This Gulf of Fire by Mark Molesky

Author:Mark Molesky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-03T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

“A Chaos of Stones”

All the pomp has ended, ’twas fleeting;

No more than a sad memory

Of the famous city that someday

Only the crystals of the Tagus will enrich.

—DOMINGOS DOS REYS,

“POEM ON THE LAMENTABLE EARTHQUAKE” (1756)

DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

On February 19, 1756, more than ten weeks after the disaster, Monsignor Acciaiuoli confided to Pope Benedict XIV about the state of the Portuguese capital. “I ask Your Holiness to believe that it is much worse than what I have previously mentioned, despite the fact that there are those who would like to make it appear less.”1 Few outside the government would have disputed the nuncio’s assessment, for in February 1756 central Lisbon was little more than a vast, yawning ruin. Its commercial and political core had been burned beyond recognition and much else had been shaken to the ground or damaged. The densely populated Baixa had borne the full brunt of the inferno as it had the earthquake—but other areas had suffered as well.2 “The fire reduced to ashes a large portion of the old city and a large portion of the new,” wrote Moreira de Mendonça. It “completely destroyed the neighborhoods of the Ribeira, the Rua Nova [dos Mercadores], and the Rossio, and the largest parts of the neighborhoods of the Remoulares, the Bairro Alto, the Limoeira, and the Alfama, which,” he added, “are the richest and most populous seven neighborhoods of the twelve that make up the city.”3 In Father Portal’s view, it destroyed “the heart of the city.”4

While the earthquake had set the destruction in motion, it was “the fourth element [fire],” recalled one eyewitness, “that caused the most consternation, and which, without exaggeration, burned the largest and best part of Lisbon.”5 “The fire,” affirmed Mr. Braddock, “may be said to have destroyed the whole city, at least everything that was grand or valuable in it.”6 In the opinion of one Portuguese priest, it was the disaster’s “greatest thief.”7 Abraham Castres estimated that the “Conflagration” did “ten times more Mischief than the Earthquake itself,” a reckoning that was repeated in numerous broadsheets and newspapers at the time.8

On the other hand, if no fires had broken out, some sections of the Baixa would have suffered only moderate damage, and many treasures would have been recovered from the rubble. On the New Street of the Merchants (Rua Nova dos Mercadores), “only a few houses initially fell,” wrote Father Portal. But after the fire swept through the Baixa, it “was completely reduced to ashes.”9 It burned “those [buildings] that had fallen as well as those that still stood,” wrote another priest. It was “the cruel executioner of the people of Lisbon,” a “barbarous element,” a “tyranny.”10

In all, an area comprising more than one and a half square kilometers or 1,500 by 1,000 meters was destroyed by the blaze. It devoured both sides of the Rua Nova dos Mercadores, according to a priest, and all the riches possessed by those who lived there, including “the whole of the Rua do Ourives do Ouro e Prata…the

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