"THERE never was a finer morning seen than the 1st of November," recalls Reverend Charles Davy of All Soul's Day 1755, on the hour before one of the most stupendous wraths of God ever witnessed by humankind.
For Europeans, the instantaneous carnage was unprecedented as were the natural calamities which stalked behind the initial earthquake, picking off more thousands of injured and fortunates. The metaphysical crisis it sparked cannot be overstated. Furthermore, the legacy of that day is tied to 2011 Japan.
If you were a scientist in 1755, chances are you possibly ranged from rationalist athiesm or agnosticism to anti-dogmatic deism in your religious worldview. It was, after all, the climax of the Age of Enlightenment, already 135 years after Francis Bacon wrote the seminal analysis of nature Novus Organum. Like most of the leading astronomers and mathematicians you probably had some understanding of astrology, and interpreted the geophysical forces and diseases of the world as being tied to the movements and degrees of the luminaries, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn: Uranus would be discovered in 26 years.
Europe's evolution economically and culturally had been dramatic; Portugal had already been in the new world, notably Brasil, for two centuries. The name for its economy is mercantilism. Portugal butchered peoples worldwide through slave trading in Angola, trading colonies throughout India to plantations in Brasil. This was a sophisticated, globalizing, complex Europe. To whichever degree as debated over among intellectuals, Europe was progressing in their eyes. Science increasingly classified natural phenomena in a new, understandable and orderly way.
The Survival of Rev. Charles Davy
The earthquake that struck in mid-morning, 1 November 1755 came so subtly at first that Rev. Davy believed that a breeze was shaking the papers on his desk in Lisbon, Portugal. To give you some idea of the quality of construction at the time, he assumed the secondary trembling of the building as due to carriages on the road. Davy witnessed an earthquake previously in Medeira, and in his suspicion soon concluded another was at hand. Then began a jarring, horrifying disruption to the regular order of human life:
Upon this I threw down my pen---and started upon my feet, remaining a moment in suspense, whether I should stay in the apartment or run into the street, as the danger in both places seemed equal; ...but in a moment I was roused from my dream, being instantly stunned with a most horrid crash, as if every edifice in the city had tumbled down at once. The house I was in shook with such violence, that the upper stories immediately fell; and though my apartment (which was the first floor) did not then share the same fate, yet everything was thrown out of its place in such a manner that it was with no small difficulty I kept my feet, and expected nothing less than to be soon crushed to death, as the walls continued rocking to and fro in the frightfulest manner, opening in several places; large stones falling down on every side from the cracks, and the ends of most of the rafters starting out from the roof. To add to this terrifying scene, the sky in a moment became so gloomy that I could now distinguish no particular object; it was an Egyptian darkness indeed, such as might be felt; owing, no doubt, to the prodigious clouds of dust and lime raised from so violent a concussion, and, as some reported, to sulphureous exhalations, but this I cannot affirm; however, it is certain I found myself almost choked for near ten minutes.
Davy's account is, truly, vivid in describing the succession of earthquake intensity, the collapse of the vast majority of the city's buildings, the bombardment of dust from lime, the terrifying toppling. The mind enters a strange place when it accepts as fact that death is one's impending fate, which survivors of traumatic ordeals can identify in his text. Yet Davy would survive even greater terror as he began rushing:
...through the narrow streets, where the buildings either were down or were continually falling, and climbed over the ruins of St. Paul's Church to get to the river's side, where I thought I might find safety. Here I found a prodigious concourse of people of both sexes, and of all ranks and conditions, among whom I observed some of the principal canons of the patriarchal church, in their purple robes and rochets, as these all go in the habit of bishops; several priests who had run from the altars in their sacerdotal vestments in the midst of their celebrating Mass; [All Soul's Day] ladies half dressed, and some without shoes; all these, whom their mutual dangers had here assembled as to a place of safety, were on their knees at prayers, with the terrors of death in their countenances, every one striking his breast and crying out incessantly, Miserecordia meu Dios! . . . In the midst of our devotions, the second great shock came on, little less violent than the first, and completed the ruin of those buildings which had been already much shattered. The consternation now became so universal that the shrieks and cries of Miserecordia could be distinctly heard from the top of St. Catherine's Hill, at a considerable distance off, whither a vast number of people had likewise retreated; at the same time we could hear the fall of the parish church there, whereby many persons were killed on the spot, and others mortally wounded.
It all unfolded in the midst of great praise for the saints who intercede on behalf of Catholics to Jesus Christ, lord and savior, for protection whether spiritual or physical. The confusion as everything familiar and assumed from stone to sky transgressed inherent states and turned to harm, even destroy, all around shocked its victims to their bones. Not even the water would leave Lisbon alone:
On a sudden I heard a general outcry, "The sea is coming in, we shall be all lost." Upon this, turning my eyes towards the river, which in that place is nearly four miles broad, I could perceive it heaving and swelling in the most unaccountable manner, as no wind was stirring. In an instant there appeared, at some small distance, a large body of water, rising as it were like a mountain. It came on foaming and roaring, and rushed towards the shore with such impetuosity, that we all immediately ran for our lives as fast as possible; many were actually swept away, and the rest above their waist in water at a good distance from the banks. For my own part I had the narrowest escape, and should certainly have been lost, had I not grasped a large beam that lay on the ground, till the water returned to its channel, which it did almost at the same instant, with equal rapidity. As there now appeared at least as much danger from the sea as the land, and I scarce knew whither to retire for shelter, I took a sudden resolution of returning back, with my clothes all dripping, to the area of St. Paul's. Here I stood some time, and observed the ships tumbling and tossing about as in a violent storm; some had broken their cables, and were carried to the other side of the Tagus; others were whirled around with incredible swiftness; several large boats were turned keel upwards; and all this without any wind, which seemed the more astonishing. It was at the time of which I am now speaking, that the fine new quay, built entirely of rough marble, at an immense expense, was entirely swallowed up, with all the people on it, who had fled thither for safety, and had reason to think themselves out of danger in such a place: at the same time, a great number of boats and small vessels, anchored near it (all likewise full of people, who had retired thither for the same purpose), were all swallowed up, as in a whirlpool, and nevermore appeared.
Analysis
So we come to understand that only by an auspicious outcome did the greatest firsthand chronicler of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, among the worst disasters in history, survive. So much did not survive. After the earthquake, after the tsunami which came in three successions came the fire. According to wikinfo, "The new Opera House, opened just six months before (named the Phoenix Opera), burned to the ground. The Royal Ribeira Palace, which stood just beside the Tagus river in the modern square of Terreiro do Paço, was destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. Inside, the 70,000-volume royal library as well as hundreds of works of art, including paintings by Titian, Rubens, and Correggio, were lost." Over 80% of Lisbon's buildings were brought down, whether by quake or flames. This copper engraving depicts the subsequent fires:
The earthquake's intensity is believed to have been comparable to the 10 March quake in Japan, either in the high 8s or low 9s. The tsunami travelled north as far as Britain. The wave height in North Africa has been proposed as high as 66 feet (20-plus meters). Many of us today would be at a loss for a means of survival yet this struck far less prepared Europeans and Africans over 250 years ago. Across the continents, hundreds of thousands perished.
After the earth and water struck, even more survivors fell. Those tent-dwelling creatures depicted in the first engraving suffered cold in the wake, disease spread by the impacts on sanitation and from hunger. Starting to sound familiar?
The Lisbon Cathedral, here, was obliterated, along with most religious structures: embedded below is a picture showing the remains of a convent. For the first time since the arrival of the Black Death over 4 centuries prior, did such emphasis on the social equalization found in death adhere in commentary, whether Davy's or subsequent philosophical debate. Under the rule of God, our material doom is fairly distributed. Philosophical and theological debates raged, not entirely unlike the role that the Shoah would play in sparking criticism within Judaism, centuries later. A fictionalized version of the 1755 earthquake features prominently in Voltaire's attack on the 'just world fallacy' and God in Candide, as well as in Poeme.
...There were relief efforts, but with the power of man and beast it was harder to rescue trapped and injured people. Estimates to this day vary widely: I've seen estimates from 30-90,000 for the casualties. Sebastião de Melo, prime minister, commanded soldiers to seize the labor of survivors in an effort to "bury the dead and heal the living."
Any denizen of the developed world who has survived an intense earthquake therein probably owes some debt of gratitude to the people of Lisbon in 1755 and the post-earthquake engineers. On order from King Joseph I and Sebastião de Melo, civil engineers raced to understand how to strengthen buildings for future times. Through the development of the Pombaline style the Portuguese gave us some of the earliest, earthquake-resistent modern buildings. Many Americans, especially Californians, can trace back to the 1906 quake, but fewer appreciate the great crisis of 1755.
PLEASE, IF ABLE, CONTINUE TO HELP PEOPLES AFFECTED BY THE 10 MARCH EARTHQUAKE.