394 
INUNDATIONS OF 1856 . 
tlie Rlione, and in fact an invasion by a hostile army could 
hardly have been more disastrous to the inhabitants of the 
plains than was this terrible deluge. There had been a flood 
of this latter river in the year 1840, which, for height and 
quantity of water, was almost as remarkable as that of 1856, 
but it took place in the month of November, when the crops 
had all been harvested, and the injury inflicted by it upon 
agriculturists was, therefore, of a character to be less severely 
and less immediately felt than the consequences of the inunda¬ 
tion of 1856.* 
In the fifteen years between these two great floods, the 
population and the rural improvements of the river valleys 
had much increased, common roads, bridges, and railways had 
been multiplied and extended, telegraph lines had been con¬ 
structed, all of which shared in the general ruin, and hence 
greater and more diversified interests were affected by the 
catastrophe of 1856 than by any former like calamity. The 
great flood of 1840 had excited the attention and roused the 
sympathies of the French people, and the subject was invested 
with new interest by the still more formidable character of the 
inundations of 1856. It was felt that these scourges had ceased 
to be a matter of merely local concern, for, although they bore 
most heavily on those whose homes and fields were situated 
within the immediate reach of the swelling waters, yet they 
frequently destroyed harvests valuable enough to be a matter 
of national interest, endangered the personal security of the 
population of important political centres, interrupted com¬ 
munication for days and even weeks together on great lines of 
* Notwithstanding this favorable circumstance, the damage done by 
the inundation of 1840 in the valley of the Rhone was estimated at seventy- 
two millions of francs. —Champion, Les Inondations en France , iv, p. 124. 
Several smaller floods of the Rhone, experienced at a somewhat earlier 
season of the year in 1846, occasioned a loss of forty-five millions of francs. 
“What if,” says Dumont, “instead of happening in October, that is be¬ 
tween harvest and seedtime, they had occurred before the crops were se¬ 
cured ? The damage would have been counted by hundreds of millions.” 
—Fes Travaux Publics , p. 99, note. 
