"In Deep Winter", by Richard von Drasche-Wartinberg. 1923 If the reign of Louis XIV remains for the general public the apogee of the French monarchy, as much by its duration as by the magnificence of the Court and its buildings, we must not forget its shadows. As if to accentuate an end of reign already largely overshadowed by conflicts, France experienced one of its most terrible winters in 1709, which Voltaire described as “cruel” in his book Le Siècle de Louis XIV . If it is at its peak, the phenomenon is not new, because the XVII th century then experienced, according to climatologists, a mini-ice age. Up to -25 degrees in Beauce France has been involved since 1701 in the War of the Spanish Succession, which must support the rights of the Duke of Anjou, second grandson of Louis XIV, ascended to the Spanish throne on November 15, 1700 under the name of Philippe V. This European war, which mobilized the economy and the vital forces of the kingdom against several enemies, heavily drained the finances of the kingdom and increased an economic and demographic crisis which had already been raging for the previous decade. This will be accentuated with the most terrible winter that France has known for five hundred years. There were in fact several cold spells, as the first commissioner of Versailles, Pierre Narbonne, described in his Journal “The winter of 1709 was extremely harsh. The frosts began on the night of January 5, and continued without interruption until the 25th of the same month. A false thaw which occurred that day, and lasted until the 29th, melted the snow which was very abundant; but on the 30th, the frost resumed with more violence, and lasted until February 20, when a real thaw occurred. » The man of law evokes here only the apogee of the phenomenon. Low temperatures, well below seasonal averages, had already been noted since October 1708. Moreover, the cold continued even beyond February, since very low temperatures were again noted from 10 to 15 March 1709. This is how, at the height of the crisis, temperatures dropped to -16.3 o C in Paris or even - 25 o C in Beauce. All the indicators are alarmist, announcing the crisis to come, and the Marquis de Dangeau notes on February 4, 1709:“All the letters we have from the provinces speak only of the disorder that the great cold has caused this winter. Many vines are frozen; it is even feared that the wheat may be. It is the same in all the neighboring kingdoms. All the trees planted for a few years are dead. » No one is spared Obviously, no inhabitant is prepared to endure such temperatures, and these climatic circumstances have catastrophic consequences on the population. The most vulnerable people, children and the elderly, are the first to be affected. The memorialists laconically list the deaths which multiply. As early as January 8, the Marquis de Sourches, Provost Marshal of France, thus reported that a captain in the regiment of guards broke his leg in Paris while he was walking on the frozen streets, specifying that it was an "unfortunate accident, but fairly common in excessive cold as was the one then, during which people were found in various places dead of cold". "The common people are freezing to death like flies," wrote the king's sister-in-law, Madame Palatine, referring to the plight of the kingdom's population. These fatal anecdotes are unfortunately repeated a lot. Madame Palatine, the king's sister-in-law, describes the misery of the people since Versailles, which was also numb to cold, in a letter dated February 2:"The cold is so horrible in this country that since the year 1606, in what is claimed, we have not seen such a thing. In Paris alone, 24,000 people have died from January 5 to date. She also adds a very sad story, in a letter of the following March 2:“The common people are dying of cold like flies. The mills are stopped, and this has caused many people to die of hunger. Yesterday, I was told a painful story about a woman who stole a loaf of bread in Paris, from a baker's shop:the baker wants to arrest her; she said, weeping:“If they knew my misery, they wouldn’t want to take this bread away from me, I have three naked little children; they ask for bread; I can't stand it, and that's why I stole this one. The commissary before whom the woman had been taken told her to take him to her house; he came there, and found three little children bundled up in rags and seated in a corner, shivering with cold as if they had a fever; he asks the eldest:“Where is your father? The child replied, “He is behind the door. The commissioner wanted to see what the father was doing behind the door, and he recoiled in horror:the unfortunate man had hanged himself in a fit of despair. Such things happen every day. » Even if it is better equipped to face these conditions, the Palace of Versailles is not spared from the cold either. While the Duc de Saint-Simon evoked the wine freezing in the glasses, the Marquise d'Huxelles wrote to her correspondent on January 14:“The news is short, Sir. More trade because of the weather… The ink freezes at the end of the pen”, while Madame Palatine mentions the “frozen partridges” on January 19… We also note several deaths within the courtiers themselves, undoubtedly accelerated by the cold snap. Louis XIV. the slights of time. The bakeries are looted This cold did not fail to affect the crops, leading to very poor harvests, worse than in previous years. In the spring, barley is sown to make up for the lack of wheat, and the government makes sure to order cereals from foreign countries. Above all, it takes measures to avoid any speculation, by asking that all stocks be declared, and has prices controlled to avoid increases. In the same way, bread is distributed and, specifies Pierre Narbonne, “on April 19, 1709, the Parliament issued a decree which ordered the formation in each city of a tax roll for the wealthiest inhabitants, in order to provide for subsistence. poor ". Despite all these resolutions, we cannot avoid riots linked to the food crisis, of which women are often at the origin. Several bakeries are looted, and the people demand the dismissal of the Minister of Finance, Michel Chamillart. Moreover, you have to imagine that the war continues tirelessly and that you also have to feed the troops on the front. This event has serious consequences on French demography, since there are, over a similar period, around 100,000 more deaths. This number must be further increased if we add to it the causes of the deaths which occurred well after the winter of 1709, and which naturally resulted from the crisis:in the first place, poor nutrition due to the lack of harvests; diseases such as dysentery, typhoid, smallpox or scurvy; finally the children who, having lost their parents, die in their turn in the most profound destitution. The effects of the winter of 1709 will be felt at least until June 1710... Find out more The Versailles of Louis XIV, M. da Vinha, Perrin, 2012.
