| 1813. | 1814. | |
|---|---|---|
| January | 98 | 450 |
| February | 121 | 276 |
| March | 206 | 244 |
| April | 202 | 152 |
| May | 178 | 159 |
| June | 200 | 120 |
| July | 290 | 85 |
| August | 189 | 107 |
| September | 176 | 118 |
| October | 311 | 111 |
| November | 743 | 96 |
| December | 785 | 104 |
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. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 356 | 517 | 456 |
| 1–10 | 161 | 310 | 305 |
| 10–20 | 29 | 174 | 76 |
| 20–30 | 91 | 362 | 157 |
| 30–40 | 87 | 492 | 173 |
| 40–50 | 104 | 559 | 207 |
| 50–60 | 126 | 409 | 208 |
| 60–70 | 124 | 358 | 234 |
| Over 70 | 119 | 256 | 155 |
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.