After the battle of Breitenfeld (September 17, 1631) Gustavus Adolphus passed through Halle and Erfurt to Würzburg, Aschaffenburg, and Frankfurt-on-the-Main. Tilly had marched through Halberstadt, Fulda, and Miltenberg to Würzburg, in order to relieve that city, which had been captured by the Swedes, and then turned south. Thus the principal scene of the war was transferred to Bavaria, which from 1631 to 1634 suffered terribly from the ravages of the soldiers passing back and forth. No part of the country was spared. ‘The Thirty Years’ War’, says Lammert,[[34]] ‘was particularly fatal and disastrous to Bavaria from the year 1632 on; it converted the country into an uninhabited waste, especially because it was followed by pestilence. Like the Imperialist army under Tilly in the autumn of 1631, so the Swedish army on its marches consumed everything it found, and wherever it went in the years 1632–5 it spread ‘hunger typhus’ and ‘war typhus’ and bubonic plague; all the places along the Main lost at least one-half of their population.’ In September 1632, when Gustavus Adolphus withdrew from Nuremberg, Wallenstein turned south, and there on November 6, 1632, Gustavus Adolphus was killed in the battle of Lützen. After that Wallenstein returned to Bohemia, while the Swedes under Bernhard von Weimar marched back into Bavaria. The acme of misery was reached here in the year 1634. It is impossible to enumerate all the places that were infected by the brutalized, wandering soldiers; the most out-of-the-way and indigent regions, such as the Spessart and the Odenwald, were visited by them, and inasmuch as they brought pestilence wherever they went, the unfortunate villages were subjected to merciless devastation.
1. The region of the Main. Since Gustavus Adolphus first had Horn occupy the bishopric of Bamberg, and himself marched through Aschaffenburg to Nuremberg, while Tilly returned to Ingolstadt and later to Lech, the region of the Main, and later the region north of the Danube, were the first to be attacked by typhus fever and bubonic plague; not until later, from 1633 on, did the pestilences spread more or less extensively in the country south of the Danube.
In Aschaffenburg and vicinity a plague broke out in the summer of 1632 and almost wiped out several villages; the city of Aschaffenburg itself, which lost a large percentage of its inhabitants, was revisited in the year 1635. In Würzburg the pestilence began in August 1632, and in the last part of July of the following year another serious pestilence broke out there, in consequence of which 489 bodies were buried in the cathedral parish alone. The prolonged quartering of troops, notwithstanding all the precautionary measures that were adopted, caused the pestilence to rage with extraordinary fury; not until September did it begin to abate. In the year 1635, when infected soldiers were transferred from Schweinfurt to the stronghold of Marienburg, it appeared once more. In 1632 Schweinfurt lost ‘several hundred people’ in consequence of ‘pestilential purple-spots’ (typhus fever). The total number of deaths was 1,055. In December of the following year another rather large pestilence broke out, and again in August 1635; in the latter year it reached a climax in September and came to an end in December. In Bamberg many people succumbed in 1632 to Hungarian disease, which the Swedes had borne thither in the spring. This disease was also very widespread throughout the entire vicinity. In the year 1634 the Swedes came several times into the region around Bamberg and plundered the country, so that famine and plague caused great misery. In the summer of 1635 Bamberg was once more attacked by an infectious disease (typhus fever), and only two houses in the city were spared. In Kulmbach the plague raged extensively in the first part of the year 1633; the number of the dead was so large that the bodies could not all be buried in Kulmbach, and some had to be taken to the churchyards of near-by villages. In the following year the plague broke out anew, carrying away 60 persons in a single day. In Bayreuth 400 persons succumbed to a pestilence in the year 1632, and in the following year 360 died; it raged even more furiously after the city was plundered by the Master of Ordnance, von der Waal, on August 19, 1634. From July to October 1,927 out of 7,000 inhabitants died, while the average number of deaths amounted to only 167 per annum.
2. The region between the Main and the Danube suffered no less. Nuremberg and vicinity was severely attacked by pestilence in the year 1632. In the summer of that year Wallenstein encamped near Fürth, and Gustavus Adolphus near Nuremberg; they watched each other for a long time without venturing a battle. The country people had all fled to the city. In the Swedish army and in the overcrowded city, which had some 50,000 inhabitants, scurvy and typhus fever carried away many thousands.[[35]] Only 4,522 bodies were buried by the Church, but many more thousands died. Two weeks after his disastrous attack on Wallenstein’s camp on September 4, Gustavus Adolphus marched south, while Wallenstein turned into Saxony. The plague continued to rage in the vicinity of Nuremberg, and many people contracted the disease by visiting the deserted camp of the Imperialist army and appropriating the left-behind implements, weapons, and kitchen utensils. Scurvy was still raging in Nuremberg in the following year. In the year 1634 the plague broke out and carried away 18,000 persons. In December 1631 Forchheim was besieged by the Swedes under General Horn, and the result was that a pestilence broke out in the year 1632 and carried away 578 inhabitants; the average number of deaths per annum was 45. In March of that year the Swedes had deserted the city, and in June 1634, when they reappeared there, the mortality increased again. In the years 1631–2 Uffenheim suffered a great deal from the predatory raids of the Swedes and also from plague, which in the year 1634 became very widespread there as in all Bavaria, carrying away one-half of the inhabitants of the town. While the Swedes and Imperialists were establishing their camps near Nuremberg, many people from Ansbach and other places fled to Windsheim, which thus became greatly overcrowded; the consequence was that people died there by the hundred, and their bodies were buried, thirty or forty at a time, in large ditches. When the Swedes left Nuremberg and appeared in Windsheim, they left behind them 450 men who were infected with disease; in the entire year 1,564 bodies were counted. In the following year the city was besieged by the Imperialists (October 12–23, 1633), and during this time 360 persons succumbed to a pestilential disease; the number of deaths in the entire year, including the outsiders, was 1,600. Windsheim also suffered greatly in the two following years; at the end of the year 1635 there were only 50 inhabitants left. In near-by Burgbernheim, where typhus fever raged in the year 1630, 155 persons died in the year 1632, 165 in 1634, and 107 in 1636. In Schwabach, which had been plundered by the Imperialists in the latter part of July, 1632, various diseases broke out—‘Hungarian disease, dysentery, and even bubonic plague.’ In the year 1633 there were 298 deaths in Weissenburg; in 1634, on the other hand, there were 642. Eichstätt had 494 deaths in the year 1632, 827 in 1633, and 982 in 1634; in the last year the town was besieged and captured by the Swedes, and for a few days thereafter pestilences raged furiously. The country districts throughout Central Franconia, like these cities, were almost completely depopulated by flight and pestilence.
The Upper Palatinate was also severely attacked by pestilence (typhus fever and bubonic plague), which spread far into the Bavarian Forest. In Amberg an epidemic of typhus fever and dysentery broke out in the year 1633, and in April of the following year bubonic plague appeared; the latter disease carried away from 15 to 20 persons on many days of that month, while in July and August as many as 40 people died every day. In the spring of 1634 Weiden became infected with typhus fever and shortly after that with bubonic plague; from August 17 to November 6, some 1,800 people died. The bodies were corded up like piles of wood, placed in ditches in groups of 200 and 300, and covered with quick-lime. In Schwandorf (north of Regensburg) the Imperialists had encamped in the summer of 1634; after their departure a pestilence characterized by ‘swellings and large unknown spots’ broke out and carried away almost one-third of the inhabitants. In Hemau (north-west of Regensburg), after the Swedes had passed through the town, ‘the malignant pestilence’ (typhus fever) had broken out in the year 1633; and in 1634, after the devastations committed by the troops of Bernhard von Weimar, bubonic plague appeared and carried away one-half of the inhabitants.
3. The cities on the Danube. In the year 1632 Neuburg was occupied by the Swedes; after their departure, on October 18, an epidemic of Hungarian head-disease broke out and carried away many soldiers and citizens (more than 900 in eight months). Again in the two following years pestilence caused great devastation. On April 29, 1632, the Swedes appeared before Ingolstadt, but in a few days withdrew; there was a strong garrison in the city, however, and many fugitives had gathered there. In this overcrowded population typhus fever broke out and carried away large numbers of people. In the following year the disease became even more widespread, and 1,039 people succumbed to it before the end of November. In the first part of the year 1635 the pestilence abated. In the second half of the year 1634 Regensburg was attacked by bubonic plague, and despite all measures of precaution it carried away two-thirds of the population (according to other reports there were 3,125 deaths). The entire vicinity suffered from the plague. The mortality in Straubing during the siege of the Imperialists (March 1634) increased greatly; even in the year before it had been very high (294 deaths). The total number of deaths in the year 1634 is not known, but of three parishes St. Jacob’s alone had 631 burials. Deggendorf and Passau fared similarly.
4. Upper Bavaria and Lower Bavaria south of the Danube. On May 17, 1632, Gustavus Adolphus had occupied Munich, and during his short sojourn of three weeks apparently no epidemic diseases made their appearance among the Swedes. But since typhus fever had broken out everywhere in the vicinity, strict measures of precaution were adopted by the city authorities. According to G. von Suttner[[36]] 124 people in the quarantine-house before the Schwabinger Tor succumbed to ‘burning fever and headache’ between August and the end of the year. According to a report published in 1632 the poor people suffered in particular, while red spots, continual headache, and later on diarrhoea, characterized the disease. A very severe pestilence broke out in Munich in the year 1634. ‘The epidemic was caused’, says Seitz,[[37]] ‘by the arrival of 4,000 Spanish soldiers in July of the year 1634; they were called there from Tölz and Weilheim when the Duke of Saxe-Weimar and General Horn were threatening the city. Although shortly after that, in August, a few evidences of disease were noticed, it was not regarded as infectious. Finally, however, a real plague broke out with such fury that four lazarets and a garden outside of the city had to be made ready for the care of the sick. It raged most furiously in the months of October and November, when from 200 to 250 dwellings, among them entire houses, were quarantined every week. Thus it went on until the end of December.’ Unfortunately there exists no medical description of the disease, the most important characteristics of which were chills, accompanied by internal fever, violent headaches, great lassitude, haemorrhage, plague-spots, and swellings. All told, some 15,000 persons are said to have died in the year 1634—about one-half of the total population of the city. The bodies of victims became so numerous that they were piled up in the streets and houses, without attempt to keep a record of the names, and buried in ditches forty at a time. Strict isolation of the patients by closing up the houses was enforced, and the use of the clothes and bedding of the dead was forbidden under severe penalties; such effects were burned outside of the gates. Only two gates remained open, and in front of one of them a garden was made ready to receive strangers who were denied admittance into the city. In February 1635, the pestilence had almost entirely ceased, but in September it broke out anew and did not disappear until February 1637.
In the years 1633–4 typhus fever and bubonic plague were spread throughout all Upper and Lower Bavaria by the continued marauding of the Swedes. The Imperialists, no less than the Swedes, helped to devastate the country, while the Spanish soldiers had the worst reputation of all. Again in the year 1635, especially in the autumn, the pestilence appeared. A plague broke out in Freising after the town was plundered by the Swedes on July 16, 1634 (Landshut had already been captured by them on May 10, 1632), and after their departure they left behind them an infectious disease which was diagnosed by the town-physician as Hungarian fever. A pestilence broke out in the city when it was plundered by the soldiers under Bernhard von Weimar, on July 10, 1634, and carried away one-third of the inhabitants; according to a list furnished by the court the number of deaths was 738, but there were many more with whose legacies the court had nothing to do. The bodies were piled up on wagons and conveyed to cemeteries, while the dwellings of diseased persons were closed. In Dingolfing, which was occupied by the Swedes from July 22, 1633, to June 1634, a plague raged with such fury that it was thought the city would be completely wiped out. Simbach-on-the-Inn and the near-by market-town of Thann suffered greatly from a plague in the year 1634. In Thann many bodies lay for a long time in the houses unburied, while entire families among the poorer population were wiped out of existence. The plague also raged in the surrounding localities, and many bodies lay in the streets as food for scavenger birds. A plague raged in the years 1633–4 in Traunstein, which had already had a few isolated cases of disease in the previous year; 123 people died terrible deaths in the two years mentioned, and also in the years 1635–6. In the year 1634 a pestilence caused 500 deaths in Rosenheim, while severe outbreaks of pestilence were reported from many surrounding places—Aibling, Miesbach, Wasserburg, and Tegernsee.
In Tölz twenty-seven adults succumbed in May and June 1633, to Hungarian disease; a pestilence also broke out in the spring of 1634 and carried away hundreds of people in the months of May, June, and July. From July on, the church-registers contain no more entries; the patients with black swellings usually had but a few hours to live. In Oberammergau ‘wild headache’ raged in the years 1631 and 1633, and many people succumbed to it. In September 1634, the town became infected with bubonic plague, and up to October 28, eighty-four people succumbed to the disease—about one-fifth of the population. The epidemic caused the people to vow that they would produce the Passion Play there every ten years. Murnau, Weilheim, and other places were severely attacked in the year 1634. In Andechs the mortality was increased in the year 1634 by an outbreak of dysentery and typhus fever, and on July 27 bubonic plague also appeared and remained until November, carrying away 200 of the 500 inhabitants of the town. In Landsberg typhus fever broke out very seriously in the year 1630. ‘All over the bodies of the people who contracted the disease’, says Lammert,[[38]] ‘red spots appeared, and then the victims lost control of themselves and knocked their heads against the walls. Many who seemed scarcely to have contracted the disease died suddenly. Dead bodies were found everywhere, even in public squares.’ In the following year the disease spread even further; the vicinity of Landsberg was infected by the soldiers, who were constantly marching back and forth. After the terrible plundering of the city in April and September of the year 1633, a plague broke out and carried away a large proportion of the few inhabitants that were left.
5. The governmental district of Swabia fared no better than the aforesaid Bavarian countries, while the region on the northern side of the Lake of Constance suffered terribly from the predatory raids of the Swedes and the consequent epidemics. In Augsburg, which from April 1632 to 1635 was occupied by the Swedes, the suffering began when the city was besieged by the Imperialists. During a siege of seven months (September 1634 to March 1635) famine and pestilence did a great deal more damage among the population than the bullets and swords of the enemies. Whereas this population numbered from 70,000 to 80,000 in the year 1624, by October 12, 1635, it had dwindled to 16,422. After the city had surrendered to the Imperialists, people still continued to die in consequence of pestilential diseases; the town council therefore gave orders on July 7, 1635, that all refuse should be removed from the city. Not until the winter did the pestilence disappear. In Memmingen there were 1,200 deaths in 1633, and 1,400 deaths in the following year; the worst year was 1635, when the pestilence is said to have carried away 3,000 persons. The towns surrounding the city were also severely attacked. In Kempten, which was oppressed by the Swedes and Imperialists in the years 1632–3, a pestilence broke out in the year 1634 and lasted well into the next year, carrying away 3,000 people. In the surrounding country, pestilence raged so furiously that many places were completely wiped out. In the near-by towns of Kaufbeuren, Immenstadt, Pfronten, Füssen, &c., the pestilence was likewise very widespread; in 1635 there were 1,600 deaths in Füssen—about one-quarter of the inhabitants.