| The Great Fire of London | |
|---|---|
| The summer of 1666 in London had been long, hot, and dry. Like everyone else, Thomas | |
| Farriner, a baker, wanted the heat to end. His bakery shop occupied the ground floor of his | |
| house in Pudding Lane. On the night of September 1, he carefully checked the six | |
| fireplaces he used to bake bread to make sure the fires had been extinguished. Then he went | |
| 5 | upstairs to bed. He hadn’t checked his fireplaces carefully enough. Shortly after midnight, |
| the smell of smoke and the crackling of flame woke him up. His house was on fire! As the | |
| flames licked upward, Farriner, his daughter, and a servant scrambled out a window and | |
| onto the steep roof of their neighbor’s house. Farriner’s maidservant, however, was too | |
| frightened. She stayed inside the house and perished in the fire. | |
| 10 | Farriner and his neighbors threw buckets of water on the inferno, their eyes |
| watering from the smoke and their lungs straining of air. The fire continued to burn. | |
| Finally, the parish constables arrived and ordered the neighboring houses to be torn down | |
| to keep the fire from spreading. When Farriner’s neighbors protested, Sir Thomas | |
| Bloodworth, the lord mayor of London, backed them up. He didn’t realize how serious the | |
| 15 | fire was. He had made a fatal decision. By seven o’clock that morning¬¬¬¬— Sunday, |
| September 2, 1666— the fire was out of control. Pushed by an easterly gale, it roared | |
| toward the River Thames and consumed everything in its path. Hundreds of houses, | |
| riverfront warehouses, and structures lining London Bridge burned to the ground. Men, | |
| women, and children rushed to save their furniture, clothing, and other belongings. Those | |
| 20 | who could afford it hastily hired boats to row their families and goods across the river to |
| safety. | |
| King Charles II finally ordered buildings near the fire to be demolished, but he was | |
| too late. As the day wore on, Londoners stopped trying to put out the flames and just fled. | |
| Thousands clogged the narrow streets, pushing carts, carrying blankets filled with their | |
| 25 | possessions, pulling small children away from danger. Many stopped to pray at small |
| churches that had not yet been touched by flames; others kept moving. Firefighters found it | |
| nearly impossible to worm their way through the crowds to the fire—not that their efforts | |
| would have made much of a difference. Many simply gave up and joined the mass exodus. | |
| As Monday, September 3 dawned, the fire rushed toward London’s commercial | |
| 30 | center. The Royal Exchange, home to numerous fancy shops, provided fodder for the |
| flames. The city’s wealthier residents, who at first did not believe the fire would ever reach | |
| them, began to fear they would lose their worldly goods. In desperation, they paid poor | |
| Londoners exorbitant amounts of money to pile their belongings in carts and move them | |
| away from the fire. Not surprisingly, thievery was rampant. By that evening, the Thames | |
| 35 | was clogged with barges and smaller boats as shop-keepers tried to save their wares and |
| householders scrambled to salvage their belongings. | |
| Charles became increasingly desperate. He ordered his brother James, the Duke of | |
| York, to curb the chaos and organize firefighting efforts. Makeshift command posts soon | |
| surrounded the fire, and James offered lots of money to lower-class men to control the fire. | |
| 40 | Using long hooks, bands of newly minted firefighters demolished many buildings in an |
| attempt to create a firebreak. | |
| Not even their desperate efforts could prevent the fire from advancing westward | |
| toward Whitehall Palace where Charles lived. During the early morning hours of Tuesday, | |
| September 4, James and his band of firefighters stood watch at the River Fleet, praying that | |
| 45 | the river would douse the flames. But the flames jumped the river and quickly surrounded |
| the men on two sides. They fled, barely escaping with their lives. To the north, a man-made | |
| firebreak barely slowed down the flames. In the late afternoon the fire leaped over it to | |
| ravage the opulent shops lining Cheapside, one of London’s most important streets. The | |
| Tower of London, which contained gunpowder stores, was also directly in the line of the | |
| 50 | fire. Had not firefighters successfully blocked the flames by blowing up houses near the |
| Tower, the gunpowder would have exploded in a huge ball of flame. | |
| Enormous chunks of London had fallen prey to the Great Fire. But, Londoners | |
| reasoned, the flames had eaten through wooden structures. Therefore, St. Paul’s Cathedral, | |
| with its thick stone walls, should be fireproof. Using this logic, countless residents trekked | |
| 55 | to the cathedral, storing their belongings in its nooks and crannies. They did not take into |
| account that the cathedral, now nearly 600 years old, was under repair. The scaffolding that | |
| fronted the building was tinder-dry wood. On Tuesday night, the scaffolding caught fire. | |
| Soon the lead roof began to melt. The molten liquid ran down the street. Books stored in | |
| the cathedral’s crypt went up with a loud swoosh, and stones flew from the building. | |
| 60 | As St. Paul’s Cathedral melted to the ground, the wind began to die down. The |
| firebreaks around the fire’s perimeter finally began to work. By Wednesday morning, | |
| September 5, flames were guttering and going out. Small fires still crackled here and there, | |
| but most of London was a smoking husk. Nearly all government buildings, thousands of | |
| houses, and almost 100 parish churches smoldered. Well over half of London’s estimated | |
| 65 | half-million citizens—mostly the poor and middle-class—were left homeless. Many had |
| erected makeshift shelters in a large public park. Others walked aimlessly around the | |
| smoldering streets, not knowing what to do next. According to official figures, only a few | |
| people—one of them Farriner’s unfortunate maid— had died in the blaze. Others believed | |
| that many more perished, but their bodies had been completely consumed. | |
| 70 | People were devastated, angry, and looking for someone to blame. Conspiracy |
| theories flew through the streets. Native-born Londoners looked suspiciously at foreigners, | |
| especially French and Dutch immigrants. The French were longtime political enemies, and | |
| at the time of the fire, England was involved in the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The Dutch, | |
| according to rumor-mongers, wanted to cripple England so that they could control | |
| 75 | European trade. More and more people began to think that “sneaky foreigners” had set the |
| fires, hoping to drive honest Englishmen and women out of their homes and business. | |
| Many claimed to have seen such people lobbing manmade firebombs into thatched roofs. | |
| Furious mobs formed, beating anyone who looked suspicious; that is, anyone speaking | |
| French or Dutch. One unfortunate young Frenchman—Robert Hubert— “confessed” to the | |
| 80 | crime. He could barely speak English, and was probably tortured. He was hanged a few |
| weeks later. Soon afterward, a sea captain came forward and said that Hubert had been | |
| aboard his ship at the time of the fire. | |
| The eagerness to hang Hubert was a reflection of a long-term animosity among the | |
| English, French, and Dutch. The English had won the first Anglo-Dutch War in 1654, but | |
| 85 | had not succeeded in driving the Dutch out of the world market. When Charles II ascended |
| the throne in 1660, he helped to whip British citizens into a frenzy of anti-Dutch sentiment. | |
| Everybody who could read got their hands on pamphlets that detailed Dutch atrocities | |
| against the English. | |
| The Great Fire of London was thus not just a fire. For thousands of Londoners who | |
| 90 | lost their homes, and for countless other Britons who hated the French and the Dutch, it |
| was a fearsome blaze designed to bring down the great power of England. While the city | |
| was eventually rebuilt, the legacy of the Great Fire lived on. As John Evelyn observed, | |
| “The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished that… there was nothing | |
| heard, or seen, but crying out and lamentation.” | |
| 95 | The Great Fire of London was an unfortunate accident. But the underlying political |
| tensions were not. They were typical of what had been going on for many years in Western | |
| Europe. The map of the continent had been undergoing changes for centuries before the | |
| fire. It would continue to change many times after that. | |
| 100 | Davey, Frances E. A Brief Political and Geographic History of Europe: Where are Prussia, Gaul, and the Holy Roman Empire?. Hockessin: Mitchell Publishers, 2008. |