VI. A General Review of the Loss of Human Life in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War
Even if it is impossible to give an accurate numerical account of the losses due to pestilence in the course of the Thirty Years’ War, we have seen in a general way how epidemics of dysentery, typhus fever, and bubonic plague followed at the heels of armies, how they were borne from place to place, and how the devastation of the country caused by the war led to an absolute dearth of the necessaries of life, and thereby helped the pestilences to spread. We have mentioned only those places regarding which we have specific information, and they can be regarded only as examples of how these pestilences appeared; as a matter of fact, however, conditions were very much the same in all parts of the country. At the same time these examples show satisfactorily that the great depopulation of Germany during the Thirty Years’ War was chiefly caused by severe epidemics of typhus fever and bubonic plague.
It will be of interest to assemble the figures (such as have been recorded) relating to the number of deaths that occurred in a few of the larger cities during the Thirty Years’ War. We include Basel among those cities, since, being situated close to the border of that part of Germany where the war was carried on during two rather long periods, it was necessarily attacked by the prevalent pestilences. At the same time Basel affords an example of how quickly these pestilences disappeared from the cities, even in the seventeenth century, if external conditions permitted the authorities to take the necessary measures of prevention and precaution, and if the cities were not constantly being reinfected. We give the total number of deaths, and merely remark that the population in all German cities in the course of the Thirty Years’ War decreased considerably. In the case of Leipzig, Dresden, and Frankfurt-on-the-Main the still-births are included, but not in the case of Augsburg, Basel, and Strassburg. As a rule the country-people who fled to the cities are not included among the dead; only in the case of Strassburg, and perhaps also in that of Breslau for the year 1633, are they included.
The total loss of human life in the Thirty Years’ War can be estimated only approximately. The statement attributed to Lammert, that the population of Germany, which amounted to sixteen or seventeen millions before the war, had dwindled down to four millions after the war, is perhaps an exaggeration. Other estimates state that Germany lost one-half of its population. In the case of a few states we have more exact figures, which probably approach more closely to the actual loss. Thus the electorate of Saxony, which was much larger in area than the modern kingdom of Saxony, in the years 1631–2 is said to have lost some 934,000 persons. The population of Bohemia is said to have decreased during the Thirty Years’ War from three millions to 780,000. In Bavaria 80,000 families are said to have been wiped out. The population of Württemberg decreased from 444,800 in the year 1622 to 97,300. The population of Hesse decreased by about one-quarter. So much, however, is sure: that in the regions where the war was carried on for several years the population decreased by far more than one-half. The most positive proof of this is afforded by the hundreds of burned-down and unrebuilt houses found in so many German cities, and the numerous unpeopled, or almost unpeopled, places which Germany had to show at the end of the war.
| Deaths (1618–48). | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year. | Leipzig.[[52]] | Dresden.[[53]] | Breslau.[[54]] | Augsburg.[[55]] | Frankfurt.[[56]] | Strassburg.[[57]] | Basel.[[58]] |
| 1618 | 422 | 400 | 1,205 | 1,354 | 625 | 1,343 | 535 |
| 1619 | 569 | 332 | 1,313 | 1,485 | 544 | 1,258 | 257 |
| 1620 | 477 | 472 | 1,456 | 1,667 | 670 | 996 | 259 |
| 1621 | 613 | 491 | 1,652 | 1,517 | 674 | 1,019 | 352 |
| 1622 | 580 | 381 | 1,045 | 1,959 | 1,785 | 4,388 | 450 |
| 1623 | 500 | 421 | 1,050 | 1,875 | 725 | 1,738 | 336 |
| 1624 | 812 | 411 | 1,260 | 1,370 | 955 | 1,491 | 297 |
| 1625 | 718 | 481 | 3,000 | 1,392 | 1,871 | 1,350 | 297 |
| 1626 | 1,268 | 740 | 1,874 | 2,440 | 963 | 2,590 | 330 |
| 1627 | 537 | 412 | 1,227 | 2,494 | 773 | 1,669 | 266 |
| 1628 | 388 | 469 | 1,020 | 3,611 | 680 | 1,513 | 527 |
| 1629 | 506 | 398 | 1,116 | 1,265 | 832 | 1,786 | 2,656 |
| 1630 | 881 | 480 | 1,156 | 909 | 927 | 1,425 | 220 |
| 1631 | 1,754 | 844 | 1,795 | 859 | 1,132 | 1,383 | 221 |
| 1632 | 2,789 | 3,129 | 1,395 | 3,485 | 2,900 | 2,675 | 284 |
| 1633 | 1,445 | 4,585 | 13,231 | 3,364 | 762 | 5,546 | 456 |
| 1634 | 306 | 721 | 1,010 | 4,664 | 3,512 | 2,115 | |
| 1635 | 603 | 597 | 949 | 6,243 | 6,943 | 560 | |
| 1636 | 1,218 | 594 | 873 | 790 | 2,301 | 600 | |
| 1637 | 4,229 | 1,897 | 1,060 | 823 | 3,152 | 424 | |
| 1638 | 552 | 531 | 863 | 638 | 1,079 | 527 | |
| 1639 | 955 | 1,845 | 928 | 674 | 948 | 1,923 | 515 |
| 1640 | 469 | 935 | 1,273 | 586 | 1,034 | 239 | |
| 1641 | 482 | 525 | 1,088 | 887 | 735 | 713 | 195 |
| 1642 | 1,080 | 601 | 1,343 | 593 | 883 | 680 | 242 |
| 1643 | 1,034 | 1,041 | 1,332 | 638 | 523 | 532 | |
| 1644 | 604 | 489 | 1,570 | 659 | 491 | 707 | 337 |
| 1645 | 458 | 532 | 1,133 | 758 | 678 | 220 | |
| 1646 | 331 | 481 | 1,042 | 1,488 | 774 | 651 | 205 |
| 1647 | 403 | 471 | 1,273 | 1,338 | 662 | 573 | 238 |
| 1648 | 469 | 606 | 1,111 | 1,208 | 575 | 643 | 235 |
CHAPTER IV
THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
(a) Central Europe
The Thirty Years’ War left Germany for several decades in such a weakened condition that Louis XIV was able to perpetrate all sorts of outrages upon the unfortunate country. The result was a series of protracted conflicts in the countries on the Rhine. The German Emperor, however, was unable to fight with much vigour, partly because of disruption in the interior of the German Empire, and partly because the advancing Turks were gravely menacing its eastern boundary. After Louis XIV had come to terms with Holland in the Peace of Nimeguen (1679), in order to secure for his protégé the Archbishopric of Cologne, which was then vacant, he invaded Germany without declaring war, and his troops committed horrible devastations in the Palatinate and in northern Baden. A German army was organized to oppose the French, but it accomplished very little. Regarding the pestilences of that time not much is known, although it is certain that typhus fever was present in the armies. Thus we learn from a physician named R. Lentilius[[59]] that in November 1689, ‘burning head-disease’ or ‘Hungarian disease’ was disseminated by Bavarian soldiers who, under Max Emanuel, had taken part in the successful siege of Mayence (ending on September 11), and who afterwards returned home to pass the winter. Typhus fever was conveyed by them to Gundelfingen, Lauingen, Höchstädt, Donauwörth, and Wendingen (all of them places on the Danube between Ulm and Ingolstadt), causing a great many deaths. In many places—for example, in Gundelfingen—the epidemic lasted well into the following year.
In the very first year of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–14) Augsburg suffered terribly from camp-pestilences, which also spread among the non-belligerent population. In the year 1703 the city was occupied by the French and Bavarians fighting as allies, and was afterwards besieged by the Imperialists and the English.[[60]] The number of deaths in Augsburg (excluding the still-births) was:
| 1701 | 906 |
| 1702 | 900 |
| 1703 | 1,245 |
| 1704 | 3,113 |
| 1705 | 748 |
| 1706 | 842 |
Seitz reports that the troops along the Rhine were again infected with petechial fever in the year 1712; Metz, on the other hand, expressly says that no pestilences occurred at that time.
In the year 1733 a conflict again broke out between France and Germany over the Polish succession. In the year 1734 typhus fever appeared along the Rhine; in the spring and summer the outbreaks were sporadic, but in the fall, when troops were stationed along both sides of the Rhine, a virulent typhus broke out in many places, as in Heidelberg, Heilbronn, and Germersheim; the disease was borne even to Lorraine by French troops returning from the siege of Philippsburg.[[61]]
In connexion with the War of the Austrian Succession (1741–8), which Maria Theresa waged in conjunction with England and Hanover against Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, France, and Spain, we know of several outbreaks of pestilence. In the year 1742 Bavaria was overrun by Austrian troops; a severe pestilence broke out in that year in Ingolstadt and carried away several thousand of the strong French garrison there. A large number of civilians also died.[[62]] It is stated that the French garrison at Amberg lost 1,200 men, and that 400 of the inhabitants perished; it is very probable that the specific disease was typhus fever.
An unusually severe epidemic broke out in the year 1742 in Prague; on November 26, 1741, the city was stormed by the Bavarians and French, and shortly afterwards it was besieged by the Austrians under the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The number of men in the French garrison was 13,000, and the siege lasted until December 25, 1742. Almost all the French physicians and surgeons died; on the bodies of the inhabitants of the city appeared petechiae, which, it is stated, were not observed among the French. All told, 30,000 people are said to have been carried away by the epidemic in Prague. The high mortality was due to the wrong treatment of the disease by the French physicians, who held it to be inflammatory and sought to cure it by means of drastic phlebotomy. ‘Cette grande mortalité,’ says Ozanam, ‘fut attribuée au traitement suivi par les médecins français, qui, malgré l’avis de ceux du pays, saignaient les malades jusqu’à ce qu’ils expirassent sous la lancette, et par l’abus qu’ils firent de l’émétique qu’ils administrèrent jusqu’au 7e, 8e, 9e, et 10e jour.’[[63]] (The high mortality was due to the treatment given by the French physicians, who, despite the advice of the local physicians, bled the patients until they expired under the lancet, and overdosed them with emetics as far along as the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth day.) The Prussian army in Silesia was also infected with typhus fever, and it was not long before all the corps and the native population were attacked.[[64]]
The Austrian and English army, the so-called Pragmatic army, which in the year 1743 operated in the region of the Main, and which on July 27, 1743, won a victory at Dettingen (near Aschaffenburg), suffered severely, according to Pringle[[65]], from dysentery and hospital fever. The hospital for the English army was situated in the village of Fechenheim (near Hanau); all the patients sent there, even those who had some mild form of sickness, were infected with a camp-fever, which according to the description must have been typhus fever, and almost one-half of them died. The inhabitants of the village were also attacked, and nearly all of them succumbed. According to Neuwied, the disease was brought there in the evacuations of the sick and carried even to England by returning English soldiers.
The Seven Years’ War was attended by several epidemics of typhus fever. Notwithstanding the long duration of the war, they did not become very widespread, inasmuch as the armies were comparatively small, and as the scene of the fighting, in accordance with the military tactics of Frederick the Great, who opposed first one and then another Power, kept changing, and thus caused no one region to suffer for any great length of time. A severe epidemic of typhus fever broke out in Silesia in the year 1758; it raged in both the Austrian and Prussian armies, and spread to many places, for example, to Breslau, Schweidnitz, and Landshut, where the civil inhabitants also became infected. In Breslau, according to Grätzer,[[66]] the number of deaths among the evangelical population was:
| 1756 | 1,375 |
| 1757 | 1,554 |
| 1758 | 4,088 |
| 1759 | 1,697 |
| 1760 | 1,590 |
| 1761 | 1,724 |
| 1762 | 2,373 |
| 1763 | 1,808 |
According to Süssmilch,[[67]] the number of deaths among the Catholics in the year 1758 was 5,135; thus the total number of deaths in the entire civil population was 9,223. In addition, the following military persons were buried: 5,470 Prussian soldiers, 2,153 Austrian soldiers, 18 Swedish soldiers; also 755 wives and children of soldiers, and 953 paupers and outsiders. The total number of interments in Breslau in that year was 18,572. The great mortality lasted from January to June; of 9,349 military persons buried, there died in:
| January | 1,346 |
| February | 1,709 |
| March | 1,246 |
| April | 940 |
| May | 1,287 |
| June | 818 |
| July | 457 |
| August | 578 |
| September | 383 |
| October | 201 |
| November | 164 |
| December | 220 |
In the year 1757, in which there was a high mortality in a large part of North Germany that was unaffected by the war, there was an unusually large number of deaths in Dresden; in the year 1760, when the city was beleaguered by Frederick the Great, a ‘virulent epidemic fever’ broke out and again caused a great increase in the death-rate. The number of deaths in Dresden (excluding the still-births) was:[[68]]
| 1756 | 2,432 |
| 1757 | 4,454 |
| 1758 | 2,603 |
| 1759 | 2,631 |
| 1760 | 3,514 |
| 1761 | 2,127 |
| 1762 | 2,008 |
| 1763 | 1,975 |
The increased number of deaths during the Seven Years’ War in the countries where the fighting took place is shown by the following figures (which include the still-births) for Berlin and Leipzig:
| Year. | Leipzig[[69]] (total no. deaths). | Berlin[[70]] (deaths per 1,000). |
|---|---|---|
| 1755 | 1,150 | 34·5 |
| 1756 | 1,286 | 42·0 |
| 1757 | 2,600 | 49·2 |
| 1758 | 2,824 | 56·4 |
| 1759 | 1,408 | 43·5 |
| 1760 | 2,025 | 41·6 |
| 1761 | 2,048 | 38·2 |
| 1762 | 2,160 | 48·0 |
| 1763 | 1,614 | 50·3 |
| 1764 | 1,052 | 30·3 |
Typhus fever also appeared in the western scene of the war, where the Imperialist and French troops were fighting against the Prussians. When the united Imperialist and French armies besieged Eisenach for two weeks, the disease broke out in both military hospitals in the city and afterwards spread among the inhabitants, causing many deaths.
(b) Eastern Europe
During the numerous wars that were waged in eastern Europe in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, epidemic diseases frequently made their appearance. After the siege of Vienna (1683), typhus fever broke out in various parts of Hungary, particularly in Pressburg, where many soldiers were congregated. The disease spread from the soldiers to the civilians, and the pestilence lasted from November 1683 to the spring of 1684. After the return of the Prussian troops from Hungary, typhus fever broke out in many parts of Germany; for example, in Minden.[[71]]
At the beginning of the eighteenth century bubonic plague broke out in Constantinople and spread from there to the Lower Danube countries and to Russia, particularly to Ukraine. According to Hecker,[[72]] this dissemination was greatly furthered by the adventurous campaign of Charles XII of Sweden, so that the epidemic included all eastern Europe and gradually embraced north-western Germany and Sweden. Fleeing Swedish and Polish soldiers, after the battle of Pultowa (July 8, 1707), conveyed the disease to Silesia. Danzig was severely attacked in that year, and a few cases occurred there in the year 1708; but in the following year a very severe pestilence broke out, reached its climax in September, and between January 5 and December 7, 1709, carried away 32,599 persons. From Danzig the plague spread to Courland, Livonia, Pomerania, Denmark, and Sweden. In Copenhagen 20,822 persons died in the year 1710, in Stockholm 40,000, in Karlskrona 16,000.
In the years 1716–18, when Austria and Turkey once more came to blows over the Turkish occupation of Morea, which belonged to the Venetians, bubonic plague broke out in Constantinople and also among the Turks who were shut up in Belgrade. The Austrian army, which was encamped outside of Belgrade, was apparently not attacked by that disease, although some 4,000 men succumbed to intermitting fever, head-disease, and dysentery.[[73]]
During the war waged by Russia and Austria against Turkey (1736–9), bubonic plague appeared along the Lower Danube. ‘It broke out there,’ says Häser,[[74]] ‘first during the war waged by Austria and Russia against Turkey, and the result was that the war was terminated unexpectedly, and in a manner unfavourable to the Christian arms. At the time of its appearance in Ukraine (July 1738) the disease was conveyed by Austrian troops to Temesvar; from there it gradually spread over all Hungary, mostly along the banks of the Theiss to the boundaries of Carniola, Moravia, and Austria, and also along the Carpathian Mountains to Poland and Bukowina. The devastation caused by the pestilence continued for seven years, and the measures adopted by the authorities proved of little or no avail.
The severe epidemic of bubonic plague during the Russo-Turkish War of 1769–72 has been carefully investigated by Hecker.[[75]] The Turkish army, in consequence of inferior nourishment, was badly infected with intermittent fever, dysentery, and typhus fever when it set out from Constantinople in March 1769. When the Russian troops advanced, the Turks retreated after an engagement near Galatz. Since the disease had been conveyed on ships from Constantinople to Galatz, where many Russians succumbed to it, the city was evacuated. On the way to Jassy every trace of the pestilence disappeared, and in Jassy the soldiers were quartered in the houses of the citizens. Since patients suffering from contagious diseases had not been isolated in the military hospitals there, in the middle of January typhus fever broke out in them, accompanied by glandular swellings in the groin. Four weeks later a Jew and his two children were taken sick in the city and died, the Jew having bought a fur coat in the hospital. Since the Russian commander-in-chief did not hold the disease to be bubonic plague and did nothing to prevent it from spreading, in March 1770 it spread far and wide in Moldavia and Wallachia. Not until the end of April was the presence of bubonic plague officially admitted; and then the well-qualified physician Orraeus was commissioned to make an investigation.
From Jassy the disease was conveyed to Botoshany, which also lies in northern Moldavia, and there it soon developed into a severe epidemic and carried away more than 800 out the town’s 2,500 inhabitants; the rest fled to Carpathia. ‘The patients,’ says Hecker,[[76]] ‘lay in tents, and without care or medical help awaited an almost certain death. The city itself afforded a sight of complete disorder; the houses were deserted and stood with open windows and doors, the air was poisoned with the odour of accumulated refuse, and the general devastation bore silent witness to the most extreme misery. In addition to that, there were multitudes of savage, ravenous dogs, which dug up the dead and menaced the sick.’
Conditions were just as bad in Jassy when Orraeus arrived there on May 10; of the inhabitants and of the Russian garrison more than half had died, while many streets were entirely depopulated. Since the persons infected with the disease were placed out in a near-by forest, where they were left without care, many patients were concealed inside the houses and their bodies afterwards secretly buried in gardens and cellars. There was no medical help, since both of the Greek physicians had fled from the city. On May 20 the Russian troops, at the instigation of Orraeus, withdrew from Jassy; a convent was converted into a hospital, and soon after that the pestilence began to subside. By June 22 it had disappeared.
In Wallachia the disease broke out somewhat later than in Moldavia, and with considerably less severity. In Bucharest it lasted until May.
In Bender, situated in Bessarabia on the Dniester, there was a mild epidemic of bubonic plague after the city had been stormed on September 16, 1770. The carrying-off of war-booty caused new pestilences in the army and in the population of Podolia and Little Russia. For a short time in the last part of September the main army also suffered from plague in its fixed quarters on the Pruth.
The Turkish army, which passed the winter in Bulgaria, was severely attacked by plague, but no further information about this outbreak is available.
In February 1771, Moldavia and Wallachia suffered very little from plague, although there were occasional outbreaks here and there (for example, in Bucharest) until the year 1773; but these were always of short duration.
The transplantation of this disease into neighbouring countries, especially Russia and its capital, was of particular importance. In consequence of the widespread occurrence of bubonic plague in Moldavia and Wallachia when the war broke out in the spring of 1770, large numbers of fugitives from those parts gathered along the border of Transylvania, where a quarantine establishment was opened at Törzburg (south-west of Kronstadt). In Rukur, a border-village of Wallachia, whither large numbers of people fled daily, a Jewess succumbed at the end of April to bubonic plague, and in the course of the next eight weeks 60 more people died. From there the pestilence spread to neighbouring localities, in which 615 out of 3,000 inhabitants (including 31 outsiders) died. The climax of the plague was in September. It gradually spread throughout the border-towns of Transylvania, but only in occasional instances did it reach the interior of the country; all told, there were 1,024 deaths from the pestilence in Transylvania in the year 1770.
Since all the supplies of the Russian army were conveyed to it on Polish wagons, Polish peasants contracted the disease in the infected countries, and then spread it throughout Poland. Jewish pedlars, who purchased clothes, furs, and war-booty in the Russian camp, likewise helped to spread the disease. In Poland the plague became unusually widespread, particularly in Podolia, Volhynia, and in the eastern part of Galicia; 47 cities and 580 villages, according to Chenot, were attacked, and 275 of the latter were almost completely wiped out. The total loss in these regions is estimated at 250,000. But the disease penetrated no further into Poland, and Warsaw did not suffer at all.
Southern Russia was attacked later than Poland—not until August 1770. Kiev was the first of several cities in which the plague broke out; the disease, which was borne there on infected wares from Podolia, carried away 20,000 people, about one-fifth of the population of the city. Fugitives from Kiev conveyed the pestilence to many cities and villages in Little Russia, while troops returning from Bender helped to spread it in the north. In Nieskin, a city in Ukraine, the plague caused horrible devastation; it broke out there for the second time in the year 1771, and carried away from 8,000 to 10,000 people.
It was generally believed that the severe epidemic of bubonic plague which raged in Moscow in the year 1771 was directly connected with the expedition against the Turks. At that time the city had some 230,000 inhabitants; the streets, full of filth, were narrow, and the houses, most of which were one-story wooden structures, stood close together. According to Hecker, the beginning of the plague is obscure; fugitives from the scene of the war, and wool imported from Poland or Ukraine are both given as the original means of dissemination, but inasmuch as the disease was so widespread in the south, it is probable that it was conveyed to the north in various ways. Schafonsky, writing in Russian, described the plague in an excellent book, of which Hecker made use; the description by a surgeon named Samoilowitz,[[77]] who did good service during the plague, contracted the disease himself, and was roughly treated in a revolt, according to Hecker, lacks scientific merit and is unreliable. In November and December, 1770, there were a few suspected cases in a hospital in the eastern part of the city; Schafonsky diagnosed the disease as bubonic plague, while the medical officer of the city called it typhus fever. By means of strict isolation and other measures this outbreak was soon entirely checked. As early as January and February, however, indubitable cases of plague had occurred, but they were kept secret. The epidemic really began in the Imperial cloth-manufactory, where 3,000 working-men were employed; not until 130 people had died within eight weeks, was this fact made known on March 9, 1771. Since many of the working-men lived in the city and had meanwhile conveyed the disease to their homes, the measures of prevention came too late. The patients were now taken to a convent in Ukresh (near Moscow), while all the rest of the employees were quarantined. But these measures merely helped to spread the disease, since many of the working-men, in order to escape being quarantined, fled and concealed themselves in the city. When it became known that bubonic plague was present in Moscow, the nobility fled to the country. The people themselves refused to listen to any advice; nobody believed in contagion, and in September there was actually a revolt in the city against the measures that had been adopted to check the epidemic. The compulsory confinement in hospitals of infected people and the quarantining of their families led to numerous concealments. In July the pestilence had already become very widespread; many houses in the suburbs were empty, the courts of justice and workshops were closed, and, since nurses and grave-diggers were dying off rapidly, convicts were employed to do their work. In the southern part of the city a convent was converted into a hospital, and at the end of July only one attendant was on hand there to take care of 1,000 patients. The epidemic reached its climax in September, when from 600 to 1,000 persons died every day. By January 1772, the pestilence had disappeared. From the month of April 1771 on, the number of people that contracted the disease and the number that died were officially recorded; the number of deaths (excluding the bodies buried in secret) was:
| Months. | Total no. deaths. | Deaths in Hospitals. |
|---|---|---|
| April (1771) | 778 | |
| May | 878 | 56 |
| June | 1,099 | 105 |
| July | 1,708 | 298 |
| August | 7,268 | 845 |
| September | 21,401 | 1,640 |
| October | 17,561 | 2,626 |
| November | 5,235 | 1,769 |
| December | 805 | 456 |
| January (1772) | 330 | |
The number of deaths, which at that time averaged 7,000 per annum in Moscow, thus increased to 58,000 (including some 1,000 secret burials), and at least 52,000 were directly due to the epidemic. About 150 priests were victims of their calling.
During the pestilence there was constant intercourse between Moscow and the surrounding country, since the necessaries of life had to be brought to the city, where clothes and household goods were to be bought very cheaply. Thus most of the villages and cities in the surrounding country were infected. Some of the latter were almost completely depopulated, while the estate-owners found protection by shutting themselves up in their manors. Of the more distant cities Jaroslav-on-the-Volga was very severely attacked, while Borowsk, Kaluga, and Tula suffered somewhat less. St. Petersburg was the only city to prohibit outsiders from entering, and it was consequently spared.
CHAPTER V
THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NAPOLEON’S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN
The twenty years of fighting that followed the French Revolution, and into which all Europe was drawn, were everywhere accompanied by outbreaks of pestilence, many of which were very serious. At the very beginning of the first Coalition War (1792–7) they played an important rôle. A severe epidemic of dysentery broke out among the Prussian troops when they were advancing into Champagne, and this was chiefly responsible for the failure of the invasion. Typhus fever had also appeared and caused a great many deaths among the Prussians, as well as among the inhabitants of the Departments of Meuse, Moselle, Meurthe, and Ardennes.[[78]] When the badly infected army of the Allies retreated, after the engagement at Valmy (September 20, 1792), it left behind its sick in various cities and villages, and thus infected the French army that followed in pursuit. In Longwy itself (which had remained in the power of the Allies until October 22), and in the immediate vicinity, the streets were filled with the bodies of soldiers who had succumbed, partly to exhaustion, and partly to dysentery.[[79]]
Verdun suffered terribly during the siege of the Allies, and at the end of August was obliged to surrender. The chief cause of the widespread occurrence of disease there was the fearful lack of sanitation; ‘à Verdun,’ say Maréchal and Didion[[80]] ‘une des causes les plus puissantes d’infection était le dépavement de la ville au moment du siège. Tous les jours on jetait de chaque maison au milieu de la rue des immondices de toute espèce, des déjections humaines et animales, des débris, des végétaux, qui se mêlant à la boue se liquéfiaient et se putréfiaient par l’action des pluies. Les agents de la ferme des boues ne pouvaient rien contre tel foyer. Il s’en échappait une odeur infecte, quand quelque voiture venait à passer, et l’on voyait souvent des personnes frappées de spasmes, prises de vomissements et même asphyxiées en traversant les rues.’ (One of the most potent causes of the infection at Verdun was the unpaved state of the town at the time of the siege. Every day refuse of all kinds was thrown from each house out into the street—the evacuations of men and animals, rubbish, and garbage—and there it mixed with the mud, liquefied and rotted through the action of the rain. The officials in charge of street sanitation were powerless. All this filth emitted a foul odour when a carriage drove through it, and one often saw people seized with convulsions and sickness, or even suffocated while crossing the streets.) There was no more thought of taking proper care of the sick and wounded in Verdun at that time, than there was in the later French wars; they lay in numbers on rotten straw, in their own excrement, two or three of them sharing a single blanket. The result was that two-thirds of the patients died.
Pont-à-Mousson, where three military hospitals were erected, also had a severe epidemic, as did Metz; the hospitals could not accommodate the many patients that came streaming in from all directions. Typhus fever continued to appear sporadically in the next two years; from 1792 to 1795 as many as 64,413 patients were received into the Metz hospitals, and of that number 4,870 died.
In the years 1793–4 typhus fever was frequently conveyed into Germany in consequence of the warfare along the Upper Rhine. In May 1793, it was brought to Frankfurt-on-the-Main by French prisoners-of-war, whom the Austrians on their march through the country had left behind. In addition to the cases of ‘putrid fever’ in the military hospitals, a few cases were also observed in the city; until November the disease raged extensively, but in the winter it increased in fury and did not disappear until the summer of 1794. ‘The descriptions of putrid fever,’ says L. Wilbrandt,[[81]] ‘while they make no mention of exanthema, nevertheless positively prove that the disease was none other than exanthematic typhus, war-typhus. The facts that the disease described was highly infectious, and that it is expressly stated that diarrhoea was not observed, lead us to this conclusion.’ In the report of the health-officer, issued at the end of July 1793, it is nevertheless asserted that ‘the disease was of a putrescent nature, involving spots and purpura’. The transportation of French prisoners caused the epidemic to spread to Günthersburg and from there to Bornheim, but only in a mild form.
A short article by Canz[[82]] informs us about the spreading of typhus fever from the Rhine to the Black Forest. The disease was borne by French prisoners to Hornberg (near Triberg), where in the autumn of 1793 they spent four weeks. Owing to numerous outbreaks of ‘infectious nerve-fever’, a war-hospital for such patients was established at Hornberg, which had some 1,000 inhabitants. In November the first patients appeared in the town, and the epidemic lasted until the beginning of June of the following year; scarcely a single house was spared, especially among the poor, and often entire families contracted the disease. All told, sixty people died, including eight outsiders who had been brought to the hospital. According to Canz, infectious nerve-fever also made its appearance in Kinzigtal, in the Rhine region, and in several parts of Swabia. ‘In some cases,’ he says, ‘petechiae appeared between the fifth and eighth days on the breast, arms, and back; at first they were very small and rose-red, but later they turned yellow, brown, and finally blue and black, occasionally taking the form of large blue blotches, like suggilations.’
French prisoners also conveyed typhus fever to Bavaria. According to Seitz,[[83]] this was the case, for example in Regensburg, where the disease raged furiously in December 1793. ‘There is no doubt,’ he says, ‘that the germ of this disease was brought there by French captives, since many contracted the disease and succumbed to it on the transport-ships on which they were carried; and Schäffer (a physician in Regensburg) also saw many people contract the fever who had come in contact with them.’ Typhus fever was disseminated all along the Danube—Donauwörth, Neuburg, Ingolstadt, Vohburg, Kehlheim, Donaustauf, Pfatter, Straubing, Deggendorf, and other places. Kulmbach was also infected by the French soldiers.
During the Coalition War violent conflicts took place in western France in the Vendée, where the Royalist population had risen against the new potentates. When Nantes was besieged by the Royalists in 1793, a furious outbreak of typhus fever occurred in that city.[[84]] The prisons and hospitals were greatly overcrowded, the city was filled with dirt which nobody took the trouble to remove, and many carcasses were left unburied. In the latter part of September the disease broke out in the prison of Saintes-Claires, where the prisoners were very closely packed together. According to le Borgne, the official inspector said of this prison: ‘Tout manquait dans cette maison—l’air, l’eau, les aliments, les remèdes, tout jusqu’aux moyens d’ensevelir et d’enterrer les morts.’ (Everything was lacking in the building—air, water, food, remedies, and even the means for covering and burying the dead.) Without beds, without even straw, the prisoners had to lie on the damp ground and be scantily fed on bad bread and water. Regarding the Le Bouffay Prison, we read: ‘Des morts, des mourants, et des prisonniers nouvellement infectés gisent sur le même grabat! Les cachots répandent des miasmes putrides, et les lumières s’éteignent lorsqu’on entre dans ces cloaques empestés!’ (Dead, dying, and recently infected prisoners lie on the same pallet! The cells reek with putrid miasma, and the lights go out when one enters these pestilential sewers.) And regarding the L’Entrepôt Prison we read: ‘La maladie était si intense à L’Entrepôt que, de 22 sentinelles qui y montèrent la garde, 21 périrent en très peu de jours, et que les membres du Conseil de salubrité, qui eurent le triste courage d’y aller, en furent presque tous les victimes.’ (The disease was so intense at L’Entrepôt, that twenty-one out of twenty-two sentinels who went on duty there died within a very few days, and almost all the members of the Board of Health who had the sad courage to go there fell victims to it.) The hospitals were so crowded that three or four persons were obliged to occupy the same bed. After December the disease also spread to the city; of 300 grave-diggers employed by the Revolutionary Committee, the majority were taken sick and many died. The total number of deaths in the city and in the prisons was estimated at 10,000.
In Italy very severe pestilences spread in a very short time over the entire peninsula, and even to Sicily, in consequence of the war that had been going on there since 1796. These pestilences were unusually severe in both camps during the siege of Mantua (1796–7). (We shall learn more about this in the tenth chapter.) In the year 1799 the French troops under Scherer were forced to retreat in disorder before the victorious advance of Suvarov and the Austrians, and they took refuge in Nice. There, in the autumn of 1799, a severe epidemic of typhus fever broke out in the French army and soon spread to the non-belligerent population, one-third of which was carried away by it.[[85]] In consequence of the removal of the patients the disease was conveyed into southern France, infecting Aix, Fréjus, Marseilles, Toulon, and even Grenoble.[[86]]
The disease spread much more widely in the direction of Italy, where it soon attacked the entire coast of Liguria. A terrible epidemic of typhus fever occurred in Genoa in 1799–1800, when 14,000 people succumbed within six months.[[87]] Rasori had noted the first cases as early as the summer of 1799; the patients were fugitives from Upper Italy, commercial travellers and military persons. Not until the end of the winter and in the spring did the disease become very widespread; it attacked principally the poorer people. Rasori held the disease to be ‘nosocomial fever’ (typhus fever), and his description of it makes this diagnosis seem undoubtedly correct. Regarding the increased prevalence of typhus fever during war-times, we are informed by the following table of deaths, compiled by Ozanam:[[88]]
| Year. | Deaths in Hospital. | Deaths in City. |
|---|---|---|
| 1794 | 392 | 812 |
| 1795 | 477 | 911 |
| 1796 | 761 | 1,000 |
| 1797 | 1,038 | 900 |
| 1798 | 549 | 803 |
| 1799 | 489 | 809 |
| 1800 | 705 | 1,100 |
| 1801 | 929 | 1,200 |
| 1802 | 519 | 1,006 |
| 1803 | 404 | 1,036 |
| 1804 | 418 | 1,087 |
We note the increase in the year 1796, then the decrease when the war was interrupted in the year 1798, and the renewed increase when it began again.
Likewise in southern Germany various epidemics of typhus fever broke out during the second Coalition War (1799–1802), and they too were caused by the war and the constant marching back and forth of soldiers. Many places in Bavaria and Swabia were also attacked in the year 1799.[[89]]
A very severe epidemic of typhus fever broke out in connexion with the war between France and Austria in 1805; it devastated all Moravia, Bohemia, Upper and Lower Austria, Galicia, and Hungary. After the battle of Austerlitz (December 2, 1805) hospital fever appeared among the wounded in Brünn, and carried away hundreds of French, Russian, and Austrian soldiers. The pestilence soon spread among the non-belligerent population, which in the months January-May 1806, suffered terribly. According to Hain,[[90]] the number of deaths in Austrian Silesia was:
| July (1805) | 3,965 |
| August | 3,945 |
| September | 4,204 |
| October | 4,735 |
| November | 4,410 |
| December | 4,501 |
| January (1806) | 16,399 |
| February | 14,588 |
| March | 14,140 |
| May | 9,087 |
| June | 6,292 |
In Vienna, which on November 13, 1805, had been occupied by the French, a severe epidemic of typhus fever soon broke out in consequence of the overcrowded condition of the hospitals. The transportation of so many prisoners of war, particularly Russians, along the military roads to Strassburg, caused the germ of typhus fever to be scattered along the entire route; Landshut, Munich, and Augsburg are three Bavarian cities that are said to have been attacked.[[91]] In Augsburg the number of deaths was:
| 1805 | 1,189 |
| 1806 | 1,840 |
| 1807 | 1,165 |
Epidemics also broke out away from the military roads, as in Ingolstadt, Hof, and Nuremberg.[[92]]
In Württemberg, infected prisoners were also transported through Göppingen, Cannstatt, and Vaihingen. In the months of November and December 1806 the number of deaths in the French military hospital at Solitude was rather small, but in January 1807 serious diseases were brought there by Russian and Austrian prisoners.[[93]] Regarding Pforzheim, a town in Baden with upwards of 5,000 inhabitants, we have more detailed information;[[94]] in December and January transports of Russian prisoners arrived there, bringing with them ‘putrid fever’. ‘Curiosity, pity, a sense of duty, and the distribution of food brought many citizens and servants in contact with them, and they were almost all infected.’ Military hospitals were erected inside and outside the city; and it is stated that those who were directly infected by the Russians suffered much more severely than those who contracted the disease later on. Diarrhoea was rare, but on the skin appeared ‘red spots of varying size and shape, usually like flea-bites; they developed first on the neck and breast.’ The climax of the epidemic was in the last part of January and the first part of February; in May it disappeared. Of 183 patients treated, Roller lost 26 by death. The total number of deaths in Pforzheim due to the pestilence was 130 (civilians), 77 of them being between the ages of twenty and sixty. The total number of deaths, which in the years 1801–5 had averaged 163, in the year 1806 was 346; in the years 1807–10 the average number of deaths was 196.
Typhus fever also appeared in France in the winter of 1805–6, having been brought there by prisoners of war; Autun, Semur, and Langres were attacked.[[95]]
In Napoleon’s war against Prussia (1806–7) typhus fever broke out in the provinces of East Prussia, where the second half of the war was waged. According to Hufeland,[[96]] the disease appeared wherever the soldiers went in the fall, winter, and following spring; he diagnosed it as putrid fever, nerve fever, and typhus fever. Hufeland, to be sure, often points to the fact that the disease of 1806–7 was in several respects different from that of 1803; in particular, the disease of 1806–7 was characterized by a long period of incubation, lasting diarrhoea, meteorism, blood in the evacuations of the bowels, and a long convalescence. But since Hufeland expressly says that the disease lasted twenty-one days, and at the same time mentions petechiae and the fact that the disease often broke out suddenly, there can be no doubt that it was typhus fever. The peculiar mixed character of his description can be explained only by the assumption that epidemics of typhus fever and typhoid fever appeared simultaneously, and that the two diseases were regarded as one and the same. Gilbert[[97]] expressly mentions ‘éruptions pétéchiales’ in his description of these epidemics in the military hospitals. In Königsberg typhus fever raged in the hospitals and among the inhabitants, 6,392 of whom died. In Thorn, Bromberg, and Culm, all of which had military lazarets, the disease spread from them to the civil population. In Danzig, which in the spring of 1807 passed through a siege of seventy-six days, the condition of health was good, whereas typhus fever raged among the French besiegers. In 1805–6 the disease was conveyed by Russian troops to Silesia, where it broke out in Trachenberg, Adelnau, Ostrowo, Wohlau, Neisse, and Leobschütz.[[98]] German prisoners brought typhus fever with them to France, where it broke out in the first part of January 1807, in the Departments of Aube and Yonne.[[99]]
Typhus fever raged less furiously during Napoleon’s war with Austria in 1809. After the battle of Wagram it appeared in the overcrowded hospitals of Vienna, and also in Tyrol. Since the war had first been waged in Bavaria, the disease had also broken out there (in Landshut and Augsburg), but had nowhere become very widespread.
Typhus fever broke out in the form of very severe epidemics during the long struggle of the French in Spain and Portugal in the years 1808–14, since here the French army suffered terribly in consequence of unremitting hardships, the scanty supply of food, and the poor hospital arrangements. While in the Spanish Peninsula the French army is said to have lost 300,000 men in consequence of disease, and 100,000 men in consequence of the enemy’s arms. A particularly severe epidemic raged in Saragossa when that city was besieged by the French in the months of June, July, and August 1808, and again in the months of December-February, 1808 and 1809; of 100,000 inhabitants 54,000 succumbed to typhus fever, and of 30,000 soldiers 18,000 fell victims to the same disease, so that the city was forced to capitulate.[[100]] In the year 1810 yellow fever caused great devastation in the southern part of Spain, attacking Cadiz, Cartagena, and Gibraltar; in 1811 it raged furiously in the provinces of Murcia and Valencia,[[101]] but the epidemic was confined to the coast.
From Spain typhus fever was frequently conveyed by transports of prisoners to France; the border districts through which the prisoners passed were the first to be attacked, as, for instance, the town of Dax (near Bayonne). Ozanam says:[[102]] ‘La France en ressentit les effets depuis les Pyrénées jusqu’aux environs de Paris, sur toutes les routes suivies par les prisonniers espagnols, et l’Angleterre en fut infestée au retour des débris de ses troupes du même pays. En France la ville de Dax, frontière de l’Espagne, fut une des premières à éprouver les ravages des maladies épidémiques, qui accompagnent toujours les armées. La situation basse et marécageuse, jointe à l’encombrement de son hôpital par des militaires atteints du typhus nosocomial, ne tarda pas à favoriser la propagation de la contagion, et elle fut bientôt transmise aux environs. Les prisonniers espagnols y contribuèrent encore, et le caractère contagieux de la maladie ne fut pas plus douteux, lorsqu’on vit les employés au service des hôpitaux et à celui du transport de ces militaires en être tous atteints.’ (France felt the effects (of the disease) all along the routes followed by the Spanish prisoners—from the Pyrenees to the environs of Paris, while England was infected by the remnants of its troops when they returned from France. The town of Dax, situated near the border between France and Spain, was one of the first places to experience the ravages of the epidemic diseases which always accompanied the armies. Its low, marshy situation, together with the fact that its hospital was overcrowded with soldiers infected with nosocomial typhus, greatly favoured the propagation of the contagion, which soon spread throughout the vicinity. The Spanish prisoners also helped to spread it, and the contagious character of the disease was no longer questionable when the attendants at the hospitals, as well as the men who had charge of transporting the sick, were seen to contract it.)
The Spanish prisoners were sent far into the interior, and caused outbreaks of pestilence wherever they went. In consequence of the strain and exertion involved in their transportation, and also of the inferior food, typhus fever soon became very widespread among them. Diseased and wounded men were always carried in the same wagons, while it was often necessary to remain for a considerable length of time in camps, where sick and healthy men lay side by side on straw; thus many died on the way. In order to prevent the disease from spreading to the civil population, it was arranged that the buildings designated for the prisoners should lie away from the town where the soldiers were quartered, or that the prisoners should be sheltered in barracks. All intercourse between the prisoners and the inhabitants was forbidden, and after their departure the straw used by them was burned, and the buildings they had occupied were fumigated.[[103]]
Since, however, it finally became necessary to house the sick in hospitals, it was absolutely impossible to prevent the disease from spreading. The result was that the following places in Central France were attacked: Limoges, Guéret, Châteauroux, Issoudun, Moulins, Nevers, La Charité, and Bourges.[[104]] As people everywhere were afraid of contracting the disease, the prisoners were transferred as soon as possible to near-by districts, and this merely helped to spread the disease. According to Boin, Bourges, in the year 1809, became the rendezvous of all Spanish prisoners, who were housed there in barracks and in public hospitals; of 653 prisoners of war received in the public hospitals, 103 died. In the city itself only a few cases of typhus fever were observed. The highly contagious nature of the disease was well known to Boin, who says:
‘Les dames religieuses de la Charité, chargées du service des salles, les élèves en chirurgie, les servans, les gardes de nuit, le casernier, les gendarmes qui escortaient les voitures remplies de prisonniers malades, le chapelain, le secrétaire du commissaire des guerres, les personnes que la charité évangélique a fait imprudemment entrer dans les salles, ont été frappés de la maladie. Tous ont couru des risques, quelques-uns ont succombé.’ (The nuns who had charge of the rooms (in the hospital) at La Charité, the medical students, the attendants, the night-watchmen, the porter, the gendarmes who escorted the carriages conveying sick prisoners, the chaplain, the secretary of the War Commissioner, and the persons who imprudently allowed a sense of duty and charity to induce them to enter the rooms—all contracted the disease. They all ran risks, and some of them died.) Nevertheless, Boin did not hold the disease in Bourges to be typhus fever, but a ‘fièvre maligne putride’; he also adds that he failed to observe petechiae in a single instance. The physicians sent by the Government, on the other hand, diagnosed the disease as ‘hospital fever’. Inasmuch as there is no doubt expressed anywhere else regarding the appearance of typhus fever among the Spanish prisoners (Ozanam speaks expressly of the appearance of petechiae on the second, third, or fourth day), it was undoubtedly that disease which broke out in Bourges.
Not only the French, but also the English troops were attacked by typhus fever in Spain and Portugal; they are said to have lost 24,930 men in consequence of diseases, and 8,889 men in consequence of battles and skirmishes. The disease was conveyed to England by returning soldiers, but was confined there to a few houses. After the battles of the year 1808, which went against the English, the badly infected English troops were transported on ships in stormy weather to Plymouth, where from January 24, 1808, to January 24, 1809, some 2,427 of them were received into the hospitals. Of that number 824 were suffering from typhus fever, and 1,503 from dysentery; all told, 405 died.[[105]]