3. The Appearance of Typhus Fever in North and Central Germany

On the return march from Moscow to Vilna the remnants of the army had all taken the same route; for, though all bonds of discipline were loosened as far back as Smolensk, nevertheless the instinct of self-preservation kept all the soldiers from abandoning the common line of march. This was also the case during the march from Vilna to the Niemen, where the extreme cold caused untold suffering. After crossing the river, however, the few unfortunate soldiers who had survived the awful misery of the march, hungry, clothed in rags, with torn shoes, alive with vermin, with frozen and gangrenous limbs, scattered in all directions, some going home, and others to strongholds that were in the hands of the French. Thus typhus fever, with which all parts of the army were infected, was spread in a comparatively short time over a large part of Germany.

At first the eastern provinces of Prussia, through which these remnants of the army passed, were attacked by the pestilence; owing to the fact that so many were infected, measures of precaution were everywhere futile. ‘Adynamic fever’, says Kerckhoffs,[[123]] ‘spread also among the civilians, who were not only afflicted by the terrible scourge of our passing armies, but also became the victims of a murderous contagion. It was a fatal present which we gave them, and which caused such a high mortality among the inhabitants of the country through which we passed. Wherever we went, the inhabitants were filled with terror and refused to quarter the soldiers.’ In the more distant parts of Germany, in the western provinces of Prussia, in Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg, where people had perceived the danger, it was easier, in the first months of 1813, to guard against the dissemination of typhus fever, since the number of returning soldiers was small and it was accordingly feasible to enforce orders regarding quarantine. With the approach of spring the disease began to abate a little even in the north and east; in the month of April it had almost entirely disappeared from the French troops there, while in May and June the condition of health among them, according to Kerckhoffs, was very good. But in July typhus fever broke out again, and since the Russian army was also infected with it, the disease became uncommonly widespread throughout Saxony and Silesia during the months of fighting that ensued. After the battle of Leipzig, when southern and western Germany were overrun by French fugitives and prisoners, typhus fever once more broke out in that part of the country with greater severity than ever before; even in the province of Brandenburg and in the adjacent regions the pestilence raged, having been borne thither by French prisoners.

In Lithuania, and East and West Prussia, typhus fever raged extensively in the winter of 1812–13. According to H. A. Göden,[[124]] who had charge of a large military lazaret in Gumbinnen, the epidemic spread continuously from the border of Russia to Berlin. ‘It appeared most virulently’, he says, ‘in the cities of Gumbinnen, Insterburg, Tilsit, Königsberg, Elbing, Marienwerder, Konitz, and Landsberg; it followed along the military roads, and broke out most severely in the halting-places and in those cities where French military lazarets were established.’ In Gumbinnen typhus fever broke out suddenly in the latter part of November, immediately after the arrival of the fugitives, and spread rapidly. At first it appeared in houses where officers and soldiers were quartered; as a rule, several members of a family contracted the disease simultaneously, and only rarely was one member spared. The pestilence raged most furiously in the months of January and February; the town had some 6,000 inhabitants, and frequently 20, 30, or 40 people, including entire families, died in a single day. In the military lazarets the mortality was considerably higher. In March the pestilence began to abate, and in May it disappeared altogether.

In Königsberg the pestilence began in the month of December 1812 and came to an end in May 1813; excluding the soldiers who died in the military lazarets, the following deaths were recorded there:

December (1812)430
January (1813)581
February802
March622
April608
May327
June196
July178
August157
September160
October151

In the year 1812 there were 2,648 deaths in Königsberg, whereas in the following year there were 4,403. In the first part of January, when the city was evacuated by the French, 10,000 people, according to Stricker, were left behind. The entire province of East Prussia, according to Gurlt, lost 20,000 inhabitants by typhus fever.[[125]]

Danzig, which was besieged by the Russians from January 11 to November 29, 1813, suffered terribly. A French army of 35,900 men, under General Rapp, was in the city, and during the siege it was exposed to all sorts of privations as well as to extreme cold. As early as February typhus fever had become very widespread; from January to May, 11,400 soldiers died in the hospitals (4,000 in March alone), while 5,592 inhabitants succumbed to the disease in the course of the entire year.[[126]]

Silesia was hit extremely hard. The pestilence was conveyed there in the months of October, November, and December 1812 by transports of Russian prisoners, and it appeared in Trebnitz, Striegau, Krottkau, Friedenwalde, Trachenberg, Breslau, Parchwitz, Quaritz, &c. The officers on duty, the persons who lifted the patients from the wagons, the physicians, and the sick-attendants were always the first to be infected.[[127]] With the opening of spring the disease disappeared, but broke out anew after the battle on the Katzbach. In Breslau the disease appeared in a very virulent form, since the infected soldiers were housed there in overcrowded lazarets, which in the month of November took in some 6,300 patients daily; numerous physicians (statements vary between 16 and 22) also succumbed to typhus fever. Among the civil inhabitants, to be sure, the disease did not become very widespread; out of a population of 62,789, only 3,055 died in the year 1812, 3,095 in the year 1813, and 3,301 in the year 1814. From the middle of September 1813 to February 1814, 478 civilians and some 1,800 soldiers succumbed in Breslau to typhus fever; the total number of soldiers that died between the middle of September and the beginning of March was 3,400.[[128]] In the governmental district of Liegnitz, having a population of 600,000, according to Kausch[[129]] only 13 physicians (excluding the surgeons) died. The disease was borne by transports of infected soldiers into other parts of Silesia, and at the end of the year 1813 all the military lazarets in Silesia were infected. In Waldenburg and vicinity (Obersalzbrunn, &c.) typhus fever broke out after the soldiers had marched through on October 20 and November 25, 1813, and seventeen days later the disease was very widespread, all the members of many families having contracted it. In Bunzlau typhus fever raged with unusual fury; in the military lazaret 12,000 men are said to have died between June 1813 and March 1814.

Presently typhus fever appeared, with the arrival of the remnants of the Grand Army, in regions further away from the Russian border. Häser[[130]] describes the manner in which the disease spread, always along military roads, as follows:

‘French soldiers returning from Russia’, he says, ‘spread the contagion of various diseases over a large part of Central Europe. Almost naked, or clothed in torn and half-burned rags, without shoes, their feet covered with straw, and their frozen limbs covered with festering sores, they marched through Poland and Germany. Typhus fever and other diseases associated with it marked their course. The inhabitants of the country were forced to house the sick; but teamsters also conveyed the infection to villages which the soldiers did not visit. The disease raged most furiously in the hospitals, which scarcely anywhere were able to meet even the most modest demands made upon them.’

Regarding the appearance of typhus fever in Berlin we are informed by Hufeland and Horn.[[131]] First to occur there (in the months of February and March 1813) were numerous cases of ‘nervous fever’, which was doubtless typhoid fever. Still it is likely that cases of typhus fever also occurred at that time, for Horn, in writing about ‘nervous fevers’ in the Charité, describes the exanthema with the same words that Hufeland uses in reference to later cases. Among these patients there were already some who had returned from Russia.[[132]] At all events, in the first part of March 1813 there occurred cases of contagious typhus, which was brought to Berlin by French, and later by Russian soldiers; the observed ways of infection, regarding which Hufeland informs us, are mentioned above. In the middle of April there were 246 typhus-fever patients in the Charité. In order to prevent the disease from spreading in this hospital, Hufeland adopted strict measures of precaution. The patients were all carefully isolated on the second floor, which was shut off by means of a grating. The newly-arrived patients were supplied with clean, fresh linen, their clothing was disinfected for several days in hydrochloric acid, and then washed in boiling water containing lye, while objects of no value were burned. The sick-rooms were constantly ventilated by leaving the windows open, and were thoroughly cleaned every day. The physicians, surgeons, and attendants, before they entered the sick-rooms, had to put on black mantles of glazed linen, and on leaving the rooms they had to wash their hands and faces in cold water and rinse out their mouths. In this way the disease was prevented from spreading in the hospital itself.

After the battle of Leipzig typhus fever broke out anew in Berlin; according to Horn, 144 cases of ‘nerve fever’ were received into the Charité in January 1814, 92 in February, 54 in March, 14 in April, 8 in May, and none in June. Regarding the total mortality in the epidemic of typhus fever in Berlin, which in the year 1813 had about 155,000 inhabitants, the following table, compiled by Gurlt,[[133]] gives us information; there died in:

1812.1813.1814.
Total deaths.Total deaths.From Typhus.Total deaths.From Typhus.
January42250031680170
February45754457596118
March44474023378185
April47671922765355
May58475218444328
June3965188543419
July4174602954114
August338551204545
September3704672257716
October4256213443013
November35655510541211
December57158515756511
Total5,2567,0121,1846,566545

Typhus fever appeared throughout the entire province of Brandenburg. Maier[[134]] gives us some information regarding the city of Brandenburg, where ‘infectious nerve-fever’ disappeared in the latter part of May 1813, and where, after the battle of Leipzig, it again broke out, but did not become very widespread. On October 27 prisoners from Baden and Hesse were quartered there; they remained until October 31 and then went on to Ruppin. Among them were some convalescents from a military lazaret in Saxony, who infected the occupants of all the houses in which the prisoners were quartered. Between November 5 and December 6 there were 38 ‘nerve-fever’ patients in the Altstadt and 7 in the Neustadt, a small number of whom died. Typhus fever raged very furiously in Jüterbog after the battle of Dennewitz, carrying away entire families.

After his defeat in Russia, Napoleon had quickly returned to France, and there, by means of new conscriptions, had in a short time assembled an army of very young men, who had never done military service and were therefore not accustomed to the hardships of war and, in particular, were much more susceptible to infectious diseases than the troops that had served under him before. In April, when the army of the Allies had arrived at the Elbe, Napoleon with his newly-gathered army left the Rhine and marched to Saxony, which from then until autumn was the main scene of the war. Since the Russian army was still infected with typhus fever, contracted in the winter campaign, and since, furthermore, isolated cases of the disease were still occurring among the remnants of the French troops that had returned from Russia, the inevitable result was that Saxony was not only completely impoverished by the protracted war, but was also terribly afflicted by war pestilences.

In Saxony typhus fever had already become very widespread in the first few months of 1813; all the places through which the military transports passed were attacked, as Sorau, Guben, Lübben, Görlitz, Leipzig, and Weissenberg; while places in which military hospitals were erected fared even worse, as Schneeberg, Zwickau, Chemnitz, Freiberg, and Augustusburg. The severe epidemic in Annaberg (in the Saxon Erzgebirge), lasting from March to May 1813, has been described by Neuhof.[[135]] In March a Saxon field-hospital was established there, and presently everybody who came in contact with the hospital contracted typhus fever. In neighbouring Thum, where the patients passed only one night, many citizens succumbed to the disease.

Dresden, in the first few months of the year 1813, was not attacked by the disease, notwithstanding the fact that soldiers and officers returning from Russia were taken sick and died there; only in rare instances were citizens, in whose homes officers had been quartered, attacked, and the disease did not rage at all extensively.[[136]] On the other hand, typhus fever raged furiously in Dresden after Napoleon’s successful battle at Bautzen (May 20 and 21, 1813), when large numbers of wounded soldiers were brought to Dresden and placed in lazarets, which soon became greatly overcrowded. The less-severely wounded were housed in the homes of citizens, who were compelled to receive them and suffered terribly in consequence of it. The result was that typhus fever spread from the soldiers to the civilians. After the battle of Dresden (August 26, 27), from which Napoleon again emerged victorious, but especially during the short siege of Dresden (from the middle of October to November 11), the epidemic increased in both extent and fury. The increased mortality is shown by the following table, which includes only the residents:

January184
February199
March188
April194
May289
June257
July264
August474
September882
October659
November960
December944

According to Fischer, one person out of every ten that contracted the disease died, while the mortality in the French military hospitals was incredibly high. In the course of the year 1813 no less than 21,090 soldiers died in Dresden, while in the same year 5,194 residents died; 3,273 civilians died in the year 1814, and 1,785 in the year 1815. The average number of deaths per annum among the civil inhabitants was 2,304.

Regarding the terrible conditions in Dresden at that time, a pastor informs us in a letter:[[137]]

It was a gruesome sight to see the wagons full of naked corpses, thrown together in the most horrible positions, drive away from the hospitals and set out for their destination. Many bodies are said to have been cast into the Elbe. The terrible days began about the middle of May, when many house-owners were obliged to quarter as many as two, three, and even four hundred men. Presently persons suffering from wounds, scurvy, and infectious disease began to arrive from Bautzen, some straggling along piteously on foot, others being rolled along in ghastly groups on pushcarts. This disease-spreading mass was now housed in the homes of citizens, since the twenty-five hospitals were no longer able to accommodate them. The houses, yards, streets, and public squares were full of dirt and refuse. Dearth of food, resulting from the breakdown of means of supply, added to the general misery. Entire families were wiped out, and many houses are still standing empty (1814). Wagons bearing the dead clattered on all the streets, and there were few inhabitants who did not wear some outward sign of mourning for lost relatives.

Leipzig suffered even greater hardships. The pestilence was conveyed thither by French soldiers in February 1813, and on the 27th of that month there were thirty-eight fever patients in the Jacobsspital. In the summer of 1813, when the war was going on in Saxony, the disease raged there furiously. After the battle of Dresden a large percentage of the wounded were brought to Leipzig, and more than 20,000 sick and wounded soldiers were kept there for several months. As usual, typhus fever broke out in the city in consequence of it, and carried away large numbers of soldiers and citizens. After the battle of Leipzig upwards of 30,000 wounded soldiers, mostly Frenchmen, were housed in the city. ‘Virulent nerve-fever,’ says Beitzke,[[138]] ‘which had been prevalent in the city for some time, now broke out with tenfold severity, not only in the city itself, but also in the surrounding country, and carried away large numbers of people. The arrival of the cold weather, which helped to check the disease, was under these circumstances a great blessing.’ In the year 1813 some 80,000 French soldiers, according to the hospital lists, succumbed to wounds, war-typhus, and other diseases, in Leipzig. From February 1813 to January 1814, seventeen young physicians died there of typhus fever. The number of civilians buried in Leipzig in the year 1813 was 3,499, in the year 1814 it was 2,022; the average number of interments in the years 1810–12 was 1,443, and in the years 1815–17 it was 1,187. The number buried (including the still-births, but not the soldiers) was, by months:[[139]]

1813.1814.
January98450
February121276
March206244
April202152
May178159
June200120
July29085
August189107
September176118
October311111
November74396
December785104

Most of those carried away were adults; the following table indicates the relation between the age of the victims and the mortality:

Years of Age.1812.1813.1814.
1356517456
1–10161310305
10–202917476
20–3091362157
30–4087492173
40–50104559207
50–60126409208
60–70124358234
Over 70119256155

In reference to the year 1813, in which typhus fever caused the greatest devastation in Leipzig, we see how the mortality among persons between the ages of ten and sixty increased between fourfold and fivefold, while among very young children and very old men, it increased by at most one hundred per cent. In the year 1813 more men than women died (1,900 men and 1,599 women), whereas in the following year the reverse was the case (1,009 men and 1,013 women).

Typhus fever spread throughout all Saxony. In Plauen, which was at that time a city of 6,800 inhabitants, the following number of deaths, according to Flinzer,[[140]] were due to typhus fever: 4 in 1812, 32 in 1813, 59 in 1814, and 5 in 1815. These figures do not include the foreign soldiers that died. According to Flinzer, the specific disease before the year 1819 was usually typhus fever. In the year 1814 the total number of deaths in Plauen increased to 440.

Numerous sick, wounded, and captive soldiers were quartered in Zwickau after the battle of Leipzig. There and in the surrounding villages, in consequence of the erection of a hospital, typhus fever had already appeared in September, but in Zwickau itself, thanks to timely measures of precaution, it gained no headway. In the year 1812 only 183 civilians died there, 376 in the year 1813, and 260 in the year 1814; 380 soldiers died there in 1813, and 14 in the year 1814.[[141]]

The pestilences spread all over the country, even into the most remote corners of the Saxon Erzgebirge; Annaberg and the neighbouring towns of Marienberg, Weipert, and Geyer were again attacked, although less severely, according to Neuhof, than in the spring. In March the disease disappeared entirely.

The Saxon strongholds along the Elbe fared worst of all; regarding the terrible devastation caused by typhus fever in Torgau we shall have something to say in the tenth chapter. Magdeburg and Merseburg were also severely attacked; this is evident from the fact that one-half of the physicians in Magdeburg (nine in number) succumbed, according to Roloff, to hospital fever.[[142]] In Wittenberg, whither typhus fever was borne in February 1813 by infected French soldiers, and where it had subsequently disappeared, the mortality was very high during the siege, which lasted from October 28, 1813, to January 14, 1814; of 6,000 or 7,000 inhabitants, upwards of 4,000 had left the city before the siege began. In the course of seven months (July 1813 to January 1814) 590 people died there, whereas the average number of deaths had been only 300 per annum. When the city was captured by the Prussians the death-rate increased; no less than 331 persons died between January 14 and April 14, 1814.[[143]]

After the battle of Leipzig the defeated army marched back through Weissenfels, Naumburg, Weimar, and Erfurt to the Main. There was now no active effort made to supply food to the army, which still numbered some 100,000 men; the soldiers had to eat whatever they could pick up along the way. ‘Extreme misery and exhaustion’, says Beitzke,[[144]] ‘led to great excesses; the places along the route were made to suffer, and worst of all, the region through which the French army hurried back was generally infected with the germ of typhus fever.’ ‘The route of the army, clear to Mayence,’ says Giraud,[[145]] ‘was again strewn with corpses and débris.’

In Weissenfels some 3,000 soldiers are said to have died in the hospitals, and also 600 civilians, within a year. In Altenburg, which had suffered from typhus fever in the spring of 1813, 1,650 men and 55 officers died between October 2 and December 1 of that year. In Eisenberg (in Saxe-Altenburg), according to Greiner,[[146]] a lazaret was established in the fall of 1813, but there were but few cases of typhus fever transmitted to citizens owing to the adoption of all measures of precaution. On the other hand, the disease was conveyed to numerous near-by villages, in which large numbers of sick and convalescent soldiers were quartered. ‘The Cossacks did the most toward spreading the disease, for wherever any of them were quartered, one could count with certainty upon an early outbreak of nerve-fever.’ In November 1813, a severe epidemic of typhus fever broke out in Gera, and the mortality in four months was seven times as high as usual. In Zeulenroda (south of Gera) the pestilence was not very severe; it was brought there by sick and convalescent soldiers, who were quartered in the houses.[[147]] Jena, on the other hand, was very severely attacked: the epidemic began in November 1813, and lasted until March 1814.[[148]] According to Gurlt, the usual number of deaths in normal years in the districts of Weimar and Jena was from 1,750 to 1,850; but in the year 1813 no less than 3,948 people died there, and in 1814 there were 3,363 deaths.

After the battle of Lützen (May 2, 1813) some 8,000 wounded French and Prussian soldiers came to Erfurt, necessitating the immediate erection of lazarets. After the battles in August, when the scene of the war moved closer to Erfurt, the misery in the city was greatly increased, resulting in a rapid dissemination of typhus fever. In the latter part of August, when 9,000 sick and convalescent soldiers arrived in the city, the citizens were obliged to quarter them; the number of soldiers that succumbed to typhus fever was appalling, while as many as 17 civilians often died in a single day; in the week before the battle of Leipzig 504 soldiers died in the hospitals. On October 20–23 the French lazarets were cleaned out as thoroughly as possible. During the siege, which began on October 25 and lasted seventy-three days, the misery was extreme, and typhus fever raged more and more furiously. From November 1 to November 17 some 400 civilians died, while no less than 1,472 soldiers died in the military hospitals; 143 soldiers died on December 9 and 10. The houses of a few citizens were rendered absolutely tenantless. In the year 1813 Erfurt lost 1,585 citizens, as compared with an average of 554 for the years 1811–12; the number of deaths in the year 1814 was 1,121. Typhus fever also raged so furiously among the Prussian besiegers, that the lazarets were soon overcrowded, and it was necessary to house the troops in other places.[[149]]

In Fulda, which was forced to take in thousands of sick soldiers, typhus fever soon began to spread rapidly, as it also did in the country surrounding the city. In Giessen, where a Russian field-lazaret for 1,800–2,000 men was erected, the epidemic soon spread to the civil inhabitants.

At Hanau the French retreat was opposed by General Wrede with an army of 50,000 Bavarians and Austrians, a much smaller number than the French had. The two days of fighting that ensued (October 30 and 31, 1813) caused the pestilence to develop murderously. Kopp has given us a good description of this epidemic in Hanau.[[150]] Since the beginning of the war the city had always had a military hospital, which lay outside the city. During the battles in Saxony the number of sick and wounded increased, so that it was necessary to erect a second lazaret within the city. Many sick-attendants and sub-surgeons contracted typhus fever, which was prevalent in the hospitals, and several cases also occurred in the city, especially among people who quartered soldiers for money in their homes; many soldiers were thus crowded together in small rooms, and among them were a great many convalescents from Saxon hospitals. The infectious nature of the disease and its consequent dangerousness was shown by the fact that as a rule entire families gradually contracted it, although the epidemic was confined to individual houses. The engagement at Hanau, from which the French emerged victorious, resulted in the unfortunate city being stormed and plundered. ‘Even while the battle was going on,’ says Kopp, ‘a corps of the French army scattered throughout Hanau. This corps had brought with it from Saxony the germ of infection; for the region around Dresden could be looked upon as the great breeding-place where, in view of the enormous assemblage of people representing so many nations, and owing to the concurrence of so many unusual factors, the soil was uncommonly fertile for pestilential diseases.’ After the engagement a multitude of French prisoners, greatly weakened by hardships and hunger, came to the city. The dissemination of typhus fever was especially helped along by the fact that many poor inhabitants engaged in looting on the battlefield, and took home with them the knapsacks and other effects of the dead. The clothing of the dead came into the possession of those who were charged with burying them, and later got into the hands of the poorest families in the city and in the neighbouring villages. ‘I often entered the houses of poor people,’ Kopp goes on to say, ‘and found the entire family suffering from typhus fever, and on the walls of the low sick-room the uniforms, shirts, and other effects of the dead soldiers would still be hanging.’ The result was that the number of patients greatly increased after the battle, and in less than two weeks an epidemic began to develop; at first it was rather mild, but later on it carried away large numbers of people, and lasted until the end of February, having reached its climax in December. From December 1, 1813, to January 4, 1814, 248 people died, whereas the normal mortality for the month of December was but 30. The total number of deaths, including the soldiers, between October 26 and March 1 was 613, while in ordinary years only 125 people died, on the average. The middle class suffered worst of all, while of the upper classes three physicians and several clergymen died. Of the 192 typhus-fever patients that Kopp himself treated, 21 died (10·9 per cent), but these figures do not include a rather large number of very mild cases. People of all ages and both sexes were attacked; children suffered less than adults, while old people and heavy drinkers were the most liable to succumb. The disease lasted from two to three weeks; death usually occurred on the fourteenth to twentieth day, often somewhat sooner.

Frankfurt-on-the-Main suffered terribly in the year 1813 from enforced quartering. Even in the spring, after the newly-organized French armies had passed through the city, the Frankfurt lazarets were overcrowded with sick and wounded soldiers from Saxony, which was then the scene of the war. Accordingly it was decided in Frankfurt to build barracks adapted to the expected requirements; and in order to protect the city as much as possible from the infection of typhus fever, the barracks were erected outside the city limits, before the Allerheiligen Tor, and were situated in the Pfingstweide along the Main. The building of these barracks was a large and very expensive undertaking, but they undoubtedly served a very useful purpose by protecting the inhabitants for a considerable length of time against the infection of typhus fever.’[[151]] On September 21 and 22 large numbers of sick and wounded soldiers came to Frankfurt; they filled all the lazarets, and many of them had to be quartered in the homes of citizens. From that time on typhus fever began to spread throughout the city. Fortunately for Frankfurt, the retreat of the French army from Hanau to Mayence passed by the city, since the French generals were afraid that they would be unable to get their troops out of Frankfurt again. On October 29 all the sick and wounded French soldiers in the Frankfurt hospitals were taken out and conveyed by boat to Mayence. The hospital on the Pfingstweide, which had room for 1,480 patients, was immediately cleansed and made ready for the army of the Allies, who were marching into Frankfurt in large numbers. Typhus fever now reached its climax. The arrival of the German and Russian armies almost doubled the number of people in the city; the soldiers were quartered in the homes of citizens and immediately infected them with the pestilence. On January 14, 1814, there were more than 4,000 typhus-fever patients in the city alone, while in the district their number far exceeded 6,000. How the mortality among the civil inhabitants was thereby increased is shown by the following figures, which include only the deaths in the civil population:

July (1813)86
August83
September93
October103
November328
December289
January (1814)264
February248
March212
April132
May135
June76

Four physicians and seven surgeons succumbed to the epidemic in Frankfurt. Of 668 typhus-fever patients taken in by the Hospital zum Heiligen Geist, 100 died. Generally speaking, Frankfurt-on-the-Main fared pretty well, for the reason that most of the patients were housed outside the city; the lower classes, particularly servants and maids, suffered the most. In the city itself the disease was confined chiefly to the narrow streets of the Altstadt. In March and April the pestilence began gradually to abate, and in May it ceased altogether.

After leaving Hanau the retreating French army went on to Mayence and France. The great loss of human life due to typhus fever during the siege of Mayence will be discussed in the tenth chapter. Wiesbaden[[152]] was attacked very severely; 800 men are said to have died in the military lazaret there, while of the native inhabitants, who numbered 4,000 at that time, 466 contracted the disease and 141 succumbed to it.

From Mayence the pestilence spread and infected the Rheingau; the outbreak in Oestrich (below Hattenheim on the Rhine) is described by Thilenius.[[153]] In October sick and wounded French soldiers were taken down the Rhine, and in the latter part of that month 500 soldiers on three boats were held up by a severe storm at Oestrich, where the bad weather compelled them to remain for twenty-four hours. The patients, contrary to orders, left the ships and were taken in by the inhabitants of Oestrich. Before they went away fourteen of them died; a number had already died on the boats. On November 7 five or six citizens of Oestrich contracted the disease; before the 9th more than thirty had been taken sick, and on the 10th there were 93 typhus-fever patients in the city. All told, 330 people in Oestrich contracted the disease, and 103 succumbed to it. In the latter part of November neighbouring places were infected by dispersed French soldiers, by the small lazarets of the troops of the Allies, by visits to the sick, and by participation in funeral ceremonies. Particularly hard hit was the town of Kiedrich, where 336 people contracted the disease and 69 succumbed to it.

As in Oestrich, so in Winkel (near Rüdesheim), according to J. B. von Franque, the pestilence broke out on November 5, 1813, when a boat-load of infected French soldiers was driven ashore there; sixty or seventy of the patients entered the village of Winkel, where they were housed in a schoolroom. Presently a large number of the inhabitants (91 all told) contracted the disease, and 31 of them died. In the small neighbouring community of Espenschied the pestilence broke out in a Prussian military lazaret and spread to all the houses with the exception of one.

Kraft[[154]] gives us some interesting information regarding the appearance of typhus fever in Runkel-on-the-Lahn (above Limburg). This outbreak affords an example of how quickly the pestilence spread in small places. Shortly after the arrival of the Allies, traces of lazaret fever revealed themselves there, and in the latter part of November 1813, several sick soldiers were brought there and housed in the homes of citizens. Presently typhus fever broke out all over the town; in the first part of December the castle at Runkel was converted into a lazaret, and it was very soon filled with patients. The poor allowed themselves to be employed for short periods as sick-attendants, and the result was that they either contracted the disease themselves or else conveyed it to their homes; it was not long before the entire town, as well as the surrounding country, was infected. The convalescents from the military lazarets were not isolated in separate houses, but taken to the surrounding towns and villages (for example, Weyer, Villmar, Münster, and Erfurt), many of whose inhabitants were taken sick. The pestilence raged far and wide; at the climax of the epidemic (February to the middle of March) entire families lay sick, and a great many physicians and surgeons were attacked; the disease disappeared about the middle of May. In Runkel itself, which had 850 inhabitants, 214 contracted the disease and 70 died; the total number of deaths between December 1, 1813, and July 1, 1814, was 94, whereas the normal number of deaths for an entire year was but 17. In the village of Münster, which had 760 inhabitants, 86 were taken sick and 22 died; and in the village of Weyer, which had 727 inhabitants, 179 were attacked and 58 died; the average number of deaths per annum in both villages was 12. As in these small places, so in all the towns and cities the pestilence broke out wherever a sick soldier of either army passed.

From October 28 on, transports of half-dead typhus-fever patients for several days kept arriving at Limburg itself, where they were sheltered in a convent. In only eight days several inhabitants living near the lazaret, and also several sick-attendants and their families, contracted the disease. In consequence of the quartering of Russian and Prussian troops in the homes of citizens, and also in consequence of the erection of a permanent hospital in the city, into which hundreds of patients were received every day, typhus fever broke out with great severity among the inhabitants; the climax of the epidemic came in January. Of 600 civilians who contracted the disease 76 died.

In the Grand Duchy of Nassau, to which the last-named places (Wiesbaden, Oestrich, Rüdesheim, Runkel, and Limburg) belonged, and which had some 270,000 inhabitants, the number of people who contracted the disease and the number who died from it, according to the reports of the church and town authorities, was recorded for the period between October 1, 1813, and April 1, 1814. According to von Franque, the following figures were compiled in reference to the civil population in the Governmental Districts of that time:

Governmental District.Due to Typhus Fever.No. Deaths from all causes.
No. Patients.No. Deaths.
Ehrenbreitstein11,5222,4093,680
Weilburg2,173419680
Wiesbaden29,3496,1798,099
Total43,0449,00712,459

Altogether, fourteen per cent of the population were attacked by typhus fever, and three per cent succumbed to it; scarcely a single community was spared.

Epidemics of typhus fever also occurred further down the Rhine; Coblenz, for instance, was severely attacked. According to Bernstein,[[155]] a small epidemic broke out in Neuwied in January 1814, having been borne thither by a Prussian corps under General Kleist, which left behind eighty-two sick soldiers, many of them suffering from ‘nerve-fever’. The disease spread in a rather mild form throughout the city, but lasted only four weeks.

Typhus fever likewise appeared in North Germany, which was not directly infected by French soldiers retreating from Leipzig. Hamburg was attacked with great severity. In March 1813, the Russian colonel, Tettenborn, by means of a bold coup de main had captured Hamburg, but he was unable to hold it, and on May 30 the French returned. Marshal Davoust erected strong fortifications and drove out all the poorer inhabitants, most of whom had come from the neighbouring Altona, and thus made ready for a long siege, which did not begin until the end of the year, although the blockade was complete by the middle of January. Large quantities of filth accumulated in the streets, since all working-men were employed at the redoubts and hospitals. Food became more and more scarce. ‘On such a fertile soil’, says Th. Deneke,[[156]] ‘typhus fever flourished. The disease spread rapidly from the hospitals throughout the entire city, since not only were all arrangements wanting for the isolation of the patients, but half-recovered patients were actually discharged from the hospital and quartered in the homes of citizens. Of the garrison, which at the beginning of the siege numbered some 25,000 or 30,000 men, sixty or seventy, at one time as many as 100, died every day between the first part of February and the last part of March, and they were all buried outside the Steintor, close by the town-moat. No less than 10,700 bodies were interred there, 8,200 people having succumbed to typhus fever, and 2,500 to wounds; among those buried were numerous prisoners. Regarding the number of inhabitants that died we have no information. The condition in the hospitals must have been terrible; since there was not sufficient room or the proper facilities to take care of the patients, the physicians and attendants did their duty only under constraint, and the managing officials in many instances grossly abused their authority; one of them, the director of the Legert Military Hospital, for example, ended characteristically by becoming in 1824 the leader of a band of robbers in France.’ Seven physicians fell victims to the pestilence in Hamburg. The city did not surrender until May, after the capture of Paris, whereupon typhus fever appears to have disappeared quickly.

From Hamburg typhus fever was conveyed by fugitives in all directions; Altona was attacked with particular severity. As mentioned above, thousands of the poor driven from Hamburg had been received in Altona. ‘The people, driven from their homes by fear,’ says Steinheim,[[157]] ‘streamed through our gates and went about seeking shelter. At the same time the gates of Hamburg were closed, and swarms of unhappy people, the dregs of Hamburg’s population, straggled with the sad remnants of their property, bent over more by sorrow than by the weight of their burden, through our gates and found protection, nourishment, and shelter in our homes; it was a heart-rending sight.[[106]] They were housed, partly in barracks, stables, and barns, and partly in the houses of the lower-class citizens, whose homes were thereby ‘so crammed full that not a single corner was left unoccupied by some poor stranger’. More than 17,000 refugees were received in Altona, whose normal population at that time amounted to some 24,000. At the beginning of January, when the very cold weather came (the thermometer often went down as low as –20 degrees Réaumur), all the cracks and openings in the doors and windows were stopped up to prevent the entrance of the outside air. In the latter part of December 1813, typhus fever broke out in these overcrowded quarters and carried away large numbers of people. The exact number is unknown; according to Mutzenbecher 1,138 fugitives, all told, died in Altona. According to other reports sixty-eight per cent of the patients in the hospital succumbed. The epidemic reached its climax in March, and with the coming spring it began to abate, partly because it became feasible to house the fugitives in better quarters, and partly because the warmer weather rendered better ventilation possible.

The disease was also conveyed from Hamburg to Eppendorf, but no information regarding the number of deaths there is available.

In Lübeck typhus fever broke out in March 1814, among refugees from Hamburg, and carried away 613 people. According to Gurlt, typhus fever was conveyed to Bremen, partly by the army of the Crown Prince of Sweden, and partly by fugitives from Hamburg; the epidemic is said to have been rather mild.

In Mecklenburg typhus fever began to spread after the erection of a military lazaret in Malchow (October, 1813), and after the erection of a second lazaret by the Swedes in Wittenburg (near Schwerin).

In Kiel typhus fever did not appear until the beginning of the year 1814; Weber[[158]] attributed the outbreak there to the Swedish military lazaret, in which physicians and nurses frequently contracted the disease. At first the poorer people were attacked (probably because the sick-attendants were of that class), and later the well-to-do. The pestilence, mild at first, soon became very severe. The disease also broke out in other places in Holstein; Pinneberg was severely attacked, and the disease was also observed in Schleswig. It is remarkable that, according to Weber, no exanthema was observed in Kiel; it must, however, have been present in a scarcely noticeable form, since a rash appeared on the entire skin of convalescents. The disease always began with a chill, and was characterized now by obstinate constipation, now by diarrhoea; no patient who survived the thirteenth day died. And even if an exanthema was not observed, there can be no doubt that it was typhus fever which raged in Kiel. Weber himself calls the disease contagious typhus.