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. . . . . . . . I can you then impute a sinful deed to babes who on their mother's bosoms bleed,

was then more vice in fallen Lisbon found than Paris where voluptuous joys abound,

was less debauchery to London known where opulence luxurious holds the throne.

That is, I think, a rather good English translation of Voltaire's poem on the Lisbon disaster,

which he wrote in December 1755, one month after an earthquake on the 1st of November,

which was All Saints Day, had the leveled Lisbon, reducing about 85% of the city to ruins, killing

perhaps some 50,000 people.

And Voltaire would return to the same question of how was it that such a disaster could happen.

Were the philosophical explanations for why a good God could have permitted it to happen?

Were they justifiable?

Even more famous work, Con deed, which he published

four years after that in 1759.

And one of the reasons, Dominic, why the Lisbon earthquake,

which we will come to, was so upsetting for people not just

in Portugal but across the whole of Europe was that Lisbon at that point was a famously beautiful and opulent capital

because this country that at the end of our previous episode we had left as a kingdom that had been absorbed into the broader fabric of the

kingdom of Spain. By the middle of the 18th century had not only regained its

independence but had really regained quite a lot of its mojo. It was importing vast quantities of gold, of diamonds,

...