The Year Without Summer (37 page)

On the night of February 19, 1817, the residents of the western coastal town of Carrigaholt
attacked the supply ship
Inverness
, which had been loaded at Limerick with butter, pork, and bacon to be shipped to
London. When the ship landed briefly at Carrigaholt, a mob formed, apparently furious
that Irish provisions were destined for the more affluent English. As the local police
commander, Captain Miller, explained in a note to the shipment’s owner, the crowd
“boarded and rendered [the
Inverness
] not seaworthy, by scuttling her, and tearing away all her rigging.” The rioters
then proceeded to “rob the crew of all their clothes, tore their shirts, which they
made bags of, to carry away the plunder, and then broached the tierces of pork and
distributed the contents to people on shore, who waited to convey them to the country.”
The police intervened, recovered the goods, and arrested the rioters.

Trouble continued the following morning, however, when local residents “collected
in some thousands, and went down to the beach, where they formed into three bodies …
declaring that they defied the police, and would possess themselves again of what
had been taken from them.” This time the crowd succeeded in overcoming the police;
again they boarded the ship and stripped it clean. “A more complete plunder,” reported
Captain Miller, “has seldom been witnessed.” The mob even managed to steal the ship’s
anchors and bilge pump, while the women of the town supplied their husbands and brothers
with whiskey. A detachment of twenty cavalry managed to disperse the crowd, but not
before three men were killed and thirty-five arrested.

News of grain shortages in Ireland reached Parliament shortly thereafter. On March
7, the House of Lords debated whether to prohibit the distillation of grain alcohol
in Ireland in order to make more grain available for food. Several days later, the
Commons discussed a similar proposal brought in a petition from the people of Belfast,
which sought to outlaw distillation in the whole of the United Kingdom. The measures
elicited considerable debate. Lord Liverpool believed that suspending distillation
would only shift production to the black market, resulting in no increase in grain
supplies but a substantial rise in alcohol prices. Liverpool refused to acknowledge
that the disorder in Ireland was widespread or warranted government intervention:
as the
Morning Chronicle
pointed out, “there was therefore no general measure wanted, the difficulties in
Ireland were altogether local.” In such situations, Liverpool believed government
interference “frequently did more harm than good.”

Faced with mounting public discontent and multiple riots, Peel did not have the luxury
of Liverpool’s caution. As grain stocks in Ireland reached precipitously low levels
in March, Peel decided to import low-quality oats to be sold as seed at a fixed price
of two shillings and six pence per stone (fourteen pounds). Farmers needed seed oats
both to plant for the coming season—most had eaten their entire stocks over the winter,
leaving no grain to plant in the spring—and to release for consumption the stocks
of better-quality oats that remained. “Several cargoes of oats are on their way from
abroad to the North of Ireland,” reported the
Bury and Norwich Post
, “which will be a considerable help to the farmers, who are greatly in want of seed.”

Peel’s plan met with disaster. When the ships arrived in Ireland, the oats proved
of even lower quality than seed oats: Some were already spoiled, and others were black-colored
oats that farmers knew they would be unable to sell on the market. The government’s
price also proved far too high. Ultimately, Peel was forced to sell the unpalatable
oats for a far lower price and admit that his scheme had done little to ease the country’s
grain shortage.

As the typhus epidemic continued to spread across Ireland, Peel turned to direct financial
intervention. He established a seven-member committee, financed with £50,000, to distribute
aid to the poor and starving. To avoid any accusations of religious prejudice, the
committee included two Quakers and a Catholic. Peel instructed the committee to buy
and sell grain, set up “soup shops,” and provide handouts where necessary. This support
paled in comparison to the contributions of private charitable concerns, however,
which relied upon contributions from local landowners and other wealthy individuals.
One estimate of these organizations’ finances puts their combined budgets at £300,000,
or six times that of the government relief fund. It was not until the passage of the
Poor Employment Act in June 1817 that the British government provided substantial
funds for alleviating Irish poverty. Of a total budget of £1.75 million across the
United Kingdom, the act allowed the lord lieutenant to spend up to £250,000 to employ
Irish workers, mostly on infrastructure projects such as building roads, bridges,
churches, and schools.

Peel’s response to the typhus epidemic followed the same strategy as his response
to the food shortages. He set up a national relief committee that received and evaluated
applications from local committees for funds, but by the time the epidemic subsided
in 1819, the national committee had spent less than £20,000. The government again
left the bulk of the charitable work to private committees, relying on the Irish national
tradition of generosity.

An 1821 survey by Francis Barker and John Cheyne estimated that the typhus epidemic
killed 65,000 Irish and rendered another 1.5 million—roughly one out of every four
people on the island—seriously ill. Although the epidemic had ended, the disease never
completely left Ireland. Periodic outbreaks occurred throughout the 1820s and 1830s,
generally associated with poor harvests and famines in particular regions. With each
period of “distress,” London became steadily more involved in providing relief to
the Irish. Although the food shortages in 1822 were not as severe as those in 1817,
the government sent nearly £200,000 of assistance, four times Peel’s original budget.
Nevertheless, each round of famine and epidemic reduced the resilience of the Irish
poor and depressed their standard of living still further. The events of 1816 and
1817 accelerated a vicious cycle of hunger, sickness, and poverty that would culminate
in the disaster of the Great Famine in 1845.

*   *   *

N
O
country on the European continent suffered more than Switzerland from the disastrous
effects of the summer of 1816. The mountainous eastern cantons, including St. Gall,
Glarus, and Appenzell, were particularly hard-hit. By April 1817, the price of wheat
in that region had risen to 350 percent of the average level of 1815. Wages of weavers
and cotton spinners, meanwhile, continued to fall, until many workers earned less
for a full day’s work than the price of a one-pound loaf of bread.

Widespread famine ensued. The misery was exacerbated by the political structure of
the Swiss federation, as canton officials jealously guarded their own supplies and
established barriers to the shipment of grain outside their boundaries. Most canton
governments purchased grain abroad, typically from Russia or Egypt, but with no sea
or ocean ports, the importation of food stocks proceeded even more slowly than in
nations such as France or the Netherlands. In the meantime, authorities obtained whatever
grain they could and provided it to their indigent citizens at prices below market,
or else gave bakers subsidies to produce cheaper bread. Some cantons put a fraction
of the unemployed to work on public works projects. Town governments also established
soup kitchens to feed their poor, and private charities raised funds to care for local
orphans and widows, but the task seemed overwhelming when more than 20 percent of
the population of St. Gall and Appenzell were classified as paupers, and when “nearly
one-quarter of the population of Glarus lacked means of subsistence.”

Thousands of Swiss peasants took to wandering and begging, sometimes in vast throngs
that stretched out along the highways. One writer noticed “the paleness of death in
their cheeks”; another noted “a wild, benumbed look of desperation in their eyes.”
When Louis Simond reached the town of Herisau in Appenzell in June 1817, he discovered
that “the number of beggars, mostly women and children, is perfectly shocking … Manufactures
are without work, and it is impossible for them to procure food: they are supported
by private and public charities, and distributions of economical soup (made with oatmeal
and a little meat) in quantities scarcely sufficient to sustain life. We see nothing
but meadows and pastures, not a patch of potatoes or grain, not even a garden.” The
following day, Simond arrived in the village of Wattwyl, where he found fewer beggars—but
only because “many distressed people are dead, if not absolutely of hunger, yet of
the consequences. After supporting for some time a miserable existence, on scarcely
any thing but boiled nettles and other herbs, their organs became impaired … and they
perished in a few days.”

Few riots shook Switzerland, but crimes against property soared. Burglary, theft,
embezzlement, arson—“crimes multiply with wants,” noted one traveler, “the prisons
are full, and executions frequent.” In the spring of 1817,
The Times
of London published reports of “the perpetually increasing crowd of mendicants and
vagabonds who menace the rights of property, and endanger the public health and safety.”
Still the price of bread continued to rise; by the summer of 1817, it peaked at four
to five times the price in 1815. “The general impression,” observed
The Times
, “is that the mass privation seems in no wise to diminish, and that hardships and
sufferings may fairly be anticipated more grievous than have been experienced by the
poor.”

Local authorities responded with vicious punishments. Louis Simond reported that officials
in the town of Appenzell had sentenced two convicted criminals to death by beheading—“one
for setting fire to a barn, the other for repeated robberies.” Eight others had recently
been whipped. “There is,” Simond concluded, “nothing Arcadian in all this.” Yet even
the harshest penalties appeared to have little effect. “Neither sentries nor bailiffs
nor policemen nor begging-ordinances were any longer respected; not even severe penalties
were feared—hunger and misery, instinct of self-preservation, and gross, often base
temper engendered a far stronger command, which despised harsh measures as mere child’s
play.”

Frequently canton officials encouraged emigration to reduce the poor rolls; nevertheless,
the best estimates indicate that fewer than 20,000 Swiss left the country. Most either
headed for southern Russia, or traveled down the Rhine to the Netherlands ports, where
they took passage on ships bound for North America. A substantial number of Swiss
settled in the Midwestern United States, including a community of Swiss Mennonites
who bought land in the hill country of Ohio and Indiana, purportedly because it “reminded
them of their former Swiss homeland.” Others settled in Canada, where the Earl of
Selkirk recruited Swiss mercenaries to defend his Red River Colony in Manitoba from
native attacks. Meanwhile, negotiations commenced between the canton of Fribourg and
the royal government of Portugal to establish the first Swiss colony in Latin America:
the settlement of Nova Friburgo, in Brazil.

If sunspots and cataclysmic weather had seemed to presage the end of the world in
the summer of 1816, the appalling spectacle of famine and misery in 1817 gave further
evidence of an approaching apocalypse, and provided momentum to a revival movement
that already was under way in Switzerland. The most notorious champion of divine reckoning
was the Baroness de Krüdener, a Russian writer and mystic who had gained notoriety
through her relationship with Tsar Alexander I in 1815. Convinced that corruption
and evil governed Europe in the post-Napoleonic world, de Krüdener predicted that
God would soon intervene and restore justice for the poor. “The Rhine rots with corpses;
people, contrary to the law, are buying blood at butcher shops. Misery is rampant
and menaces all our security,” she wrote in January 1817. “The time is approaching
when the Lord of Lords will reassume the reins. He himself will feed his flock. He
will dry the eyes of the poor. He will lead his people, and nothing will remain of
the powers of darkness save destruction, shame, and contempt.”

Well-known for her benevolence, de Krüdener spent the spring of 1817 moving from one
part of eastern Switzerland to another, dispensing food to the hordes of vagrants
and beggars who followed her, and denouncing the wealthy and powerful who ignored
the plight of the poor. “It is a disgraceful falsehood of the newspapers to talk of
idle vagabonds at a time when no one has any work to do, and when thousands come and
implore me to give them work; when all the factories are closed in consequence of
the punishments inflicted on cupidity and selfishness,” de Krüdener insisted. “Far
from hearing of robberies as the papers declare, the only wonder is that the whole
country is not given up to brigandage.” Alarmed by her gospel of social radicalism,
and fearful of the crowds of starving paupers she attracted, police officials—enthusiastically
supported by local residents—drove de Krüdener from village to village, dispersing
and expelling her followers. By the end of the summer she had been driven out of Switzerland
altogether, into Breisgau in southwestern Germany.

A fair harvest finally brought grain prices down in the autumn, but so many Swiss
perished in the
Hungerjahre
of 1817 that the nation recorded more deaths than births for one of the few years
in its history.

*   *   *

P
RUSSIA
escaped the worst of the devastation. The summer’s weather wreaked slightly less
damage upon its crops in 1816 than the states to the south, and a more efficient system
of political administration, along with a strong tradition of active government intervention,
limited the effects of the grain shortages that appeared in 1817. Officials moved
aggressively to purchase foreign grain, even at inflated prices, and the leading citizens
of numerous Prussian cities (including Coblenz, Düsseldorf, and Frankfurt) established
Kornvereine
—cooperatives funded by local businessmen and landowners that purchased grain abroad
and then sold tokens that residents could redeem for bread at prices about twenty-five
percent below the market price. (Some of these tokens subsequently became collectors’
items for numismatists.)