If the siege takes place in the winter, it is very difficult to procure fuel for heating purposes, unless sufficient provision has been made beforehand. In Paris, for example, the inhabitants suffered severely from cold, and to meet the emergency artificial fuel was prepared by mixing stable manure with tar and reducing the mass to solid form under the hydraulic press.
In the following pages we discuss a few sieges which were characterized by severe outbreaks of pestilence.
1. The Siege of Mantua (1796–7)[[326]]
During the siege of Mantua, which the French carried on from May 30, 1796, to February 3, 1797, war-pestilences raged with fearful severity among both besiegers and besieged. The city lay in an extremely unhealthy region—malaria was ever prevalent and the drinking-water was bad. The intentional flooding of the region and the great heat of the summer of 1796 caused malaria to break out with great severity and to acquire virulent forms that rendered the disease more dangerous than usual. In the latter part of May 1796, the garrison consisted of 18,000 Austrian troops, whose power of resistance had been greatly reduced by hard service from November on, and by exposure to rain and cold with inadequate means of shelter. Besides intermittent fever, both intestinal catarrh and typhus fever made their appearance in July; the latter, at least, was probably the ‘nervous fever’ mentioned by Stegmeyer. Thus as early as the latter part of July there were some 2,000 sick men in the garrison. In August the investment was not yet complete, so that the soldiers did not suffer from lack of food. Notwithstanding this fact, however, the diseases increased in prevalence and caused many deaths; the number of sick men was no less than 6,000. On September 12 the Austrian general, Würmser, with about 12,000 men, succeeded in gaining entrance into the city; he brought with him a large number of disabled men who had been wounded in recent fighting, and many of whom succumbed to tetanus and hospital fever. The number of patients now increased to 8,500; as there was no bedding or straw available, the patients were compelled to lie on the bare ground, and the uncleanliness of the hospitals grew worse. When the investment was finally rendered complete in October, it caused a great scarcity of meat, fat, and wine; the number of patients that month was 9,000 and the number of deaths 2,560. These figures, however, are not complete, since they do not include the patients in the houses set aside for troops overcome by exhaustion. Up to this time the weather had been good, but in November rain set in; and while intermittent fever then decreased in prevalence, dysentery raged even more furiously, and typhus fever also broke out in a virulent, quickly fatal form. The supply of food now ran very low, and although there was sufficient bread on hand, horse-flesh was the only meat. To add to the general misery, scurvy made its appearance in November, and all those who contracted it died. The extreme cold compelled the patients to keep their clothes on, and they lay without blankets on the hard floors of the hospital corridors; their number had now increased to 9,500, and 2,400 died in November. In December the misery increased; the cold became more and more intense, the supply of food was almost exhausted, and the wine gave out altogether; scurvy raged in an even more severe and virulent form, being frequently accompanied by copious hemorrhages from various parts of the body. In the hospitals there were 7,354 patients, and 2,021 died in the month of December. In January the acme of misery was reached; the scarcity of food was terrible, and the ravages of scurvy were no less than frightful; 1,968 men in the garrison were carried away in the course of that month. On February 3, 1797, the stronghold was surrendered to the French. The number of patients taken in by the hospitals between September and January exceeded 40,000, and of the garrison, which numbered some 30,000 men, 10,249 (more than one-third of the total) died. Fodéré estimates the total number of deaths in the city of Mantua during the siege at 20,000;[[327]] regarding the prevalence of diseases and the number of deaths among the civil inhabitants Steegmeyer unfortunately gives us no information.
2. The Siege of Danzig (1813)
Danzig, which in the spring of 1807 had passed through a siege of ten weeks, was once more, in the year 1813, from January 11 to November 29, subjected to the horrors of a siege, which for two reasons was even more horrible than the previous one; in the first place, the garrison was badly infected with disease, causing a severe epidemic to rage throughout the city; and in the second place, the defenders of the stronghold, which was most advantageously located to withstand a siege, were national enemies of the inhabitants. Consequently the latter were not only grossly disregarded in the distribution of supplies, but were actually obliged to turn over all they had to the French and then buy it back at exorbitant prices. And while the inhabitants, and toward the end of the siege the soldiers, too, suffered severely from a lack of the necessaries of life, the higher officers and the military officials lived in luxury until the day of the surrender.
Napoleon had assigned the defence of the city to General Rapp, who performed the task with great valour and ability. On the return march from Russia, some 40,000 men of Macdonald’s corps had congregated in Danzig, and 5,000 of them were sent away by Rapp; in the middle of January the total number of men in the garrison, including the military officials, was 35,934, consisting of Frenchmen, Poles, Bavarians, Westphalians, Spaniards, Italians, and Dutchmen. While Macdonald’s corps had fared pretty well, comparatively speaking, in the Russian campaign, the men were all very much exhausted, and furthermore, typhus fever was prevalent among them. As early as the latter part of January, accordingly, the number of sick soldiers was very large; in fact, only about 10,000 men were healthy and able to bear arms. ‘As there were no hospitals, beds, or remedies,’ says Friccius,[[328]] ‘many died from lack of care, and at the same time infectious diseases broke out and made great havoc. A heap of dead men and horses was a common sight in the streets, and in a short time many thousands of the troops, as well as of the inhabitants, were carried away.’
In January the death-rate remained comparatively low; of the garrison about 400 men died in the course of that month. But in February, which was a very cold month, typhus fever spread abroad with great rapidity, so that toward the end of the month some 130 soldiers died every day; no less than 15,000 men lay sick, and the total number of deaths for the entire month amounted to 2,000. When it began to thaw on February 24, the number of patients and deaths increased still more, so that 4,000 men died in March and 3,000 in April. From April on, the condition of health in the garrison improved, although the number of deaths in the month of May was still no less than 2,000.[[329]]
As early as February typhus fever had spread to the civil population, which before the siege had numbered some 40,000; a great many civilians, however, had fled from the city before the investment was yet complete. In the months of February and March, according to Blech,[[330]] some 200–300 persons died every week, ‘including representatives of all classes—physicians, preachers, jurists, merchants, down to the humblest people.’ The pestilence raged most furiously among the civil inhabitants in the latter part of March. ‘Almost every family was in mourning, and many families were wiped out entirely; the best and most estimable young men were carried away in the prime of their lives. Whole families perished, especially in certain streets which the pestilence seemed to have selected for its chief dwelling-place.’[[331]] These were especially the streets inhabited by the poorer classes.
It was not long before a lack of the necessaries of life began to make itself felt in the city. As early as February 27 the Russians had cut off the supply of water afforded by the Radaune, which fed the wells in the city, and this necessitated dependence upon rain-water. For the purpose of obtaining new supplies of food, a sortie along the Nehrung was undertaken on April 27; and while the enterprise was successful, the only persons who really derived any benefit from it were the higher officers and military officials, who sold butter, milk, and corned beef at exorbitant prices. Thus the well-to-do citizens, at least, were able to secure food by paying an excessive price for it. In May the conditions among the poor became a great deal worse; they were obliged to eat things that were positively disgusting; horse-meat and waste from the breweries were delicacies, while cats and dogs were also devoured. The rations of the soldiers grew smaller and smaller, although there was sufficient grain on hand to keep them supplied with bread. Says Friccius,[[332]] in regard to a sortie undertaken on June 9, ‘How hungry the troops in the garrison were is indicated by the fact that they cut up every horse that was killed in battle and took the edible parts with them.’