Arson, conspiracy and rumour in early modern Europe

Abstract

During the night of 24 May 1524 a fire broke out in the city of Troyes in the French province of Champagne, a fire which was to rage for two days and nights, destroying up to a quarter of the town (including at least 300 houses) and seriously damaging three of the city's churches. A number of fatalities was also reported. In the aftermath of the fire, as an assessment of the damage was made, the city council undertook a review of municipal security and ordered the expulsion of non-natives of Troyes, the safe storage of inflammable materials and the provision of water outside each house. Emergency grain supplies were also organized, as many stores had been destroyed in what had already been a poor yield that year. The extent of the fire reveals the vulnerability of urban communities at a time when fire-fighting methods were still extremely primitive and fire insurance non-existent, but the sources also demonstrate the capacity of these communities to recover from such a setback. For fire was a common enough occurrence in cities in this period, an everyday hazard in narrow streets where houses were huddled together and the primary building material and source of fuel, for both domestic use and manufacturing, was wood. Indeed, there is now a substantial literature on urban fires of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which concentrates largely on the physical damage inflicted, the sources of relief available to the victims and the precautions to be taken to prevent a recurrence of such misfortune.