In Ingolstadt an unusually severe epidemic broke out after the arrival of the French prisoners. In the first part of December the number of prisoners that died every day was no less than ninety, but after the middle of the month the mortality was somewhat lower. On December 18 there were 845 typhus-fever patients in the hospitals, and the number of deaths on this day amounted to only twenty-seven. From then to the end of the month only fifteen or twenty persons died per diem. On December 10 several civilians contracted the disease; on December 18 the number of civilians suffering from the disease was thirty-six, and about an equal number on December 30. The total number of deaths among the prisoners of war amounted to 2,000. Typhus fever also appeared along the Danube on both sides of Ingolstadt.
In the course of the winter, typhus fever was also borne into southern Bavaria by Austrian troops; it broke out in the towns along the military road, e.g., in Vöcklabruck, Traunstein, Rosenheim, and Landsberg. Places which the soldiers did not visit were also attacked by the pestilence. In Weilheim (west of Lake Starnberg) the disease broke out repeatedly after soldiers had marched through the place; up to April 8 no less than 885 persons had contracted the disease there, and some 100 had succumbed to it.
According to Seitz, 18,427 cases of the disease and 3,084 deaths attributable to it were officially recorded in Bavaria between October 1813 and June 1814; the lists kept by the Governmental Districts were undoubtedly very incomplete, but on the other hand we must assume that the contagious and non-contagious ‘nerve-fevers’ (typhus and typhoid) were not always distinguished. For the several districts Seitz furnishes us with the following figures relating to the number of people who contracted and succumbed to typhus fever:
| The Region of the | No. Patients. | No. Deaths. |
|---|---|---|
| Main | 5,752 | 1,067 |
| Rezat | 2,135 | 32 |
| Regen | 1,627 | 290 |
| Upper Danube | 4,613 | 1,003 |
| Lower Danube | 1,338 | 270 |
| Salzach | 1,815 | 259 |
| Isar | 1,147 | 163 |
This does not include the number of deaths among the prisoners of war, nor among the native and foreign soldiers. For the Main region, Seitz also furnishes figures relating to the age of the patients; of the 5,752 persons who contracted the disease 453 were children, 1,345 were young men and women, 3,657 were of middle age, and 297 were old men and women.
As in Bavaria, so also in Württemberg, typhus fever broke out in two epidemics; the first, which was less extensive and less severe, was caused by soldiers returning from Russia, and the second broke out in consequence of the passing of troops through the country after the battle of Leipzig. According to Elsässer,[[162]] in the first part of the year 1813 there were 165 cases of typhus fever and twenty deaths due to it reported from fifteen different localities. In the month of July the disease disappeared from Württemberg. At the end of the year 1813, however, the disease was again borne into the country, partly by French prisoners, and partly by Russian soldiers. ‘Throughout Württemberg’, says Lohnes,[[163]] ‘this fever appeared wherever foreign troops had tarried. Consequently contagious typhus first appeared in the northern lowlands, while the region around Tübingen and the southern and eastern part of the country at the beginning did not suffer at all. But in December, when large bodies of troops marched through the highlands, the southern part of Württemberg, these fevers followed the soldiers’ lines of march. At first it was the French prisoners who carried lazaret-fever with them wherever they went, and a very severe form of the disease too; later on, these fevers always broke out wherever the Russian soldiers went, although very few of the soldiers themselves were infected with them. Frequently persons contracted the disease who had no sick soldiers in their homes. As a rule the disease in such cases was mild, but it was very dangerous wherever patients were left or congregated in large or small hospitals.’
As early as the month of February, the disease had reached its climax in Württemberg; in March it began to abate rapidly, so that in the first part of the summer only 150 patients could be counted in fifteen Governmental Districts. From then until the end of the year it broke out only sporadically. Braun,[[164]] who asserts that more than half of the physicians in Württemberg contracted typhus fever, mentions the names and residences of seventeen physicians who succumbed to it; we see from this list that the disease was prevalent throughout all Württemberg. The disease was also conveyed to the southern part of Upper Swabia. According to Dillenius, 1,300 sick soldiers were sent in the first part of the year 1814 from France (especially from Mülhausen in Alsace) to the military hospital at Tettnang; twenty-four of them died on the way, and in the course of the following four months five times as many succumbed to typhus fever in the hospital.[[165]]
Baden suffered severely from typhus fever; in Karlsruhe, for instance, typhus fever raged from October to December 1813. But Baden suffered particularly, for the reason that all the sick soldiers in the Bohemian army were sent back there from France. Their number far exceeded all expectations, since typhus fever was uncommonly prevalent in the field army in France, and the soldiers arriving from there infected the hospitals. Even when the Austrian and Russian troops marched through the country the number of ‘nerve-fever’ patients was very large. Freiburg im Breisgau, at that time a city of 9,000 inhabitants, suffered very severely in consequence of enforced quartering; some 210,000 soldiers were housed in the homes of its citizens. In the garrison lazaret and university hospital, which together had room for 500 patients, no less than 1,200 patients were crowded together in December 1813; almost all of them were suffering from diarrhoea and typhus, and owing to the lack of linen they were compelled to lie in their own dirty clothes on sacks of straw. Every morning two large wagonloads of dead bodies were driven away for burial. As usual, the pestilence spread to the civil population, carrying away entire families. On October 12, 1813, the former Abbey of Thennenbach was converted into a military lazaret, in which two weeks later some 1,200 patients were sheltered, although it had adequate room for only 700. Between December 27, 1813, and March 1814, 567 soldiers succumbed there, most of them to typhus and dysentery. The epidemic reached its climax about the middle of January, when as many as thirty persons died per diem. After the middle of January the number of deaths rapidly decreased.[[166]] Northern Baden was also attacked. In Mannheim the sick and wounded French soldiers who arrived after the battles of Lützen and Bautzen were led around the city and taken to Spires. Thus typhus fever did not appear in Mannheim itself, where the condition of health was subsequently also good. The statement of the Rheinische Merkur, that out of 13,000 patients in the military lazarets in Mannheim 3,347 died, according to Gurlt,[[167]] is incorrect; the number of deaths was no more than 346.
Regarding the total number of deaths due to typhus fever in Baden no information is available; at all events it was very large. This is shown by the fact that in the last part of 1813 and first part of 1814 no less than thirty-five physicians and thirty surgeons of the first class fell victims to the pestilence.[[168]]
In November 1813, thousands of scattered French prisoners came to Darmstadt; many of them were suffering from typhus fever, which soon spread throughout the city. Many places in that part of the present Grand Duchy of Hesse which lies south of the Main were severely attacked by the epidemic; as many as 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants of many places contracted the disease. But by July 5, 1814, it had everywhere disappeared.[[169]]