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. | ||
| Ehrenbreitstein | 11,522 | 2,409 | 3,680 |
| Weilburg | 2,173 | 419 | 680 |
| Wiesbaden | 29,349 | 6,179 | 8,099 |
| Total | 43,044 | 9,007 | 12,459 |
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).