Occurring in 1775 at the height of the European Enlightenment, the Lisbon earthquake was the great natural disaster of the century, killing thousands and destroying over 80 percent of the city’s buildings. It also left its mark on the history of ideas, as Henrik Bering writes in his review of Mark Molesky’s This Gulf of Fire: The Destruction of Lisbon, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason:

In an apocalyptic sermon published the year [after the earthquake], Father Gabriel Malagrida, a prominent [Portuguese] Jesuit, interpreted the earthquake as God’s punishment for the sins of the Lisboans. . . . [T]heologians like Britain’s John Wesley went on the offensive and seized on the earthquake as evidence of divine intervention. Abroad, Lisbon did indeed have a reputation as Sin City, King José setting a bad example with his predilection for taking nuns as mistresses. . . .

Up until then, writes Molesky, the feeling among the leading figures of the Enlightenment had been one of “smug self-satisfaction.” [Gottfried Wilhelm] Leibniz had spoken of a benevolent deity who had created “the best of all possible worlds,” an attitude reflected in the conclusion of [Alexander] Pope’s Essay on Man: “whatever is, is right.” That optimism was badly shaken. Voltaire, who was living in comfortable semi-retirement in Switzerland with his chubby niece Madame Denis and Luc, his pet monkey, went into a deep funk: “Leibniz does not tell me . . . why the innocent and the guilty suffer alike this inevitable evil.” He wrote “Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne,” a bitter denunciation of an evil world with a tepid acknowledgment of God’s existence stuck on at the end.

The young [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau would have none of this and wrote Voltaire a long letter accusing him of inconsistency. Rousseau got around the problem by dividing evil into natural and moral categories, says Molesky, which enabled him to attack his fellow men while retaining his faith. Thus he tears into the Lisboans for having built such tall buildings and crammed so many people into them, and for hanging around trying to save their belongings rather than fleeing. Besides, he adds high-handedly, by dying at this point, “some no doubt escaped greater misfortunes.”

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.