The Plague of Marseille in 1720–1722, caused by flea-borne Yersinia pestis introduced via a merchant ship from the Levant, killed approximately 50,000 of the city's 90,000 inhabitants and devastated the surrounding Provence region. It was the last major bubonic plague epidemic in Western Europe and marked the end of over three and a half centuries of recurring flea-borne plague since the Black Death. The French response to the epidemic included the construction of a plague wall (the Mur de la Peste) to contain the disease.

The Marseilles plague inspired immediate literary responses including letters, pamphlets, and later poetic commemorations, and its status as the last great European bubonic plague gave it retrospective literary significance as the end of an era. Daniel Defoe, whose Journal of the Plague Year appeared in 1722 partly in response to fears that the Marseilles epidemic would spread to England, was one of the most significant literary responses. The plague wall — a monument to human attempts to contain the flea's destructive power — became a literal and literary boundary between the old plague world and the modern one.