Jérémie Foa

During the winter of 1564, a sudden and severe cold wave struck the Mediterranean and all of Europe: “the hands, feet, ears, and genitalia of several men froze as they walked through the fields […]. During these frosts, several men were found dead, who had died of nothing other than cold […]. The combs of roosters and hens froze and fell off their heads a few days later” (Haton, 2001). Historians of the Wars of Religion have extensively studied the Provencal chroniclers for bloody conflicts between Protestants and Catholics. However, a fresh reading reveals numerous unnoticed annotations. The contemporaries faced an invisible enemy, more dangerous than the opposing armies: climate change. Much has been written, rightly so, about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Catherine de Médicis’ supposed Machiavellianism, or the period’s contribution to the invention of religious tolerance or political constitutionalism (Skinner, 1978). He will dedicate his time at Iméra to writing a book on the environmental history of the Wars of Religion, based on the experiences of ordinary Provençals facing a significant climate cooling during a protracted religious conflict.
How did they confront these challenges, interpret them, and attempt to adapt?

The Climate, the True Enemy

Had the contemporaries spoken, they might have painted a surprising picture of the Wars of Religion – quite different from that depicted by specialists. On the ground, what distinguishes the period 1560-1610 is less the soldier than the climate. The real enemy of the predominantly rural population was meteorological. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie demonstrated that the era experienced an extraordinary “push of the Little Ice Age,” a “remarkable offensive swelling of the Alpine glaciers.” Winters were cold, summers cool, and springs rotten, as evidenced by increasingly late grape harvests (September 29 during the Wars of Religion, compared to September 25 in the early 16th century…). In Provence, it rained continuously from October 1561 to February 1562. This severe winter cold almost always led to massive spring floods due to snowmelt. The result was catastrophic famines. Five were particularly memorable: 1562-1563, 1565-1566, 1573-1574, 1586-1587, and 1596-1597. Each time, grain was scarce, prices soared, and people died.

On this weakened population, the opportunistic plague struck and wreaked havoc: the epidemic raged from 1562 to 1567, again in 1573, 1586, and 1596, never disappearing entirely. The ravages of war, the horrors of the climate followed by the plague, resulted in immense population losses. In 1563, France experienced one of its highest mortality peaks: the population decreased by over a million. One in twenty French people lost their lives! Researchers, obsessed with political turmoil or religious controversies, have almost always neglected the environmental and demographic history of the late 16th century. Yet, it offers invaluable insights into the challenges faced by societies confronting climate change. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie wrote: “Imagine today, which is very likely, a press and media devoting most of their coverage to the Tour de France or the Paris-Dakar, almost immediately after a demographic catastrophe causing a minimum of 3 million deaths in our country.”