| Due to typhus fever. | All deaths. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1813 | 784 | 12,971 |
| 1814 | 1,529 | 15,309 |
In the rest of the country few diseases appeared, despite the fact that troops kept marching back and forth.
Typhus fever was conveyed by marching troops to Styria also; the source of the pestilence was the seven military hospitals in Graz. We read in the report:[[184]] ‘The pestilence, proceeding principally from the seven military hospitals lying within the city limits as from a focus, was spread abroad by convalescents, attendants, physicians, &c. The mortality in these hospitals was extremely high; the buildings set aside for the purpose could scarcely accommodate the number of sick. Everything was topsy-turvy; the corps of field-doctors on hand was not nearly large enough to take even the most necessary care of the large number of patients.’ The region around Graz, Marburg, and Bruck was most severely attacked by the disease, which also spread to Carinthia and broke out in Klagenfurt and vicinity.
7. Survey of the Epidemic of Typhus Fever in the Years 1813–14
It is impossible to draw an accurate picture of the loss of human life which typhus fever caused in the years 1813–14. This is due, on the one hand, to the lack of reliable statistics, and, on the other hand, to the fact that the several regions suffered to a varying degree, depending upon the number of troops, prisoners, and refugees that they received. The number of persons that succumbed to typhus fever in Germany during the years 1813–14 must be estimated at least as high as 200,000 or 300,000. Assuming that 200,000 people succumbed to the disease, the number that contracted it would amount to some 2,000,000. Since Germany at that time had hardly more than 20,000,000 inhabitants, some ten per cent of them, on the basis of this assumption, contracted the disease. The size of this number is significant, when we consider that the stronger and older people manifested particular susceptibility to the disease.
One of the chief causes of the wide dissemination of typhus fever in the years 1813–14 was the imperfect development of the lazaret system. If at first a lazaret for infectious diseases was available, the number of patients it was called upon to accommodate in a few days became so large that new buildings always had to be opened for them, and it was impossible to keep them isolated. The efforts of the various municipal administrations to have the lazarets erected outside the city limits were powerless against the brutal obstinacy of the French, and, later, of the Russian generals. The severity of the penalty which they had to pay for unceremoniously housing infected French troops in strongholds together with healthy men, is evident from the fearful devastation caused by typhus fever in Danzig, Torgau, Mayence, &c. The little communities were absolutely helpless against the dominating power of the soldiers. One might reproach the municipal administrations of that time with failing to adopt measures of prevention against the menacing danger of pestilence, particularly in places which did not suffer in consequence of the marching back and forth of soldiers. But one must take into account the excitement which permeated the entire people at that time—the hopeful longing to be freed from the national enemy’s long oppression, toward which all thinking and planning was directed, the employment of all resources for this purpose, and in particular the fact that sheer ignorance rendered appropriate measures impossible. If this ignorance prevailed in the highest places, nothing better was to be expected of the administrations of the smaller cities and towns. The population was therefore everywhere defenceless against the intrusion of the pestilence, which was given an opportunity to become more and more widespread. This, however, had not been the case in Central Europe since the Thirty Years’ War.
CHAPTER VII
FROM THE AGE OF NAPOLEON TO THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
1. The Russo-Turkish War of 1828–9
On April 28, 1828, Russia declared war against Turkey; the fighting took place partly in the Balkan Peninsula, in Wallachia and Bulgaria, and partly in Transcaucasia. In the western scene of the war, the Russians, after the capture of Varna and the futile siege of Schumla in the campaign of the year 1828, were obliged to retire to the left bank of the Danube; in the second campaign (1829) Diebitsch defeated the Turks at Kulevtchi, marched across the Balkan Peninsula, and appeared unexpectedly at Adrianople, which the Turks surrendered to him without resistance.
An unusually severe epidemic of bubonic plague accompanied this campaign. In the year 1828 plague had spread from Asia Minor to European Turkey and Wallachia; as early as 1825 and 1826 it appeared in Bucharest, while sporadic cases of the disease occurred in Wallachia in the summer of 1827 and in the winter of 1827–8.[[185]] On April 30, 1828, the first Russian troops made their appearance in Bucharest; they were quartered in the city itself and in the surrounding villages. On May 13 seven cases of plague appeared in a private house, but the Bucharest physicians did not hold the disease to be plague. Orders to disinfect the houses were issued, but intercourse with the surrounding villages was not stopped. Some thirty inhabitants succumbed to the pestilence in May, and at the end of that month three Russian soldiers were allowed to enter the city. Since the number of cases in the city was increasing, the troops stationed there were quartered in the village of Fundeni, where, however, several more people soon contracted the disease. During the month of May, plague broke out in other villages of Wallachia, and in the course of the summer and autumn it spread throughout the entire country. In regard to the origin of this epidemic of plague, Simon[[186]] says: ‘All Wallachia was infected from the year 1826; but had it not been for the war and the consequent afflictions of all kinds, the disease would not have developed in the year 1828 into such a furious and extensive epidemic. The arrival of the Russians was responsible for this widespread outbreak, since they carried the infection contracted from the inhabitants to a thousand different places.’