The Great Fire - Of London Samuel Pepys ((hot))

Charles II, often dismissed as a pleasure-seeker, proved his mettle. He handed Pepys a simple command: Go back and tell the Lord Mayor to start pulling down houses. No excuses.

So Pepys did what he always did: he went to the king. At 4:00 a.m., Pepys climbed into a waterman’s boat and rowed up the Thames to Whitehall Palace. He burst into the presence of King Charles II and his brother, James, Duke of York. While other courtiers were still yawning, Pepys delivered a calm, precise report: the fire was spreading west, the Lord Mayor had failed, and if nothing was done, the entire city would burn. the great fire of london samuel pepys

That was the moment the fire won. Pepys, then 33, was not a firefighter. He was not a politician. He was the Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board—a glorified bureaucrat who managed shipbuilding contracts. But he had two superpowers: a bottomless curiosity and a diary written in a secret shorthand that no one else could read. Charles II, often dismissed as a pleasure-seeker, proved

This is the story of the Great Fire of London as told through the ink-stained fingers of the man who refused to look away. To understand Pepys’s terror, you must first understand the city he loved. London in 1666 was a medieval labyrinth of over 350,000 souls crammed into a one-square-mile area. The houses were built almost entirely of oak timber, pitch, and tar. They leaned so close together across the narrow alleys that neighbors could shake hands from opposite upper windows. So Pepys did what he always did: he went to the king

Fire was a constant, grim companion. The previous year, Pepys had watched a smaller blaze and noted drily in his diary: “ A great fire in the city... but it was quenched. ”