author
Pichatty de Croislainte
Best known for a firsthand account of the 1720 plague in Marseille, this early 18th-century writer recorded how the city struggled through one of the worst public health disasters in its history. The result is a vivid, plainspoken chronicle that still feels immediate centuries later.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Pichatty de Croislainte is known for A Brief Journal of what Passed in the City of Marseilles, while it was Afflicted with the Plague, in the Year 1720, a work drawn from events during the devastating plague outbreak in Marseille. Contemporary editions describe the journal as being taken from municipal records kept by him, and they identify him as a civic official connected with the government of the city.
That background helps explain the book's distinctive voice. Rather than reading like a distant history, it follows the crisis as it unfolds, noting public measures, fear, loss, and the strain placed on ordinary life. Its value lies in that closeness to events: it preserves not just facts, but the atmosphere of a city under extreme pressure.
Little biographical detail is easy to confirm beyond his connection to Marseille and this plague narrative. Even so, the journal has endured because it offers a rare eyewitness-style window into a major epidemic, making Pichatty de Croislainte an important name for readers interested in history, disease, and life in 18th-century France.