Plagues and the transmission of diseases constituted one of the major concerns of people during the early modern period. Although there was a consistent effort from the sixteenth century onwards to find proper solutions to relieve the European citizens, the lack of medical knowledge forced these states to focus mostly on the containment of these diseases and not on finding a cure. Thus, the European states used any available resource in this battle against plagues. One of the most prominent allies in this effort to control the outbreak of diseases was the press. Brochures and pamphlets issued by the authorities, reporting the established policies on plagues, circulated in large numbers during the sixteenth century. The emergence of the newspaper in the early seventeenth century increased this circulation. The purpose of this article is to present the role of Francophone newspapers in propagating public health measures through the relevant reports and advertisements on their issues, during a period when the need for medicines increased, the services provided by apothecaries became necessary for the function of the health system and doctors’ involvement was of upmost importance.

The article presents the emergence of the three major French-language gazettes published in the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the Gazette d’Amsterdam, Gazette de Leyde, and the Gazette de Rotterdam. All of them had Huguenot publishers, especially after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The gazettes became famous during the two major wars of the King Louis XIV, the War of the Great Alliance, and the War of the Spanish Succession. They were circulated in large numbers not only among the Huguenot diaspora but also in France. At that time, France had only one gazette, the constitutional Gazette de Paris. The three Huguenot gazettes presented updated reports from every major city or military camp. Their reports and their attitude towards France, however, varied. This article enlightens the attitude of each Huguenot gazette towards France, presenting reports of the last two years of the War of the Great Alliance.