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Habsburg-Lorraine), and that there were two independent official responses to the
emergency. Letters were exchanged between the earthquake-affected area and two
capital cities (Florence and Rome); damage surveys had to be made, relief measures
taken, restoration work done, and financial accounts totted up. Each of these actions
would leave a paper trace in written records destined to be stored, in local and
central archives. Once there they would undergo all the vicissitudes that archives
are exposed to and which sometimes lead records to be lost, either temporarily or
for good; for more on this subject see (Vogt 1993) (chapter on “Archives: general
considerations”).
Contemporary perception of the 1789 earthquake is also likely to have been influ-
enced by an earthquake of another kind. Two month and a half before September 30
a Parisian mob had stormed the Bastille and, in quick succession, King Louis XVI
of France was forced to acknowledge the National Assembly, panic swept through
France, and the Declaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen was issued. By
the end of September 1789, the French revolution and its repercussions on European
politics had become the major focus of attention for most European observers; ad-
ditional interest was provided by the Balkans (where an Austro-Russian army was
confronting Turkey) and by the Austrian Low Countries (which had revolted against
Habsburg rule).
The international situation is the likeliest responsible for the lack of inter-
est shown by learned members of the Italian intelligentsia, for the 1789 earth-
quake, as witnessed by the fact that no scientific treatises were written on the
1789 earthquake, contrarily to what had happened in the wake of many compar-
atively minor earthquakes occurred in Tuscany and the Papal States in the 1780s
(Augusti 1779; Augusti 1780; Augusti 1785; Canterzani 1779; Cavalli 1785a; Cav-
alli 1785b; Della Valle 1781; Gilii 1786; Parere 1787; Rinieri de' Rocchi 1788;
Saggio 1787; Sarti 1783; Vannucci 1787). Newspapermen showed more interest
in the 1789 earthquake. The earliest gazettes to report on the 1789 earthquake
were those printed in Florence and Rome (Gazzetta Universale 1789a; Notizie
politiche 1789a): second-hand accounts based on letters received from the provincial
capitals of the afflicted districts (Tuscan Sansepolcro and Papal Citta di Castello),
which would in their turn become a source for other Italian (Avvisi di Genova 1789;
Gazzetta di Bologna 1789a, 1789b, 1789c; Gazzetta di Mantova 1789d; Notizie
del Mondo 1789a, 1789b, 1789c) and foreign gazettes: by November 1789 the
news had reached London (Gentleman's Magazine 1789), Madrid (Mercurio de
Espana 1789a, 1789b) and Paris (Gazette de France 1789).
3 The 1789 Earthquake in the Eye of Contemporary
Newspapermen
From mid-19th century onwards the 1789 earthquake became a subject for histor-
ical reconstruction, first on the part of local erudites (Muzi 1842-1844) then by
seismologists (Baratta 1901; Boschi et al. 1995; Boschi et al. 2000) and architecture
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