ABSTRACT
In 1720, six years after Britain had abandoned quarantine restrictions against the Baltic, Marseilles was decimated by one of the deadliest outbreaks of bubonic plague ever to strike terror into post-medieval Christendom.1 Nearly half the population of 100,000 was wiped out, with the same ratio dying in many nearby towns, including Toulon. Frantic attempts were made to control the epidemic by cordons sanitaires. Western Europe, especially the maritime nations of Britain and Holland, reacted with panic and disbelief; Marseilles was one of the Mediterranean ports where quarantine procedures were supposedly a model for dealing with disease from the East.
