Natural destructive disasters are usually forgotten after 30-50 years, but there are tragedies that are remembered after 50-100 years. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which occurred almost two and a half centuries ago, is still remembered in Europe. According to a contemporary of this incident, the German writer Goethe, it was "a terrible world event." The earthquake not only turned the prosperous city of Portugal into ruins, but also influenced all European countries, their culture, philosophy, politics and served as one of the impetus for the development of a new science - seismology.
Timeline of the disaster. Earthquake
The history of Lisbon has more than 20 centuries. Originating in the 1st millennium BC. e., by 1755, he became one of the largest and most influential cities in Europe. Its population at that time was, according to various estimates, from 250 to 500 thousand people, and Portugal itself was a treasury of material and artistic wealth, which were buried in a matter of minutes as a result of the Lisbon earthquake.
On November 1, 1755, at 9 hours and 50 minutes, local residents gathered for a morning service. The city’s churches were crowded, as it was All Saints Day - a widely revered holiday in European countries. Suddenly, the earth's ground began to fluctuate strongly, and after a few seconds the oscillations turned into powerful tremors, the amplitude of which increased each time over the next 6-8 minutes. The maximum magnitude of the earthquake, according to modern estimates, was 8.4-8.9 points. It's a lot. For comparison, the 1988 Spitak earthquake in Armenia had an amplitude of 6.8-7.2 points.
According to one of the captains of the ships located near the coast, the city buildings began to flutter like ears of wheat in a field. The walls of the houses swayed in the direction from the sea to the east. In the first seconds of the earthquake, many houses collapsed, and wide cracks of 5 meters appeared in the earth, separating the city center from the rest of it.
After this, according to some sources, the city embankment was lowering, and according to other sources, the sea first receded several kilometers, and then again flooded over.
Tsunami
Maddened by fear, residents who managed to escape the fate of being buried under the rubble of houses rushed to the embankment. They hoped to find their salvation at sea and leave the city on ships. But here death awaited them from another element - after about 20 minutes, a huge tsunami wave, generated by the focus of an earthquake in the sea, came ashore. Its height is estimated at 6-15 m.
After the collapsed water mountain, the Lisbon embankment collapsed and buried with it the people who had accumulated on it. According to some evidence, after the second major tremor in the coastal area, a large landslide arose. This happened around 10 in the morning. Modern studies show that large underwater landslides occurred in the Lisbon Bay that day.
Fires
The troubles that hit the residents of the city were not limited to tremors and tsunamis. When the Lisbon earthquake occurred, fires broke out in many places, which quickly grew into a big fire. Fire destroyed the remnants of the city for 5 days, the ruins smoldered as much.
Contemporaries of the event saw the cause of the fire in the fact that on All Saints Day a fire burned in churches and chapels, which spread throughout the city due to strong winds. However, there are other hypotheses. Since deep cracks in the earth's crust formed on the territory of the city, combustible gas could flow from them from the bowels of the earth. Its ignition led to the appearance of numerous sources of open fire, which could not be extinguished in any way. This version is also supported by the fact that 100 years after the terrible event, radioactive elements were discovered here. They could come to the surface of the earth with combustible gas.
Subsequent shocks
Tremors continued throughout November and December. Some of them were strong enough to bring additional destruction. One of the tremors observed on December 9 was felt throughout Europe: in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.
Seismic activity in the following months was high. According to a report from Lisbon dated November 1761, tremors were felt in this region almost every day.
Human sacrifice
The Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755, according to various estimates, claimed the lives of 40 to 60 thousand people. And this is only in the capital of Portugal. To one degree or another, other cities of the country, as well as settlements of Spain, were destroyed. So, in the southern port of Portugal Faro as a result of seismic events and flooding killed 3,000 people, and in one of the Moroccan villages due to a landslide - from 8 to 10 thousand inhabitants.
Since warehouses for bread were set up in Lisbon for the whole district, after their destruction, starvation began among the survivors. Help from England in the form of food arrived only in December. The scale of disasters after the earthquake was very large, given that in those days there were no rescue services or adequate medical assistance.
Losses of material and cultural values
According to one of the residents who returned to the city 3 weeks after the start of the natural disaster, in the city he saw only mountains of smoking ruins. The great Lisbon earthquake completely destroyed more than 85% of homes. Among them were 53 palaces, more than 70 chapels, 90 monasteries. These figures may differ in different sources, since the event happened a long time ago. However, all researchers admit that the city was destroyed by at least two-thirds.
The Royal Library (several tens of thousands of volumes, including first-printed books), church archives with ancient manuscripts, architectural masterpieces, about two hundred paintings by Rubens and Titian, ancient maps and other historical and cultural values disappeared in ruins. The royal palace and the opera house were destroyed, jewelry worth a total of 800 million gold francs disappeared.
Were harbingers of disaster?
However, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 was not the only one in this region in those centuries. Strong tremors were recorded in the XII and XIV centuries., In 1531, 1551. Large earthquakes are usually always of a group nature and are accompanied first by smaller ones. The focus of this catastrophe was "prepared" by natural processes for at least 5 centuries.
Researchers also note the presence of a precursor seismic lull several years before this event. So, 33 years before the tragedy in the Portuguese city of Faro, the last foreshock was recorded - an earthquake that occurred before a stronger one at about the same place and in the same period.
Climate change
There were other formidable harbingers of a lull. During the last 5 years before the event, less rainfall than usual fell, and the summer of that year was unusually cold. In the vicinity of Lisbon, many wells dried up, while other sources, on the contrary, gushed out. In some of them, the taste of water has deteriorated as a result of changes in its chemical composition. Gas emissions from the earth were also recorded.
Modern science knows that climatic and hydrogeological anomalies are a characteristic sign of seismic activity. It is surprising that on November 1, 1755, at 11-12 a.m. in the Czech spa town of Teplice, a healing spring several times threw a large amount of water, although the earthquake itself was not felt there.
The effect of the event on people's minds
The Lisbon earthquake impressed all of Europe. Along with the Great French Revolution of 1848, it became one of the most significant events of the 18th century. A large number of articles, poems and essays on the Lisbon earthquake appeared in the literature of that time. Voltaire included the description of this catastrophe in one of the episodes of the satirical novel Candide. Other outstanding figures mentioned him in their works: I. Kant, I. Goethe, J. Zh. Rousseau, O. W. Holmes.
Since piety reigned in enlightened minds in those days, the very fact that this event occurred on All Saints Day caused a deep shock. Some modern scholars note that many facts could be exaggerated due to the philosophical attitude to this tragedy and the lack of scientifically explainable mechanisms of this phenomenon.
Seismology Development
Immediately after the earthquake, the Marquis de Pombal, who served under the Portuguese king, issued a decree according to which questionnaires were distributed in church parishes to clarify the facts of the event. He led the restoration of the city and country. His merit lies in the fact that almost completely destroyed Lisbon was restored and again became one of the most brilliant and elegant capitals of Europe.
Thanks to the Pombal questionnaires that have been preserved in the national archive of the country, as well as information collected by the Royal Spanish Academy, 20th century seismologists were able to develop a macroseismic map of the region.
The Lisbon earthquake was the impetus for the development of research on this topic. So, only 2 years after the disaster, the Russian scientist M.V. Lomonosov outlined the first classification of earthquakes and tried to explain their causes. A number of treatises were issued in almost all European countries. However, this natural phenomenon was then considered more from a philosophical point of view - as a manifestation of the four elements, and the theory of seismic waves gained recognition only after 100 years.
Political Changes
The destruction of such an important shopping center as Lisbon, and the destruction of the court of the Portuguese king gave rise to a kind of “revolution”. The main ally in the Atlantic trade of this power was England. The natural disaster provided an excellent opportunity for radical changes in the foreign economic policy of other European states with the aim of weakening the existing domination of England and Portugal.
As a result of this event, the king of the destroyed country had to abandon his colonial ambitions.
Earthquake press
It is also interesting how this incident was covered in the official Portuguese press of that time: among the most significant destructions in the Lisbon Gazette of November 6, 1755, only the collapse of the tower in which the state archives were located was noted.
Meanwhile, the losses were clearly more significant. The king of Portugal understood the importance of public opinion during the Enlightenment, so the scale and consequences of the disaster were deliberately underestimated. The aforementioned Marquise Pombal also took part in this, who assembled and “instructed” a group of writers in order to advantageously cover the facts of the Lisbon earthquake. It was also a new, not yet common phenomenon for the time in the field of printing.