The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 (32 page)

The year 1816 acquired immediate notoriety on both sides of the Atlantic as "the year without a summer." Heavy rain accompanied abnormally low temperatures in western and central Europe throughout the vital growing months. The monthly temperatures for that summer were
between 2.3 and 4.6°C colder than the mean. Northern England experienced the coldest July in 192 years of record keeping. Hailstorms and violent thunder showers battered growing crops. On July 20, the London
Times remarked that "should the present wet weather continue, the corn
will inevitably be laid and the effects of such a calamity and at such a time
cannot be otherwise than ruinous to the farmers, and even to the people
at large." 3 In Kent, one of the warmer parts of England, a poor wheat harvest ended on October 13, compared with the usual September 3. The
crop was in "so damp a condition, as to be unfit for immediate use."4

Europe was still reeling from a generation of war and economic blockade. Widespread industrial unemployment from the scaling down of warrelated manufacturing and the demobilization of thousands of men from
armies and navies had already created hunger for many poorer families.
The meager harvest soon drove cereal and bread prices beyond these families' reach. English wheat yields in 1816 were the lowest between 1815
and 1857, at a time when food and drink consumed two-thirds of a laboring family's budget. Fortunately, large grain reserves from the previous
year kept English cereal prices reasonably low for a while.

In France, "you could not eat the bread, it stuck to the knife."5 In the
country as a whole, the crop yielded half the normal grain after a cold
summer marked by widespread flooding and hailstorms. The wine harvest
began on about October 29, the latest date in years. In Verdun, the grapes
failed to ripen at all. More sophisticated transportation facilities than a
generation earlier eased the threat of hunger in many areas. There was a
food dearth rather than a famine. French prices rose sharply in rural areas,
but politically mandated subsidies in Paris kept bread prices there low.

Conditions rapidly worsened in remoter and mountainous areas.
Southern Germany suffered a complete harvest failure in 1816, such that
by the following winter there was "a true famine ... so far as this is still
possible in the state of civilization in which we find ourselves." Carl von
Clausewitz, who wrote those words, described poor villages and remote
towns where "ruined figures, scarcely resembling men, prowling around
the fields searching for food among the unharvested and already half rotten potatoes that never grew to maturity."6

The mean summer temperature in Geneva, where the English poet
Lord Byron had taken up residence in the Villa Diodati after abandoning
his wife in London, was the lowest since 1753. Byron's lakeside refuge
was filled with houseguests, among them Percy Bysshe Shelley and his
wife Mary. The cold weather kept the party indoors, so they entertained
each other with stories. Mary's invention became the classic horror novel
Frankenstein. The tourists were surrounded by famine. Grain and potato
prices had tripled, and more than 30,000 Swiss were breadless and with out work. The poor ate sorrel, Iceland moss, and cats. The streets of
Zurich swarmed with so many begging adults and children that 1817 became known as the "year of the beggars." "They are supported by private
and public charities, and distributions of economic soup." 7 In response,
government imported grain from as far away as Lombardy and Venice.
All too often, bandits intercepted the precious cargo in mountain passes
or on Lake Como. Offenders convicted of arson or robbery were beheaded, robbers whipped. Three women were decapitated for infanticide,
and the number of suicides rose rapidly.

Inevitably, the widespread hunger brought a surge in religious devotion, mysticism, and prophecies of the imminent demise of the world.
Baroness Julie de Kri dener of Baden, expelled from Baden in southern
Germany for her missionary zeal, distributed charity at every opportunity
through a fund supported by the sale of her jewels, income from her estates, and donations from wealthy supporters. "The Lady of the Holy Alliance" caused a great uproar in Switzerland by proclaiming that "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 all the powers of darkness save destruction, shame, and contempt."" Baroness Krudener's protests over the
treatment of beggars and her claimed miracles caused her to be banished
from several towns.

Social unrest, pillaging, rioting, and criminal violence erupted across
Europe in 1816, reaching a climax the following spring. For centuries,
the popular reaction to poor harvests and famine had been fervent prayer
and civil disturbances. The latter followed a well-established patterndemonstrations in front of bakers' shops and in market squares, accompanied by arson, looting, and riots. Whenever a food dearth and high grain
prices loomed, the working poor took to the streets, as they did in response to poor harvests in France and other countries throughout the
eighteenth century. But the grain riots of 1816/17 were marked by a level
of violence unknown since the French Revolution.

Trouble came first on the English side of the Channel, when, following
excess rainfall in East Anglia during May 1816, grain prices rose rapidly
and rural employment opportunities shrank. Marauding crowds of farmworkers attacked the houses of those who offended them, burned barns and grain stocks, and marched around armed with iron-studded sticks
and flags bearing the words "Bread or Blood." They demanded a reduction in bread prices until the militia confronted them and read the Riot
Act, which threatened the death penalty. The summer was quiet until the
poor harvest and renewed price rises brought more trouble. A crowd of
2,000 in Dundee, Scotland, plundered more than a hundred food shops,
then looted and burned a grain merchant's house. Once again, the militia
had to be called in to restore order.

The British disturbances had far more than merely the food dearth as
an agenda. Stagnation in trade and manufacturing, widespread unemployment, and the social stresses of rapid industrialization and emerging
class consciousness were major forces behind the rioting and behind the
accompanying Luddite movement. In March 1817, for example, a meeting of 10,000 Manchester weavers resolved to send a hunger march of
600 to 700 protestors, each with a blanket on their backs, to petition the
Prince Regent for measures to relieve the depressed cotton trade. The pathetic march, though apparently apolitical, was soon dispersed. Only one
"blanketeer" eventually reached London.

The food shortages were even more severe in Ireland, a country now
heavily dependent on the potato. Hundreds of smallholding families in
County Tyrone abandoned their homes in spring 1817 and lived by begging. They searched for nettles, wild mustard, and cabbage stalks. Food
was so scarce that "seed potatoes were taken up from the ground and used
for the support of life; nettles and other esculent vegetables eagerly sought
after to satisfy the cravings of hunger.... The whole country was in motion.°9 At least 65,000 people perished despite urgent relief efforts.

Bread riots afflicted France by late 1816. In November, an enraged
Toulouse crowd, incensed by price increases, prevented shipments of
wheat from leaving the town and imposed a "fair" price of 24 francs a
hectoliter. Although there were no grain shortages in the region, the people were afraid of what would happen if all stocks were exported elsewhere. A company of dragoons eventually dispersed the rioters. Policemen and soldiers protecting grain wagons on their way to market in the
Loire Valley found themselves fighting with hungry villagers. By midwinter 1817, many magistrates had given up searching for thieves. Serious
disturbances broke out around Paris, where grain imports and subsidies kept prices down, while those outside the city worried about food deprivation. Thousands of immigrants from the countryside poured into the
city in search of cheaper food. An 1817 census classified no less than 11.5
percent of Parisians as "destitute" out of a total population of 713,966.
Large vagrant bands wandered the countryside, seizing control of the
town of Chateau-Thierry, emptying the food storehouses, and intercepting grain barges along the Marne river. When the military took control of
the town, the rebellion spread to the countryside amidst rumors of an impending Napoleonic coup.

The subsistence crisis triggered massive emigration throughout Europe.
A quarter-century of war had pent up a generation of potential emigres.
Tens of thousands of people journeyed down the Rhine from the German
states into Holland, hoping to cross to America. Conditions in Amsterdam were so deplorable that many would-be immigrants tried to return
home. Hundreds begged for ship berths. Even those with money for the
fare could not find space. The authorities tried returning the destitute to
their homelands and stopping them at the frontier, with little success.

Even the emigrants' home countries worried about the exodus.
Switzerland, already famous for its watches and textiles, and fearful of losing vital industrial secrets, had frowned on emigration in 1815. But increasing pauperization and high food prices caused thousands to leave.
Tens of thousands of Englishmen, mainly from Yorkshire, migrated to the
United States between 1815 and 1819 for the same reason, as did 20,000
Irish in 1818. How many of these people were specifically fleeing hunger
rather than general deprivation is unclear, but it is certain that more than
20,000 Rhinelanders emigrated to North America between 1815 and
1830 to escape a miserable life of subsistence farming on highly fragmented land holdings where the margin of risk was simply too high and
wage earning opportunities were too rare.

During the summer of 1816, Professor Jeremiah Day, President of Yale
College in New Haven, Connecticut, was responsible for maintaining
temperature records at the university, a continuous weather chronicle that dated back to 1779. The task involved rising at 4:30 each morning to
read the instruments, even in the dead of winter. Day's readings for June
1816 are astoundingly low, averaging 18.4°C, about 2.5°C lower than
the mean for 1780 to 1968. New Haven was no warmer that month than
Quebec City in Canada. It was the coldest June ever known.

Spring had been dry and late that year, with frosts in mid-May. Nevertheless, crops were planted and beginning to grow when three unseasonable cold waves swept down rapidly from Canada and spread over New
England. For five days between June 5 and 10, bitterly cold winds blasted
the region. Eight to fifteen centimeters of snow fell in northern New
England before the weather moderated. Vermont was pounded with
heavy rain, which turned to snow on June 9. The snowfall blanketed the
hills and stranded dozens of sheep. Farmer Hiram Harwood of Bennington, Vermont, wrote in his journal of fields stiff with frost, of weather so
cold that he wore mittens in the fields until midday. By June 10, his corn
was "badly killed and was difficult to see."10 Hundreds of freshly shorn
sheep perished in the cold. In Concord, New Hampshire, guests at the
Inauguration Address of Governor William Plumer battled strong winds
and snow flurries on their way to the meeting. Once seated, wrote guest
Sarah Anna Emery: "our teeth chattered in our heads, and our feet and
hands were benumbed."11 A friend's "troublesome tooth" ached unbearably in the cold.

New York and southern New England fared little better. The Catskill
Mountains were dusted with snow. Thousands of migratory birds fled
their frozen country forests and flocked to New York City, where they
dropped dead in the streets. In South Windsor, Connecticut, the Reverend Thomas Robbins, who farmed part time, preached to his congregation on the parable of the fruitless fig tree (Luke 13:6-9). A vineyard
owner came to pluck fruit from the fig tree on his property, found none,
and ordered his laborer to cut it down. The worker urged him to leave it
alone and to cut it down the next year if it did not bear fruit. In other
words, be patient, for this affliction will pass.

The cold wave passed and farmers throughout New England planted
anew. Just under a month later, a second, but less severe, cold spell
brought heavy frost to Maine. Many lakes in southern Canada were still
iced over. Widespread crop damage prompted fears of insufficient hay for the coming winter. Newspapers urged farmers to replant yet again and
discussed possible substitutes, like potato tops, as winter fodder. The remainder of July and early August were warm and summerlike, except for
a prolonged drought. The indefatigable Thomas Robbins thanked Providence for the wonderful change, but worried about rain. On August 20,
he conducted a "solemn and interesting season of prayer" for rain. A
shower fell the next day, coinciding with a sharp, unseasonal frost, which
effectively ended any chance of a decent corn crop. Had the frost come
two weeks later, the harvest would have been excellent. Despite the unusual weather, many farmers fared reasonably well. The Vermonter Hiram Harwood mowed his hay in early August, had his winter wheat in by
August 23 and his oats a few days later, "as fine a crop of oats as is rarely
seen."12