The Red Sphinx

by Alexandre Dumas

  This plague arose in Milan—as depicted in Manzoni’s novel The Betrothed—and passed from Milan to Lyon, where it wrought terrible havoc. It was said some soldiers had brought it over the Alps, where it broke out just outside Lyon in the village of Vaux. A cordon sanitaire was placed around the village, but this plague, like all plagues, had human vice as its ally. The plague found an accomplice in greed: some of the infected paid to be smuggled out of Vaux and into the Church of Saint-Nizier, which brought the contagion into the heart of Lyon.

  It was the end of September. One would have said, watching workers fall as if struck by lightning all across the populous quarters of Saint-Nizier, Saint-Jean, and Saint-Georges, that nature was mocking humanity. For the weather was magnificent: never had a more beautiful sun lit so clear a sky; never had the air seemed so sweet and pure; never had the Lyonnais seen such lush vegetation. There were no sudden changes of temperature, no extreme heat or thunderstorms, none of those atmospheric disruptions so often associated with outbreaks of communicable disease. Radiant and smiling, nature watched as corruption and death came knocking at the doors of house after house.

  Moreover, the spread of the scourge was inexplicable and oddly capricious. It spared one side of a street and ravaged the other. An island of homes would remain intact, while every house in the surrounding quarter was visited by the sinister guest. The plague passed over some of the most filthy and congested parts of the old city, only to break out in places like Bellecour and Terreaux, among the nicest, airiest, and most open neighborhoods.

  Along the river quays, the entire lower part of the great city was devastated. No one knows why, but for some reason, the plague stopped dead at Rue Neyret. There, outside a small old house, is a statue bearing the Latin inscription: Ejus prœsidio non ultra pestis 1628. Beyond, in Croix-Rousse, there wasn’t a single case of plague.

  Then, as if the plague hadn’t done enough damage in its march, infection was followed by murder. As in Marseilles in 1720, as in Paris in 1832, the populace, ever suspicious and credulous, cried out that they’d been deliberately poisoned. But unlike in Paris, where it was said criminals had poisoned the fountains, or in Marseilles, where convicts were blamed for corrupting the harbor water, in Lyon it was meat vendors who were accused of spreading the plague. These street sellers were said to be the ones who’d passed the pestilence from house to house.

  A Jesuit, Père Grillot, claimed the meat vendors were selling tainted lard and tallow. “It was in mid-September,” he said, “that we began to notice the spoiled meat. The sacristan in the Jesuit church found a sack of greasy meat behind a bench, and when he burned it, the smoke was so foul that he had to bury what wouldn’t burn.”

  Monsieur de Montfalcon’s lovely history book provides us these details, but unfortunately doesn’t tell us if Père Grillot was able to give absolution to those his claims assassinated. The very next day, an unlucky man who’d gotten tallow on his clothes from a lit candle was stoned by a mob. Then, in Guillotière, a doctor who’d concocted a potion for one of his patients was accused of poisoning him, and had to drink his own medicine to escape being killed. Any passing stranger might be accosted, pursued with the cry “Throw that poisoner into the Rhône!”

  When the plague broke out in Marseilles, the city aldermen went to consult with Chirac, the municipal physician, who told them, “There’s nothing to do but try to keep up your spirits.” However, as they found in Lyon, staying cheerful wasn’t so easy when the priests and monks advised giving up all hope, as the scourge was surely the instrument of God’s wrath. So advised, the simple folk regarded the plague not as an epidemic that could be staved off, but as a destroying angel with a flaming sword that no one could escape.

  The doctors who went on our expedition to Egypt learned a few facts about such plagues: they attack the weak, the feeble, and the afraid. Fear the plague, and you’re as good as infected. And who wouldn’t be afraid if they saw two Brothers of the Minimes chanting the General Atonement as they carried to Notre-Dame-de-Lorette a silver death lamp, on which were engraved the names of the city aldermen? Who wouldn’t be afraid when monks on soapboxes in the squares and on street corners loudly preached the end of the world, while their priests granted final blessings to the dying city? When a monk or priest passed in the street, some knelt in their paths to ask absolution—but many fell before they could receive it. Penitents roamed the city in sackcloth and ashes, ropes around their waists and torches in their hands, and sick citizens, leaning against walls or lying in the street, without knowing whether these penitents were consecrated and had the right to absolve the dying, shouted their confessions to them, hoping to save their souls at the price of their dignity.

  In such times we see how the grip of terror can sunder the bonds of nature, of friendship, and of love. Kin flees from kin, the wife abandons her husband, parents leave their children, the chaste surrender their modesty to any who will carry them away. One woman, laughing hysterically, told how she’d sewn into their funeral shrouds her four children, her father, her mother, and her husband. Another woman was widowed six times in six months, burying six husbands. Most citizens locked themselves in their houses or shuttered shops, jumping at every noise, eying passersby and gazing, haggard, from their windows, behind which they appeared as pale as ghosts. Few people were in the streets; those who had to go someplace did so at a run, with hardly a word for anyone they met. Anyone from outside Lyon who had to come into the city did so on a horse at the gallop, wrapped up to the eyes in a cloak. Gloomiest and most frightening of all were the physicians who made their rounds wearing a strange costume they’d invented, a beak wrapped in oilcloth that covered the mouth and nose, containing a handkerchief soaked in vinegar. Such a getup would have been laughable in ordinary times; but in this lethal atmosphere, it was terrifying.

  After eight days, the city was almost depopulated, though more by flight than by death. All those who could afford to leave had left; even the judges had vacated, and the courts were quite empty. Women gave birth by themselves, for the midwives had all fled, and the physicians were busy with the plague. The workshops were silent: no laborers sang their work songs, no vendors cried their wares in the streets. Everything was still, everywhere was the silence of death, broken only by the dismal sound of the bell of the dead-cart as it collected the corpses, and by the tolling of the great bell of Saint-Jean, which rang every day at noon. These funereal sounds had a woeful effect on the nerves, especially those of women, who would sit gloomily counting their rosaries while uttering only an occasional moan. Some, when they heard the bell of the corpse-cart approaching, fell dead as if stricken by lightning. Others, leaving a church where the death bell tolled, fell ill on the way home and died soon thereafter. One frantic woman threw herself down a well; another young lady ran out of her house in a frenzy and hurled herself into the Rhône.

  There were three main measures the citizens could take, and they took them: sequester the wealthy sick in their homes; lock up the sick poor in hospitals; and collect the bodies of those who had died. Some adopted a fourth course, skipping the first three, intruding into houses on the pretext of treating the sick or carrying out the dead, and instead carrying out anything of value they could find, breaking open desks, cracking safes, and relieving the dying of their rings and jewelry.

  To sequester the sick, doors were walled up and food and medicines were passed in through the windows. New gallows were put up in every quarter, and looters caught in the act were taken to them and hanged without delay.

  The hospitals were overwhelmed, so the city established a quarantine house on the right bank of the Saône. It had room for only two hundred beds, but had to accommodate four thousand patients: there were plague victims everywhere, in the rooms, in the corridors, in the cellars and the attics. Every victim who died and freed up a bed was replaced by two more. Doctors and nurses making their rounds could barely pick their way through the press. In between the stiffening corpses, which almost immediatel
y began to rot, the dying trembled and shook, throats burning, crying out for water. Here and there a body would rise in a spasm from its mattress or pile of straw and, sunken-faced and wild-eyed, paw at the air with its hands, then utter a deep groan and fall back, dead. Other victims, if they had the energy, recoiled from these visions, tripping over their neighbors and dragging off those sheets that would soon serve as their shrouds.

  And yet, the patients in the dreadful quarantine house were envied by those poor who were dying alone on street corners and in ditches.

  Most wretched of all were the beggars and vagrants who were pressed into service as corpse collectors. They were paid three livres a day, plus whatever they found in the pockets of the dead. They had iron rakes and pitchforks that they used to drag out the bodies and pile them onto carts. Any bodies found above the ground floor were thrown out through the windows. The corpses were buried to overflowing in mass graves, which fermented and burst open, spewing out rotting human remains.

  One old man by the name of Raynard had watched his entire family die, leaving him on his own. When at last he felt himself succumbing to the sickness, he was terrified of dying alone, being thrown into a mass grave, and denied a proper Christian burial. So he took a spade and a pick and used the last of his strength to dig his own grave. When the work was complete, he made a cross of his spade and pick and placed it at the head of his grave. Then he lay down on the edge of the pit, counting on his last convulsion to roll him in, in hopes that some passing Samaritan might see his body there and cover it with earth.

  Most terrible of all, amid the agony of a dying people was the laughter and cheer of some of the corpse collectors, awful men who came to be known as “the crows.” It was as if the dead were their friends, and the plague was their kin. They welcomed the coming of the plague to their city, and their admission into homes from which all their lives they’d been spurned. Like the Marquis de Sade, like the executioner of Mary Stuart, they wallowed in forbidden pleasures—and when a dead woman was pretty, when a corpse was beautiful, they celebrated a monstrous marriage of life with death.

  Appearing in Lyon, as we said, in September, the plague peaked after about thirty days, but continued to rage for another month. Toward the end of December, when bitter cold came south, it tapered off. The citizens celebrated its departure with dances and bonfires, but then the warm weather came back, a heavy rain put out the fires, and the plague returned for another bout.

  The epidemic revived to full force in January and February, then declined in the spring, only to reappear in August before finally disappearing in December. In just over a year, the plague in Lyon killed six thousand people.

  Archbishop Charles Miron had been the first to die, on August 6, 1628, and was succeeded by the Archbishop of Aix, Alphonse de Richelieu, brother to the cardinal. It was to this brother that the cardinal naturally addressed himself to ask if it would be possible to attempt another campaign against Piedmont, marching thirty thousand men through Lyon and the Lyonnais. The archbishop replied that the threat of disease had passed, and there would be plenty of empty homes to house the troops—and even the Court, should the Court choose to follow the army.

  When he received this response, the cardinal dispatched Monsieur de Pontis to Mantua that same day, to assure the duke that help was on its way. De Pontis was also ordered to place himself at the disposal of Duc Charles de Nevers to help plan the city’s defenses.

  LXVI

  One Year Later

  A year had passed since Richelieu, satisfied with the Treaty of Susa, or at least pretending to trust in it, had been forced to leave Piedmont to go fight the Huguenots in Languedoc. During that year, as he’d promised King Louis XIII, the cardinal had crushed the hopes of the Protestants, already badly battered by the fall of La Rochelle. He had reorganized the army, refilled the coffers of the State with new money, and signed his famous treaty with Gustavus Adolphus, which supported the Catholics of France against the Protestants, and the Protestants of Germany against the Catholics. He had sent Marshal Bassompierre to the Swiss Council in Solothurn to complain about the passage of the Imperial Germans across the lands of the Grisons, and to see if he could bring back another five or six thousand Swiss mercenaries.

  Finally, since he couldn’t yet get to Mantua personally, the cardinal had sent the best help he could in the form of his finest engineer, Monsieur de Pontis, with military advice from Maréchal d’Estrées, sent from Venice. With the plague in Lyon exhausted, the French army was put back on the march, though, as mentioned, a year after forcing Susa Pass and imposing terms on Charles-Emmanuel, the cardinal found himself back where he’d started: except that with Susa Pass cleared, and Fort Gélasse in French hands, Piedmont was open to him—he should be able to get to Casale to rescue the Marquis de Thoiras, under siege by Spinola, who’d succeeded Gonzalès de Cordova as commander of the Spanish troops.

  This time, the cardinal felt sure enough of the king that he could afford to leave him behind, having taken pains to reveal to him the treachery of Monsieur, Marie de Médicis, and Anne of Austria. And the cardinal’s vanity played its part as well: newly empowered, he was able now to undertake a campaign on his word alone, and in the king’s absence to reap its glory for himself. Every man of genius has a weakness, and Richelieu was so great that he had three: he wanted to be recognized not just as a great politician—which no one disputed—but also as a great general—making him a rival to his own commanders, Créqui, Bassompierre, Montmorency, Schomberg, and the Duc de Guise—and as a great poet, a title only posterity could award.

  At the beginning of March 1630, the cardinal was back at Susa, exchanging ambassadors and envoys extraordinaire with that elusive chameleon called Charles-Emmanuel, that crowned snake who, for fifty years, had been slipping from the grasp of the Kings of France and Spain.

  The cardinal had already spent a month in negotiations that had led nowhere. But he was compelled to be patient for fear the Duke of Savoy might prevent him from resupplying Casale with food and ammunition, where they were running out. The Duke of Savoy wasn’t strong enough to resist the force of France without the support of Spain or Austria—but he had the support of Spain from Milan, and of Austria from Wallenstein’s troops that had passed the Grisons. In fact, he might be better able to dispute the passage of Montferrat than he’d been to defend the Pass of Susa.

  As the delays wore at his patience, the cardinal wrote to the Duc de Montmorency, in a tone more friendly than formal:

  Monsieur le Duc, you know what we’d agreed between us: when the Italian campaign was over, you would be awarded the Sword of the Constable. But the Italian campaign, as you can see for yourself, won’t be concluded until the Duc de Nevers is confirmed as the ruler of Mantua. Last year’s campaign will be only a skirmish compared to this year’s war, which must support Duc Charles in his claims. It’s time we quit dealing with intermediaries and envoys while there’s still a chance of success. Go to Turin under the guise of a pleasure trip and meet secretly with the Duke of Savoy. You are gallant, Monsieur, and the ladies of the Court of Savoy are beautiful, so I don’t think you can complain too much of this task.

  But let me speak frankly of the real mission, which is delicate. You are related, through your wife, to Queen Marie de Médicis, and are known to be a member of Queen Anne’s circle—which will be a recommendation to the enemies of the king, though you are his friend as well. Try to arrange a direct meeting with the Duke of Savoy, or at least between his son and me, to find out his real position. Meanwhile, I, undistracted by beautiful ladies or lively music, will be sending scouts out in every direction. When you return, Duke, depending on what you find out, we’ll know in which direction to march. Just try to keep the truth of your mission under your hat.

  It was the kind of mission perfectly suited to the charming, elegant, and handsome Duc de Montmorency. He had, in fact, married the daughter of the Duke of Braciano, that same Vittorio Orsini who had been one of Marie de Médicis’s lo
vers before her marriage, and perhaps even after—if the rumors about Louis’s parentage were true, that made Montmorency the king’s brother-in-law. He was, indeed, devoted to Queen Anne, though it was Buckingham who had stolen her heart when he had come to Court as ambassador of Charles I. Buckingham had scattered the pearls from his doublet across the Court of the Louvre, but had won a gem far more precious in the gardens at Amiens: a lady’s love.

  Yes, a man like the Duc de Montmorency would be welcomed at the Court of Savoy by all but the husbands of the beautiful Savoyard ladies. The duke therefore accepted this mission, half diplomacy and half gallantry, and departed for Turin, leaving the cardinal, as he’d said, to study the horizons to see which would be darkened by the oncoming storm.

  On the northern horizon, in Germany, Wallenstein daily grew more powerful, becoming almost unstoppable. The Emperor had made him the Duke of Friedland, ruling the vast, rich regions he’d conquered for Ferdinand in Bohemia, domains confiscated from so-called rebels. At Wallenstein’s own expense he’d raised an army of fifty thousand troops, repelled the Danes, beaten Mansfeld and his allies at the bridge of Dessau, defeated Bethlen Gabor, reoccupied Brandenburg, and conquered Holstein, Schleswig, Pomerania, and Mecklenburg—in token of which the Emperor named Wallenstein the Duke of Mecklenburg as well as of Friedland.

  But there his series of conquests came to a halt, at least temporarily. Ferdinand was assailed with complaints against his bandit general from all sides; seeking a way to remove him from Austria, Denmark, Hungary, and Germany, he sent him east and south. Recruits flocked to Wallenstein: he sent a force of them to Italy, and another to Poland, where a huge garrison of forty thousand men camped on the Baltic, devouring a country already exhausted. To feed his troops he had to conquer or perish, so he went back to war, marching on the rich Imperial cities of Worms, Frankfurt, Schwaben, and Strasbourg. His western vanguard occupied a fort in the Diocese of Metz, and Richelieu learned that their Monsieur, when he was in Lorraine, had made contact with Wallenstein to invite his barbarians into France—ostensibly to overthrow Richelieu, though the real target was Louis XIII.