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A Surgeon With 300% Mortality Rate From a Single Operation and Other Historic Screwups

Khalid Elhassan October 11, 2020 32 min

Robert Liston - Surgery — Dr. Robert Liston operating. Wellcome Images

12. Minor Mistakes at a Major Banquet

The Chateau de Chantilly at the time of Francois Vatel and his boss, The Grand Conde. Wikimedia

Francois Vatel was put in charge of a grand banquet for 2000 people, scheduled at the Chateau de-Chantilly for April 25^th, 1671, in honor of King Louis XIV. The banquet was scheduled on short notice, and Vatel, who had only 15 days to prepare, got stressed out by a series of minor mishaps and mistakes.

During a preliminary dinner a few days before the banquet, there were more guests than expected, and two out of twenty-six tables went without roast. A mortified Vatel wept that he had lost honor and could not bear the shame. Reassurances that the dinner had gone great, and that the king was pleased, did not comfort Vatel, who kept obsessing about the roast-less tables. Later that night, a grand display of fireworks flopped because fog and low clouds descended. That depressed Vatel even further.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.