Cordon sanitaire

In accordance with their recommendation, the French Ministry drew a cordon sanitaire round the Spanish frontier. The plague gradually died away with the colder weather of the winter; but the French Ministry did not withdraw the troops who composed the cordon sanitaire.

Bubonic plague had been in relative abeyance since the 1660s, and its explosion into Marseille and Provence in 1720 confirmed the ability of government, through quarantines and cordons sanitaires, to hem the disease in and prevent its diffusion across the country.

The alternative for such a policy was the isolation of Russia and the construction of a cordon sanitaire, in order to contain Bolshevism in the present area.