure to the inclemency of weather, by fatigue, terror, grief, and every thing that can render life miserable, had also been communicated by the most powerful means. There only wantedsomethingto begin the calamity; and this, whatever it was, took place in the fifteenth year of Justinian. Mr. Gibbon ascribes the origin of it to locusts; and its universality, to the general mixture of all nations, and the unrestrained intercourse they had with one another. “No restraints (says he) were imposed on the frequent intercourse of the Roman provinces. From Persia to France the nations were mingled by wars and emigrations; and the pestilential odour, which lurks for years in a bale of cotton, was imported, by the abuse of trade, into the most distant regions. Procopius relates, that it spread always from the sea-coast to the inland countries: the most sequestered islands and mountains were successively visited; the places which had escaped the fury of its first passage, were alone exposed to the contagion of the ensuing year. In time, its malignity was abated and dispersed; the disease alternately languished and revived; but it was not till the end of a calamitous period of fifty-two years, that mankind recoveredtheir health, or the air resumed its pure and salubrious qualities.”
Thus Mr. Gibbon endeavours to explain the causes of this plague from an alteration in the salubrity of the atmosphere, without taking into consideration the dreadful commotions among mankind, above related. But, now that we have noticed two very general infections, one in 767 B. C. the other 1300 years after, we find them both preceded and accompanied by wars uncommonly violent and destructive. The great plague in the time of Justinian is said by Mr. Gibbon to have continued only fifty-two years; but this we must understand of its first and most violent attack; for it appears, from the testimonies produced in the former section, that pestilential disorders, even very violent ones, continued at intervals for several centuries. Thus, from the year 541 to 593, the space of fifty-two years is included; nevertheless, in the time of Phocas, who began to reign ten years after, the same calamity continued; as did also violent wars with the Persians and other barbarians.
The year 622 is remarkable for the flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina, from which time we may date the rise of the empire of the Saracens; a people who, for desolation and destruction, were perhaps never equalled except by the Hunns and Moguls. In 630 the impostor himself died, after having just united the Arabs or Saracens, and fitted them for the work in which they were to be employed. Their first exploit was, to fall upon the empire of Persia, now weakened by its endless wars with the Romans. This was conquered in two years; after which they broke into Palestine, and conquered the provinces bordering upon Syria. In 634 they reduced Syria itself and Egypt. In 636 they took and plundered Jerusalem. In 642 they conquered the African provinces, and reduced some of the islands in the Levant. With unabated fury they proceeded to the east and west; laying siege, in 668, to Constantinople itself, where they received their first check by the shipwreck of their fleet, and the defeat of their army.Thus, in the space of 38 years, the immense tract of country from the eastern part of Persia to the confines of the Mediterranean Sea, with the northern coasts of Africa, the whole including a space scarce inferior to the empire of Alexander the Great, was reduced under subjection to a race of savage barbarians, who knew only how to plunder, destroy, and reduce other nations to slavery.
In this manner were the eastern parts of the world prepared for a new infection, supposing the old one to have been entirely gone off. The Saracens pursued their good fortune, ravaged and conquered from India to Spain, and from Spain were proceeding northward through France, to extend their conquests to the other countries of Europe. But here, in 728, their fury was stopped by Charles Martel, the father of Pepin, and grandfather of Charles the Great. After a most obstinate and bloody battle, which lasted seven days, and in which the barbarians lost three hundred and seventy-five thousand men,40they were driven beyond the Pyrennean mountains, and never after durst enter France. Thus was one fury stopped, only to give place to another. Charles, as ambitious and as cruel as the Saracens, having in vain attempted the conquest of Spain, reduced Italy and Germany; and, having dreadfully massacred the Saxons, and almost exterminated the Hunns, set up the German Empire, and was crowned emperor of the West in 800.
While the nations were thus deluging the earth with blood, the pestilence made its appearance in the east, attended with extraordinary phenomena.41Some of these are taken notice of by the Arabian historians, and others are mentioned by them, concerning which the Greek historiesare silent. In 636, particularly, we hear of violent storms of hail throughout the Arabian Peninsula, and of Syria being ravaged by epidemic distempers. It would seem, indeed, that the plague, during the whole of these horrible periods, had never been extinguished; for in 671 they tell us that a celebrated Arab, namedZiyad, died of the plague; though neither Greek nor Arabian historians take notice of any remarkable pestilence as raging at that time. We are told that this man was attended by no fewer thanan hundred and fiftyphysicians.42“But,as the decree was sealed, andthe thing determined, they found it impossible to save him.” This distemper was attended with such an excruciating pain in his right hand, that the unhappy patient had recourse to acadi, or judge, to inform him whether he might lawfully cut it off. The judge determined that it was absolutely unlawful to do so; notwithstanding which, Ziyad resolved to proceed: but his heart failed him when he saw the instruments and cauterising irons to be employed in the operation; for in those times of barbarity and ignorance they knew no other method of stopping blood but by a hot iron; and therefore some of the physicians in ancient times, when a limb was to be cut off, ordered the incision to be made down to the bone with a red hot razor. But, to return to our subject: In Syria and Mesopotamia swarms of locusts infected the earth about the year 679; but, as it seems extremely probable that the plague was never out of the eastern regions, we cannot expect to hear much of it, unless when extremely violent. That in the time of Constantine Copronymus seems to have extended over Arabia, as we are told that the Khalif Yezid, who was cotemporary with Copronymus, died of the plague. We are also told, that the earthquakes which afflicted the territories of the Greek emperors extended themselves to the countries about the Caspian Sea. In those ages indeed the phenomena of nature appear to have been so extraordinary, that we can scarcely account them any other than miraculous. Some of these have been described in theformer section, on the authority of the Greek historians: the Arabians make mention of others similar. They tell us, also, that once or twice it rained black stones, and that some of these were so inflammable, that an Arab having attempted to make a fire with one of them in his tent, it burst out into such a violent flame as consumed the tent altogether.43This rain may be accounted for from the explosion of a volcano; but how shall we account for the sun himself losing his light? a phenomenon acknowledged even by Mr. Gibbon; though that author huddles things together in such a manner as seems totally inconsistent with the regular chain of events. He tells us, that the dreadful plague, which broke out in the time of Justinian, was preceded by comets, and most violent earthquakes; and that these comets were attended with an extraordinary paleness of the sun. This may be; but the wordpalenesscannot apply to thedarknesswhich lasted from the fourth of August to the first of October, and to which he seems to allude, though it happened long after the time of Justinian; neither can it be applied to what I am now about to relate, viz. that in the year 782, a little after sunrise, the solar light was lost without an eclipse, and the darkness continued till noon. It is impossible to read the histories of those times without remembering the words of our Saviour, that there should be signs in the sun and in the moon, distress and perplexity of nations, the sea and waves roaring, men’s hearts failing them for fear, &c. But, however the God of nature might thus intimate to mankind his displeasure with their proceedings, it is certain they made no alteration in their conduct. The Saracens, having conquered immense tracts of country, engaged in civil wars among themselves; the western nations, after having tried invain to destroy each other, at last united in a romantic design of conquering Palestine from the Infidels; while the Turks, leaving their habitations about Mount Caucasus, where, like the vultures of Prometheus, they had for ages remained unseen and unknown, precipitated themselves upon the Greeks and Saracens, and lastly, as if all hell had broke loose at once, the Moguls, from the most easterly part of Asia, poured destruction upon the countries to the west, even as far as Russia and Poland.
All these events took place in a few centuries. In 844 the Turks quitted Mount Caucasus, and settled in Armenia Major. In 1030 they fell upon the Saracen empire, now divided among innumerable chieftains continually at war with each other. Among these was one called the Sultan of Persia, and another of Babylon. The former being worsted, called in the Turks to his assistance. They sent him an auxiliary army of onlythree thousandmen; and from this slender beginning has arisen the vast empire of the Ottoman Porte. The three thousand men were commanded by a general called by the GreeksTangrolipix, and by the AsiaticsTogrul Beg. Being a man of ability, the Sultan of Persia, by his assistance, got the better of his adversary; but, refusing to let the Turks depart, Tangrolipix with his army withdrew to the desert of Carbonitis, where, being joined by numbers of discontented Persians, he began to invade the territories of the Saracens. The Sultan of Persia sent against him an army of twenty thousand men, whom Tangrolipix surprised and defeated, acquiring at the same time an immense booty. The fame of his victory, and his wealth, procured him bands of robbers, thieves, and blackguards, from all the neighbouring countries; so that he soon found himself at the head of fifty thousand. Against such a formidable force the Sultan of Persia marched in person; but happening to lose his life in the engagement by a fall from his horse, his men threw down their arms and acknowledged Tangrolipix to be Sultan of Persia.
The new sultan instantly thought of destroying other sultans and potentates; for which purpose he opened apassage for his countrymen from Armenia to Persia. The Sultan of Babylon was the first victim; after which Tangrolipix turned his arms unsuccessfully against the Arabians, but afterwards more successfully against the Greek emperors. The first invasion by the Turks took place in 1041; and in four hundred and twelve years they became absolute masters of the empire. Though unsuccessful at first against the Saracens, they prevailed greatly afterwards, and, by the time of the crusades, we find them masters of Palestine, as well as several other countries formerly conquered by the Arabs. From the time of their first invasion, in 1041, we may say, the war never ceased; and there is the greatest reason to suppose that the Greek empire would have been overthrown in a very short time, had not the crusaders checked their progress. The immense numbers with whom the barbarians had now to contend (amounting to no fewer than seven hundred thousand) threatened with destruction the newly erected empire of the Turks; and had it not been for the want of unanimity among the crusaders themselves, and the jealousy of the emperors of Constantinople, they certainly would have overthrown it. But, as matters went, all their labour was lost; and they only increased the general carnage and desolation to an extreme degree. The first crusade was planned in 1093, published in 1095, and in March 1096 the first army set out. In 1097 they began their conquests, but soon found it very difficult to keep them. The Turks being at home, and united, had many advantages over foreign invaders; which the latter endeavoured to counteract by drawing continual supplies of fresh men from Europe. Thus, for several centuries, the western part of Asia was rendered a scene of bloodshed and desolation. When they had contended for something more thantwo hundredyears, Jenghiz Khan, the Mogul, seems to have formed thenobledesign of destroying the whole human race at once, excepting only his own immediate followers. His plan was, toexterminateman, woman and child wherever he went, and to plant the countries with his own people. It is impossible to do justice tohis exploits. Voltaire, speaking of the irruption of the Moguls, says, that the people fled every where before them, like wild beasts roused from their dens by other beasts more savage than themselves. In the Universal History we are told, that he is supposed to have destroyedfourteen millions and an halfof his fellow creatures. He died in 1227, and left successors worthy of himself. Some of these proceeded eastward, and some westward. The latter, under the conduct of amonsternamedHula-ku, overthrew, in the year 1256, the remains of the Saracen empire, by the taking of Bagdad. The miserable Khalif, coming forth to meet his conqueror, was trampled under his horse’s feet, then sewed up in a sack, dragged through the streets, and thrown into the river. The Moguls who proceeded eastward invaded China. The Chinese resisted with innumerable multitudes, and battles were fought to which those of the present age are mere skirmishes. The soldiers, overcome with thirst, drank blood instead of water; hundreds of thousands fell on both sides, while human blood ran in streams for five or six miles. At last the fury of the Moguls was stopped by the ocean; for, having attempted the conquest of Japan, their fleet was wrecked, and an hundred thousand perished. Like other great empires, also, pretenders to the sovereignty started up, and the whole was parcelled out into a number of little states, which, of course, ceased to be formidable.
The decline of the Mogul empire did not restore peace to the world. The Turks continued their ravages; the western nations continued their crusades. England, which became a kingdom in 800, had been ravaged and conquered by the Danes and Normans, and likewise distressed by civil wars. At last, having emerged from its own difficulties, it began to inflict upon other nations the miseries itself had endured. Wales and Scotland became objects of the ambition of Edward I, who had already signalized his valour in the crusade. The Welsh were totally subjugated, and the Scots overthrown in the very bloody battle of Falkirk, where almost the whole force of the country was destroyed. The Scots,however, were never totally subdued. Robert Bruce retaliated on the English in the battle of Bannock-burn, where two hundred thousand English were defeated by thirty thousand Scots. But Robert was not contented with asserting the liberty of his country. Jealous of his brother Edward, he sent him with an army to conquer Ireland. We shall not doubt of his valour, or of the miseries he inflicted, or was willing to inflict, upon the people among whom he came. In destroying them he destroyed his own army. They were reduced to the most dreadful straits by famine, insomuch that they were obliged to feed upon the most loathsome matters, their own excrements not excepted.
Being now arrived at the beginning of the fourteenth century, we see that, from Ireland to China, mankind had involved themselves in one general work of destruction. Besides the wars, famines had been so frequent, that the eating of one another seemed to be but a common affair. Indeed the history of mankind would tempt one to believe that they thought themselves brought into the world for no other purpose but to destroy each other. As far back as the year 409, in the time of the wars of the Vandals in Spain, a dreadful famine took place, which, in 410, reduced many to the necessity of feeding upon human flesh; parents devoured their children, and the wild beasts, being deprived of the dead bodies which they used to feed upon, but which were at this time devoured by the living, fell upon the latter, and thus increased the general destruction. Such of the Romans as fled into strong holds and fortresses, were in the end obliged to feed upon one another. To these calamities the pestilence was added, which did not fail to rage in its usual manner. Famine and pestilence had also ravaged the city of Rome when besieged by the Goths under Vitiges, and under Totila. In this last siege the unhappy citizens were reduced to such straits, that they consumed even the grass which grew near the walls, and were at last obliged to feed on their own excrements. We do not indeed hear, at this time, of any particular instances of people feeding upon one another;though, in such dreadful emergences, it is scarcely to be doubted that some would have recourse to this terrible expedient in order to allay their hunger. But in the famines which took place during the ravages of the Saracens, Turks and Moguls, nothing seems to have been more common. In 1066 a most grievous famine took place at Alexandria in Egypt, and throughout the whole country. Three bushels and a half of flour were sold at eighty dinars, a dog at five, and a cat at three. The Visir, having waited on the Khalif, left his horse at the palace gate; but, before he returned, the animal had been carried off and eaten. Three men were hanged for this theft, and their bodies ordered to be exposed upon gibbets; but next day they were found picked to the bones, their flesh having been all cut off and devoured the preceding night. Bodies of men and women were boiled, and their flesh publicly sold. A violent plague followed, which swept away the greatest part of the inhabitants. As the hellish Moguls spread desolation wherever they advanced, so their retreats were equally formidable. In 1243, having advanced as far as Aleppo in Syria, they found themselves obliged to retreat, and that for a very odd reason, viz. that their horses were not well shod. This, however, did not hinder them from destroying every thing the earth produced, and stripping every man, nay, every woman, they met, even of their clothes. The consequence was, a terrible famine, so that people were fain to sell their children for small pieces of bread.
Such was the conduct of men, from one end of the earth to the other, during the interval, if any interval there was, between the plague in the time of Justinian and that of 1346. The pestilence, which had continually raged in one place or other, now overspread the whole world. At what time it began to decline we know not; and, indeed, as the same desolations and massacres continued, if these had any share in its production, it ought scarcely to have declined at all. That there was all this time little or no interval, appears from what Dr. Rush says, vol. iii. p. 165, that between theyears 1006 and 1680, that is, in a period of 674 years, the plague wasfifty-twotimes epidemic all over Europe. Supposing the intervals between every general infection then to have been equal, and the plague to have lasted only one year at a time, it must have recurred once in twelve years. But the intervals were not equal; for the Doctor tells us that it prevailedfourteentimes in the fourteenth century; which gives an interval of less than seven years; and if the pestilence so frequently overspread the whole continent, we may be very sure that it never was out of particular places of it. The Doctor adds, “The state of Europe in this long period is well known.” We shall also consider that of Asia.
The empire of the Moguls, which had fallen into decay, revived under Tamerlane; who, following the example of Jenghiz Khan, had the epithet of thedestroying princebestowed upon him by the Indians, on account of his behaviour in their country. Building his captives into walls with stones and lime, pounding them by thousands in large mortars, was his common practice; while the Turks, proceeding westward, wasted every thing with fire and sword; the christians all the while continuing their mad crusades, and when driven from one place endeavouring to establish themselves in another. At last the Turks and Tartars, or Moguls, or rather their emperors, happening to quarrel, the battle of Angora, in Galatia, decided (at the expense of some hundred thousand lives) the dispute in favour of Tamerlane; but, as his empire ended with his life, the Turks soon recovered from the blow they had received; and, by the taking of Constantinople in 1453, put an end to the terrible commotions which had prevailed in the east for so many ages. The crusades had also for some time been discontinued, and the world hath since that time been comparatively in a state of peace.
But, by so much intercourse with the Asiatics, especially with the countries particularly subject to the plague, all Europe had been so deeply infected, that the distemper could not but prevail for a long time, even though it had not been kept up by the almost continualwars of the Europeans with one another, which was too much the case. Dr. Sydenham informs us that before his time the plague commonly visited England once in forty years; but by this we must understand a very violent infection; for Dr. Rush tells us that plagues prevailed in Londonevery yearfrom 1593 to 1611, and from 1636 to 1649. The author of the Journal of the Plague Year (1665) mentions a visitation in 1656; and Mr. Carey, in the beginning of his account of the plague of London in 1665, says, that the plague wasalmost continuallyamong the diseases enumerated in their bills of mortality; so that we may fairly conclude it to have beenendemicin that city. Now let us see how England had employed itself. Its kings, as well as many of their subjects, had gone to the holy wars, as they called them, and, by continuing in that devoted country where most probably the pestilence first originated, it is impossible to suppose that some of them did not receive the contagion. Having caught the pestilence in theholy war, they came home to diffuse it among their countrymen, and to keep it up byprofane wars, I suppose, both foreign and domestic. Henry VII put an end to a very long and bloody contest between the houses of York and Lancaster; but he brought the pestilence along with him, which raged violently during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A most violent war, for half a century, on the continent of Europe, and civil wars in England, would still continue to keep the infection alive from 1600 to 1648, when a general peace was concluded; and from the subsequent state of tranquillity, probably, after the violent attack in 1665, it seems to have languished and died in England, as a plant in a soil not natural to it.
But, though England has since remained in peace, on the continent it has been otherwise. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the heroic madness of Charles XII seemed ready to confound the north, while the glorious exploits of prince Eugene and the duke of Marlborough appeared equally confounding to France. In the midst of these grand atchievments, the pestilencesilently claimed its share in the common work of destruction; carrying off upwards of two thousand in a week for some time, in 1709, in the city of Dantzick, and, in 1711, twenty-five out of sixty thousand inhabitants in Copenhagen.
The infection, however, seemed now to be retiring to the place from whence it originally came. In 1666, or soon after, it seems to have totally abandoned the island of Britain; with the attack in 1711 it left the western countries of the continent next to that island; in 1713, 1714 and 1715 we are informed by baron Van Swieten that it ravaged Austria; in 1721, or soon after, it abandoned France; in 1743 it made its last attack on Messina; and in 1784 we find it confined to Dalmatia and the eastern territories, where it has so long reigned without interruption.
From the view then which we have taken of the conduct of the human race, and the consequences of that conduct, we may reasonably conclude, that war will produce famine and pestilence, and that after all violent wars a violent pestilence may be expected, especially if the contending parties interfere with those nations where it is most frequent. Another piece of conduct by which mankind expose themselves to pestilential contagions is, the practice of cooping themselves up in great cities. Mr. Gibbon, speaking of earthquakes, says, that men, though always complaining, frequently bring mischief upon themselves. “The institution of great cities (adds he) which enclose a nation within the limits of a wall, almost realises the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had but one neck. In these disasters (earthquakes) the architect becomes the enemy of mankind. The hut of a savage, or the tent of an Arab, is thrown down without injury to the inhabitant; and the Peruvians had reason to deride the folly of the Spanish conquerors, who with so much cost and care erected their own sepulchres. The rich marbles of a palace are dashed on its owner’s head, a whole people is buried under the ruins of public or private edifices, and the conflagration is kindled andpropagated by innumerable fires necessary for the subsistence and manufactures of a great city.” In plagues, great cities are unquestionably as pernicious as in earthquakes; not indeed by reason of the weight and bulk of the materials, but the confinement of the people within the sphere of infection, and their continual exposure to the causes which prepare the body for receiving it. In fact, it has always been found that plagues begin in cities; and were it not for the multitudes that continually fly out of them there can be no doubt that the mortality would be much greater than it is. The intercourse of many nations with one another, the carrying from one end of the earth to the other of goods capable of bringing with them the infection, must also be supposed a very principal cause of pestilence; but this last will be more fully considered in the next section. At present we may conclude, that, the pestilential contagion having originally fallen upon mankind for their sins, it is still kept alive by the same causes; and, as far as we can conjecture, these sins are, the propensity to murder and destroy which breaks forth in war; the vanity, pride and luxury which produces great cities; and the same vanity, &c. joined with avarice, which gives life to commerce. Add to all this the neglect of the cultivation of the earth, which ought to be the principal business of man. In consequence of this neglect, immense tracts of it are still overrun with woods, covered with stagnant and noxious waters, or lying in waste and now uninhabitable deserts, fit only for serpents and the most destructive animals. Thus the very climate is changed from what it ought to be; the elements become hostile to man in an extreme degree, and the whole system of nature, originally designed to give life and happiness to the human race, is, through their own misconduct, changed into a system of misery, disease and death.
The account just now given of the ways in which mankind bring upon themselves the plague, and other diseases almost equally terrible, is so conformable to the opinions of the learned Dr. Mead, that I shall concludethis section with a few extracts from his works. Of the small pox he says, that he supposes this “to be a plague of its own kind, originally bred in Africa, and more especially in Ethiopia, as the heat is excessive there; and thence, like the true plague, was brought into Arabia and Egypt, after the manner above mentioned” (i. e. by war and merchandise.) “Now (adds he) if any one should wonder why this contagion was so long confined to its native soil, without spreading into distant countries, I pray him to consider, that foreign commerce was much more sparingly carried on in ancient times than in our days, especially between Mediterranean nations; and likewise that the ancients seldom or never undertook long voyages by sea, as we do. And Ludolfus observes, that the Ethiopians in particular were ignorant of mercantile affairs. Therefore when in process of time the mutual intercourse of different nations became more frequent by wars, trade and other causes, this contagious disease was spread far and wide. But, towards the end of the eleventh century, and beginning of the twelfth, it gained vast ground by means of the wars waged by a confederacy of christian powers against the Saracens, for the recovery of the Holy Land; this being the only visible recompense of their religious expeditions, which they brought back to their respective countries.” Of the true plague he says, “It appears, I think, very plainly, that the plague is a real poison, which, being bred in the southern parts of the world, is carried by commerce into other parts of the world, particularly into Turky, where it maintains itself by a kind of circulation from persons to goods; which is chiefly owing to the negligence of the people there, who are stupidly careless in the affair: that, when the constitution of the air happens to favour infection, it rages there with great violence; that at that time, more especially, diseased persons give it to one another, and from them contagious matter is lodged in goods of a soft, loose texture, which, being packed up and carried into other countries, let out, when opened, the imprisoned seedsof the contagion, and produce the disease whenever the air is disposed to give them force; otherwise they may be dissipated without any considerable ill effects. The air of our climate is so far from being ever the original of the true plague, that most probably it never produces those milder infectious distempers, the small pox and measles. For these diseases were not heard of in Europe before the Moors had entered Spain; and, as already observed, they were afterwards propagated and spread through all nations, chiefly by means of the wars with the Saracens. The sweating sickness was most probably of foreign original. It began in the army with which king Henry VII came from France, and landed in Wales; and it has been supposed by some to have been brought from the famous siege of Rhodes, three or four years before, as may be collected from one place of what Dr. Keyes says in his treatise on the disease. We had here the same kind of fever in 1713, about the month of September, which was called theDunkirk fever, is being brought by our soldiers from that place. This, probably, had its original from the plague which broke out at Dantzick a few years before, and continued some time among the cities of the north.”
I now take leave, for the present, of this subject, which exhibits the conduct of mankind in such a disagreeable view. Some, like M. Millot above quoted, may be apt to suppose that many of the accounts are exaggerated. But it is evident, that in our days it is impossible to determine any thing to be a falsehood, said to have happened in former ages, which is not absolutely contradictory to reason. Every one of the accounts inserted in this section has found a place in the works of historians reckoned authentic, particularly in the Universal History. All who believe the New Testament must certainly believe, from the words of our Saviour, that extraordinary things were to happen in the ages subsequent to his appearance. Can we then discredit the relations of those historians who inform us that extraordinary things have happened? Modern historians,making their own judgments the infallible measure of wisdom, and the strength of nations now existing the ultimate measure of human power, have endeavoured to turn into ridicule every thing which does not precisely accord with these two. In this the French are particularly culpable; accounting every thing to be incredible which exceeds the power of modern France to accomplish, though they certainly do not know even the extent of this power. Of such scandalous vanity we have a notable instance in the works of president Goguet, who positively determines that the walls of ancient Babylon, the pyramids of Egypt, and all the wonderful works of Semiramis, Nebuchadnezzar, &c. were not equal to the canal of Languedoc made by Louis XIV!