Read Online The Year Without Summer by William K. Klingaman, Nicholas P. Klingaman - Free Book Online Page B

Norwich destroyed as much property as they could with axes, shovels, spades,
     and saws before the militia arrived; then they stoned the soldiers.
    On May 22, hundreds of villagers—some of whom were quite inebriated—gathered at the
     Globe Inn in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, and commenced to rampage through the streets.
     They began by plundering the house of a magistrate, proceeded to empty the cellars
     of public houses, and carried on by robbing wealthier residents (many of whom fled
     for their lives), demolishing their furniture, and hurling less portable possessions
     into the street. The following day the mob moved on to the town of Ely, where they
     demanded amnesty and a minimum wage tied to the price of flour. The local magistrates
     initially consented, and provided beer to the demonstrators as a token of good faith.
     But a small group of rioters returned to Littleport and resumed their depredations.
     When a detachment of royal dragoons and a troop of yeoman cavalry appeared to subdue
     them, the rioters barricaded themselves in the George and Dragon Inn. After a brief
     sort of skirmish in which one rioter was shot dead, the rest surrendered. More than
     eighty people were arrested; twenty-four were convicted, and five were hanged.
    Alarmed, nearby villages began swearing in special constables, and the authorities
     in Cambridge briefly considered arming university students to help defend the town.
     Neither they nor Liverpool’s government in London had any way of knowing that the
     British economy—already battered by a trade recession and rising unemployment—would
     soon suffer the shock of a disastrous growing season that would send the price of
     bread soaring even higher, and further fuel the discontent of the poorer classes.

 
    3.
    COLD FRONTS
    “The most gloomy and extraordinary weather ever seen…”
    M AY DAWNED COLD and dry over the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. A news report from
     Quebec described “large quantities of snow” in the fields, ice in the St. Lawrence
     River, and a hard frost on the evening of May 2. In Maine it seemed as if winter had
     returned, and parts of New York State were still covered with six or more inches of
     snow. The New York Evening Post blamed the frigid temperatures on “the unusual long spell of cold westerly winds
     which have prevailed since the spring set in.… Vegetation at this season of the year
     was never more backward.”
    Soon things got worse. On May 12, strong winds swirling down from Canada brought snow
     and freezing temperatures to New England, killing the buds and leaves on fruit trees.
     Two days later, Albany, New York, reported that “the ground was covered with snow,
     and the temperature of the weather during the day more like that of March than May.
     Rarely has vegetation been more backward at this season of the year than it is now
     in this city.” Residents of Trenton, New Jersey, awoke to find a “heavy black frost”
     that had frozen the ground half an inch deep.
    On May 14, the cold wave struck crops in Virginia (the National Register reported frost in the vicinity of Richmond), and by one account reached as far south
     as Tennessee, ruining substantial quantities of cotton. The severe cold exacerbated
     the effects of a prolonged drought throughout the mid-Atlantic and Southern states,
     a highly unusual occurrence at that time of year. In Virginia, the Norfolk Beacon reported that farmers were “ploughing up and re-planting the corn. The temperature
     of the weather with us is very fluctuating—the evenings and mornings generally so
     cold as to render a fire quite agreeable.” As the cold persisted, ice formed nearly
     an inch thick on rivers and ponds from Maine to Buffalo. “The season continues extremely
     unfavorable to Agriculture,” mused a Quebec correspondent. “Masses of snow still lie
     in the fields, and very little wheat has yet been sown in this district.”
    Seasonably warm