The Past behind Une Place in Reims...

Typically getting held up at the same traffic lights most days, as my mind dwells on the usually niggling tasks to carry out, I also end up looking out at the same city architecture too. The old building by the tram stop usually catches my attention, albeit not for any actual beauty in design, but simply for the fact it has survived the passage of time and the various plans to get it demolished! Over the last two decades the surrounding area has been redeveloped to incorporate extensive modern housing projects and pedestrian areas to the point that the old house with its vast walled garden hidden behind stands fully alone in every sense. Although not a particularly old building – built in 1910 - it is the only remnant of the city’s distant past that few are even aware of today. However, this link back in time is less through its architectural design than the street name attached to its facade; Place Colin. Squinting across at the plaque the other day, I made out the reference associated with this location – the rémois Nicolas Colin (1621-1668). During the reign of Louis XIV, when Jean de La Fontaine was writing his fables in nearby Château-Thierry, and Molière’s plays were being performed, Colin was head surgeon to the king’s armies. More significantly in this context, the year 1668 marked the devastating outbreak of plague in Reims to which Colin would finally succumb along with his daughter Simonne, having valiantly returned to his hometown to help fight the epidemic.

Of course, waves of contagious disease were not uncommon across Europe in centuries past and Reims itself had already fallen victim in 1635 and 1650. The case of the Great Plague of London 1665 was, of course, one of the most renowned epidemics, known largely through the writings of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) and those of Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) whose Journal of the Plague Year was published in 1722. London lost up to 20% of its population to the bubonic plague and the banishment of the disease was aided by the Great Fire of London that swept the city the following year, 1666. Understanding of the causes of plague was sketchy with most people believing, like Pepys, that contagion was a ‘divine visitation’ brought upon mankind in punishment for earthly sins. Prevention, protection and possible cure were all based on practices that were gruesome and generally inefficient, in line with beliefs that seem nonsensical, if not comic, to us today!

Nevertheless, rudimentary sanitary measures were developed and applied over time so that the plague of Marseille in 1720 was far better contained than previous outbreaks. In late 17th century France, the government laid down a cordon sanitaire, to limit uncontrolled propagation of the disease across the territory. Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), oversaw the application of strict rules that initially saved the north of the country but little by little cases were declared and Reims -incidentally Colbert’s birthplace - fell just as other cities had weeks before. To prevent further deaths, pesthouses would isolate plague-stricken individuals from the healthy citizens and quarantaine sites des lazarets would often be set up in ports and docks. In Reims a former washhouse serving the Hôtel-Dieu (on the site of today’s palais de justice) was set up to this effect along the marshland by the banks of the Vesle. It was in this buanderie or buerie that Nicolas Colin worked and subsequently died alongside the patients, most of whom subsequently buried in a cemetery placed near the pesthouse. The buerie was later destined to become a hospital for cancer patients under Canon Godinot (1661-1749) – and Hôpital Saint-Louis was the first of its kind in the world. Godinot also ensured that Reims was supplied with fresh water from the Vesle thanks to a series of fountains that helped maintain a basic level of sanitation and thus prevent contagion from infectious diseases across the city. In order to honour Colin’s sacrifice and to commemorate the lives of those lost, a plaque mounted by a Croix aux Pestiférés was placed on this site which would finally be named Place Colin in 1903. With the construction of the tramway in 2011, the cross was moved to its present location – hidden by the trees near the bridge over the Vesle. Had I not tumbled across it one day, I would never have known about it. It seems to me that in the present day the city of Reims does not commit sufficiently to honour the past sacrifices of its medics…