| 1812. | 1813. | 1814. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total deaths. | Total deaths. | From Typhus. | Total deaths. | From Typhus. | |
| January | 422 | 500 | 31 | 680 | 170 |
| February | 457 | 544 | 57 | 596 | 118 |
| March | 444 | 740 | 233 | 781 | 85 |
| April | 476 | 719 | 227 | 653 | 55 |
| May | 584 | 752 | 184 | 443 | 28 |
| June | 396 | 518 | 85 | 434 | 19 |
| July | 417 | 460 | 29 | 541 | 14 |
| August | 338 | 551 | 20 | 454 | 5 |
| September | 370 | 467 | 22 | 577 | 16 |
| October | 425 | 621 | 34 | 430 | 13 |
| November | 356 | 555 | 105 | 412 | 11 |
| December | 571 | 585 | 157 | 565 | 11 |
| Total | 5,256 | 7,012 | 1,184 | 6,566 | 545 |
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:
| January | 184 |
| February | 199 |
| March | 188 |
| April | 194 |
| May | 289 |
| June | 257 |
| July | 264 |
| August | 474 |
| September | 882 |
| October | 659 |
| November | 960 |
| December | 944 |
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]]