From all these circumstances, the notion is highly probable that it was the petechial fever which raged in the French camp; and if we may attach any importance to the incidental accounts of historians, it may perhaps be to the purpose to state that Prudencio de Sandoval, who has written from authentic materials, calls the disease “las bubas.”[517] This name, it is true, presupposes a rather strange confusion of petechial fever with lues; and, indeed, the diseases among the French troops from 1495 to 1528, have been oddly jumbled together by Sandoval. It shews, however, that there still existed a recollection of the prevalent eruptions which occurred in the pestilence of 1528; and, therefore, this whole account might perhaps be the more justly applied to petechial fever, as this same historian states, that the French called the disease after the village of Poggio reale “les Poches,”[518] by which name the well known bubo plague would hardly have been designated. If, however, we choose to suppose that at one and the same time _different diseases_ prevailed in the French army, this notion is not only supported by the express testimony of a contemporary[519], but also by many observations ancient and modern[520], that have been made in cases where the circumstances have been similar to those which then prevailed. It is ever to be regretted that there was no intelligent Machaon to be found in the camp before Naples; such a one would undoubtedly have left us some pithy observations on the combination and affinity of petechial fever and bubo plague.
SECT. 2.—TROUSSE-GALANT IN FRANCE.—1528, AND THE FOLLOWING YEARS.
Deeply as the irreparable loss of such an army was felt by the French, yet were they destined to suffer still greater misfortunes at home. The dark power which threatened all Europe regarded neither distance nor limits. It seized on the French nation in their own country whilst their military youth were destroyed before Naples. The cold spring and wet summer of 1528 destroyed the growing corn[521], and a famine was thus produced throughout France, even more grievous, on account of its duration, than the period of scarcity in the time of Louis the XIth[522], for the failure of the harvest continued for five years in succession, during which all order of the seasons seemed to have ceased. A damp summer heat prevailed in autumn and winter, a frost of a single day only occasionally intervening. The summer, on the other hand, was cloudy, damp, and ungenial. The length of the days alone distinguished one month from another. It appears plainly from detached accounts how much the usual course of vegetation was disturbed. Scarcely had the fruit trees shed their leaves in the autumn when they began to bud again, and to bear fruitless blossoms. No returns rewarded the toil of the husbandman, and the longed-for harvest again and again deceived the hopes of the people. Thus, even during the first of these calamitous years, the distress became general, and the increasing indigence was no longer to be checked by human aid. Bands of beggars wandered over the country in lamentable procession. The bonds of civil order became more and more relaxed, and people soon had to fear not only robbery and plunder on the part of these unfortunate beings, but the contagion of a pestilence, the offspring of their distress, which followed in their train.