author

Pichatty de Croislainte

Best known for a vivid firsthand account of the 1720 plague in Marseille, this early-18th-century civic writer recorded a city under extraordinary strain. His journal still stands out for its immediacy, public detail, and sense of lived history.

1 Audiobook

A brief Journal of what passed in the City of Marseilles, while it was afflicted with the Plague, in the Year 1720

A brief Journal of what passed in the City of Marseilles, while it was afflicted with the Plague, in the Year 1720

by Pichatty de Croislainte

About the author

Pichatty de Croislainte was a French civic official associated with Marseille in the early 1700s. Contemporary bibliographic records for his plague journal describe him as a counsellor and orator of the community, and as the king's attorney for matters of police or public order in the city.

He is known for Journal abrégé de ce qui s'est passé en la ville de Marseille, depuis qu'elle est affligée de la contagion, published in 1721, a work drawn from the council chamber memorial of the Hôtel de Ville. An English version also circulated as A Brief Journal of what passed in the City of Marseilles, while it was afflicted with the Plague, in the Year 1720.

Because so little biographical detail is easy to confirm today, he is remembered mainly through that book itself: a close, official-looking record of the Marseille plague and the city's response. For readers interested in eyewitness history, his writing offers a rare view from inside a major public crisis.