The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History

by William K. Klingaman

  One route through western Pennsylvania ran over Laurel Hill, a mountain more than seventy miles long, where rains turned the track to soft clay mud more than a foot deep, obstructed by stones nearly as large as a barrel. A farmer from Stonington, Connecticut, who tried to navigate his wagon through the pass watched it nearly tip over four times as he descended a single slope, but the passage was so narrow and steep that the walls of the pass helped him push the wagon upright each time.

  Not all the emigrants were young. In late September, a dozen wagons filled with passengers described as “consistently advanced in life” left Worcester, Massachusetts. And some left to avoid the prophesied apocalypse, including a band of religious zealots calling themselves “Christ-ians” who left Connecticut to find “a kind of Paradise on earth” in Ohio.

  By the end of October, so many emigrants from New England were flooding into Ohio—to Columbus (recently named the new state capital), Steubenville, Chillicothe (the former state capital), and Circleville—that the Zanesville Messenger reported that “the number of emigrants from the eastward the present season, far exceeds what has ever before been heretofore witnessed.” The Messenger’s editor estimated that at least several thousand refugees had passed through Zanesville in the past several weeks: “On some days, from forty to fifty wagons have passed the Muskingum at this place. The emigrants are from almost every state north and east of the Potomack, seeking a new home in the … territories of the west; traveling in various modes—some on foot, some on horses, and others in different kinds of vehicles, from the ponderous Pennsylvania wagon, to the light New England pleasure carriage.”

  Back east, fires continued to devastate woodlands. Smoke from a series of blazes in eastern New York State, from Ticonderoga to Plattsburgh, blinded sailors on Lake Champlain. One traveler reported that the smoke on the lake was so thick that “the steam boat moves very slow and cautious, continually sounding, not being able to discover either shore when near the middle of the Lake.” A measure of relief finally arrived in the form of a snowstorm on October 17, weeks ahead of the first snow of autumn in a typical year. In Albany, snow fell for most of the evening. Chautauqua County, New York, received eight inches; St. Lawrence County reported slightly more. A correspondent in Haverhill, New Hampshire, reported a snowfall of “about 12 inches deep.… Sleighs have been going quite brisk today.” Hanover, the home of Dartmouth University, also witnessed heavy snow, and travelers noted drifts several feet deep in the nearby White Mountains.

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  PRESIDENT Madison returned to Washington on October 9, after an absence of more than four months, only to find that workmen still had not finished repairing the Executive Mansion. Nor had much work been accomplished on the Capitol. Builders still awaited new stone for the House side, and renovations to the Senate were delayed when numerous legislators decided they wanted more extensive changes than originally planned. Cost overruns already plagued the project, but the architect in charge, Benjamin Latrobe, promised that the additional work would “render the building much more strong and durable than it was before the conflagration.”

  With only five months left in what Madison termed his “detention,” tributes to the President filled the press. Unlike Washington, Adams, or Jefferson, Madison would leave office with the nation largely united behind the policies of his administration; as Henry Adams concluded, Madison “seemed to enjoy popularity never before granted to any President at the expiration of his term.” John Adams agreed, in his own fashion. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams accused the Madison administration of “a thousand Faults and blunders,” yet he acknowledged that Madison and his Cabinet had “acquired more glory, and established more Union than all his three Predecessors, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, put together.” Indeed, Madison was so highly regarded by the American people at the end of his term that he still holds the record among presidents for having the most towns and counties named after him in the United States.

  * * *

  CONDITIONS in Ireland deteriorated rapidly in September and October. From all parts of the island, but especially from the west, came eyewitness reports of constant, drenching rain that ruined acre upon acre of crops. “Dreadful weather,” Daniel O’Connell wrote to his wife on September 30. “There is nothing but rain and wretchedness.” Accounts in The Times of London made clear the extent of the developing catastrophe:

  Westport, County Mayo: There is not in this extended county 100 acres reaped—the heavy crops all floundered and rotted … no change of weather, at this advanced season, can render them productive—add to which, a complete failure in the potatoes.

  Killarney, County Kerry: Wheat afflicted by blight. Well-ripened fields of oats flattened by rain. “I saw one field of flax not yet pulled; many spread, but no prospect of their drying. Very little of the turf [used for heating homes in winter] brought home.”

  Castlebar, County Mayo: Before today, we believe, there was not twenty acres of corn reaped throughout the whole of the county of Mayo, and scarcely an acre within six miles of this town, in any direction.… The potatoe [sic] crop is by no means as productive as usual, and a considerable part of it has been further injured by the late floods.… Every article of consumption, except flesh meat, is advancing in price.”

  Belfast, County Antrim and County Down: All the low grounds flooded—the people struggling to save whatever they can of the harvest, up to the knees, and many places to the middle, in water. The potatoes in the flooded ground are looked upon as lost, the season being so far advanced; the turf not saved.

  Athlone, County Westmeath: I know not whether this letter will reach you, for the roads are quite inundated. I do not think we shall have an acre of wheat within ten miles round us. We are in the midst of a flood. The fields are covered, and I have not been able to discover, in an anxious walk, any vestige whatever of grain.

  Mullingar, County Westmeath: The lakes around the town rose “to an height unprecedented in the memory of the oldest inhabitant.” The road to Longford was nearly impassable. Lough Owel had completely inundated several acres of ground around its banks. “Yesterday morning it overflowed the supply cut (to the Royal Canal), the banks of which burst, and has inundated the country to an alarming extent.”

  Enniskillen, County Fermanagh: Lough Erne overflowed its banks. Meadows on low ground had been underwater for the past several months. By October 8, the water had risen to nearly four feet, and Lough Erne continued to rise. “There is no crop; we shall not have as much corn in this country as will support us. Potatoes are equally bad, which, you know, must be the case when we are under inundation.”

  A traveler who made the thirty-mile journey from Ballinasloe to Moate reported that nearly all the country he traversed was under water. “It was a miracle, he said, how the coachman made his way through.” Along much of the route, slash walls—stone walls without mortar—were covered up to four feet high.

  Skeptics in England suspected the Irish were exaggerating the extent of the destruction, but a recently returned traveler made it clear in the October 19 issue of The Times of London that was not the case. “Let no one impose upon you,” he wrote, “the harvest is destroyed.… I see nothing before us but the prospect of the most grievous of all earthly calamities—famine.” The only hope seemed to rest with heaven. “God is powerful, and can, by a miracle, save his creatures from destruction; but without such, we see nothing for it but the desolation of the land.”

  By the first week of October, Peel harbored no illusions about the state of the harvest in Ireland. In a series of letters to Lord Liverpool (October 9) and Lord Sidmouth (October 10), the chief secretary explained in detail the magnitude of the impending disaster. “Since the first of this month we have had almost an incessant storm—the Sun has scarcely made its appearance and the wind has done as much damage as the rain,” Peel informed the prime minister. “I assure you nothing can be more melancholy than the Accounts which are received from every part of the Country … not one third of
the average Crop of wheat will be saved.” The recent rains had been especially destructive to the oat and barley crops, Peel continued, “and (what is of more consequence so far as this country is concerned) to the Crop of Potatoes. I fear the effect of the wet has been not only to reduce the size of the Potatoe [sic] but to make it soft and unwholesome.” Moreover, the constant rain had rendered the turf—which Irish peasants depended upon as free and abundant fuel to compensate for shoddy housing and thin clothing—nearly unusable. “If there is a severe winter the want of fuel will be a greater source of misery than the want of food,” Peel concluded. “I fear we have melancholy Prospects before us, and are threatened with calamities for which it is impossible to suggest a remedy.”

  Peel did not expect increased hardship to provoke widespread violence in Ireland. “Distress in this country has a different effect—almost a contrary effect—from what it has in England,” he informed a colleague. “Sheer wickedness and depravity are the chief sources of our crimes and turbulence, and I am satisfied that severe distress would rather tend to diminish than to increase them.” In any event, Peel believed the Irish peasantry would never challenge an open display of English armed force. “We burn people in their houses, and shoot at them from behind ditches, in this country in great abundance,” he wrote, “but there is a most salutary terror of what is called ‘the Army,’ whether it consists of two regiments or of a couple of dragoons.”

  Perhaps Ireland could avoid violence in the aftermath of a disastrous harvest; it could not avoid disease. Typhus—known as “the contagious fever,” or simply, “the fever”—already was spreading through parts of County Mayo by the end of September. Presumably Peel did not know that lice and fleas carried the organism that caused the fever, but he did understand why Ireland in 1816 presented a fertile ground for an epidemic. As Peel subsequently explained to Parliament, “the causes of the disease are, I fear, want of employment, and the poverty it engenders, and the defective quality and quantity of food, from the wetness of the season and the want of fuel.” Certainly Ireland qualified on all counts.

  Hordes of itinerant beggars wandering across Ireland in the wake of the failed harvest exacerbated the situation, as did the Irish peasantry’s custom of gathering for the wakes of their friends. “On such occasions,” observed Peel, “the infectious disease of a few is communicated to the many, and the disorder becomes violent and general.” Peel seemed genuinely moved by the irony of the situation: that the generosity and hospitality for which the Irish were justly renowned and praised also gave rise to epidemics of contagious disease. And the government could do nothing to stop it. “No persuasion can induce them to shut their door against the wandering beggar,” he noted, “or refuse to pay the last sad tribute to the remains of their friends and kindred.… In Ireland, no fear of contagion—no fear of death—can operate to induce the people to forego the habits which they cherish.”

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  ON October 16, King Louis XVIII and the royal French court commemorated the twenty-third anniversary of the execution of Marie Antoinette. Every church in Paris held funeral services; every theater in the city closed. The king and his household were in mourning. Neither Louis nor his brothers appeared in public that day, but the late queen’s eldest daughter, Marie Thérèse, the Duchess D’Angoulême, rode to St. Denis at eight o’clock in the morning to pray at the tomb of her mother. Several hours later, the room in the Conciergerie in which revolutionaries had imprisoned the doomed queen was dedicated as a chapel to her memory, hung with black cloth and illuminated with candles.

  Final results from the elections for the Chamber of Deputies: 92 Ultra-Royalists (mostly from the south and west), and 146 supporters of the Moderate cabinet. The Ultras—who called themselves “pure royalists”—were well on their way to establishing a cohesive and disciplined political party, headed by the king’s brother, the Count d’Artois, and backed by a majority of the French clergy. The new majority of deputies, on the other hand, were united primarily by their opposition to the Ultra-Royalist cause, and included both those who sincerely desired a constitutional monarchy, and smaller groups who favored a republic or the restoration of a Bonapartist regime, but felt it prudent to pose as constitutionalists for the time being.

  All factions agreed on the need to rid France of the Allied army of occupation. The costs of feeding the Allied troops, added to the scheduled reparations payments, put a severe strain on the French budget, especially in light of the dismal harvest. Opposition to the Allied army united even King Louis XVIII and Madame de Staël. The doyenne of Coppet decided to return to France, but before she left Switzerland she married her longtime lover, the chevalier Albert Jean Michel de Rocca, a Swiss military officer who had served with the French army during the Peninsula War. Upon her arrival in Paris, Madame de Staël established a new salon in the rue Royale which quickly became the home of a group of French liberal intellectuals known as the Doctrinaires. Occasionally an Ultra stopped by to debate politics with the most famous woman in France. One “pure royalist” seeking respect for his party reminded her that “we also, Madame, we enter within the constitution,” to which Madame de Staël replied, “Yes, as the Greeks did into the Trojan horse, to set fire to the city!”

  Unlike Napoléon and the various revolutionary factions who had tried to silence Madame de Staël, Louis chose to simply ignore her. “We attach so little importance to anything you do, say, or write,” the king informed her before she left Coppet, “that the government wants to know nothing about it; nor does it wish to give you any fear on this account, or even allow anyone to hinder you in any way in your projects and mysteries.” Royal disdain notwithstanding, Madame de Staël retained substantial influence in Paris; the Doctrinaires who basked in her principles would play a vital role in ending the Bourbon dynasty in 1830. But in the autumn of 1816, she spent much of her energy—despite her chronic insomnia—attempting to persuade her old friend, the Duke of Wellington, to reduce the size of the army of occupation and remove it as soon as possible.

  Wellington initially demurred. “All of you who have such short memories, and such a strong imagination, you forget everything that has brought France to the situation she finds herself in,” the Iron Duke wrote to Madame de Staël. “You forget where she was last year, and the far worse situation she might have found herself in as a result … [and] national hatred now inspires you to cry that it is to England that we owe our misfortune, and that we are under English influence.” The British government, he insisted, could not display weakness by backing down simply because the French people had turned against the Allied army. But Wellington also understood the parlous state of French finances. Without a loan from British bankers, he informed Lord Castlereagh from Paris, “France will be aground this year…”

  Reports from the provinces confirmed Wellington’s pessimism. The “general scarcity of the harvest,” combined with widespread unemployment presaged a winter of hardship and discontent. In the fields around Le Havre, for instance, the harvest was reportedly “in a deplorable state.” Cold weather throughout October added to the misery, since the necessity of maintaining fires forced up the price of fuel, and left the poor even less of their income to spend on food. The price of bread continued to rise, and shortages already had developed in Paris. In one quarter of the capital, bakers ran out of loaves by nine o’clock on a morning in late October, leaving long lines of angry citizens who continued to clamor for bread until a deputation of gendarmes dispersed them. “Nothing but the utmost vigour and wisdom can carry the Government through this trying season,” predicted one resident.

  Few contemporaries associated the words “utmost vigour and wisdom” with King Louis, but the monarch and his advisers recognized the crisis and responded with unwonted alacrity. At the end of September, the government issued a circular to the prefects in the provinces, urging them to ease the plight of the poor “during the rigorous season,” specifically through a program of public works. “The repairing of highw
ays and roads affording works of the greatest utility, his Majesty requests that they will promote them with all possible activity,” the government announced. Not only should the prefects immediately spend their funds allocated for road repair, and ensure that they spent monies budgeted for charity throughout the coming winter, but if they had any funds left over from any other account, “they shall hasten to authorize the disposal thereof in useful works.”

  Wellington, meanwhile, ensured that the Allied army of occupation would have enough to eat during the winter by purchasing substantial quantities of grain from several northern German states that had escaped the ravages of the summer rains.

  * * *

  BYRON and John Hobhouse departed Geneva on October 5 for a tour of northern Italy—first Milan, and then Verona. Before departing, Byron sent detailed instructions to John Murray, his publisher in London, about the copyediting of several of his latest poems. In a moment of introspection, Byron mused that his compulsion to write poetry was, he feared, incurable. “God help me!” he confessed to Murray, “if I proceed in this scribbling, I shall have frittered away my mind before I am thirty; but it is at times a real relief to me.”

  As he entered Italy, Byron admitted that the autumn weather was “very fine, which is more than the Summer has been.” He found Milan “striking—the cathedral superb,” an opinion tempered by his admission that the city reminded him of a slightly inferior version of Seville. The inhabitants seemed “very intelligent and agreeable,” although one suspects his opinion also reflected the fact that the region was “tolerably free from the English.” Doubtless Byron’s English contemporaries who were unaware of the Calvinistic side of his personality would have been surprised that he considered the state of morals in Italy “in some sort lax.” During his stay in Milan, Byron attended the Teatro della Scala, where he met Stendhal, and visited the Ambrosian Library, where he purportedly managed to purloin part of a lock of Lucrezia Borgia’s hair.