In June 1427, the Seine started to rise. “This was not surprising, for it never left off raining from the middle of April until the Monday after Pentecost, which was the 9th of June,” says the unknown author of Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, translated in 1968 by Janet Shirley as A Parisian Journal 1405-1449 (Oxford).
The water covered the island of Notre Dame, to such a height people could have sailed along in their boats. “All the houses had their low-lying storerooms and ground floors flooded; in some storerooms the water was deeper than two men’s height – a great pity, for the wines were on top of the water.
“In some places where there were stables three or four steps down, the water rose so much that the horses, which were tied fast inside, could not all be rescued but were drowned, some of them, because the water rose within two hours, there and in other places, by more than a man’s height,” the memoirist reports.
“In short, the Seine rose almost two feet higher than it had done the year before, and wherever it spread to, as for instance over the corn and oats in the Marais, it utterly spoiled and withered everything.”
To make things worse, tax was mercilessly collected. The fruit crop, however, was excellent.
“Almonds especially were so heavy on the trees they broke the branches. It was the finest August anyone could remember, though there had been such dreadful cold and rain earlier on. But God can work in a moment, as this year shows, for the corn was plentiful and good.”
