After the conclusion of the armistice, which became known in Danzig on June 10, there was a pause in the siege lasting until August 18; during this time the besiegers brought food to the garrison every five days, but absolutely no provision was made for the civil inhabitants. During the armistice many citizens left the city; indeed the French expelled from the city all persons who were not sufficiently provided with the necessaries of life. At first the Russians allowed the fugitives to pass through their lines, but later on they raised objections, so that a large number of the unfortunate inhabitants were obliged to live in the open fields between the besiegers and the besieged, where many of them died of starvation. In the latter part of September General Rapp allowed some 300 of them, who had managed to keep alive, to return into the city. Blech asserts that the emigration of beggars and others of the poor reduced the population of the city by some 16,000.[[333]]
In October, lack of the necessaries of life reached a climax, so that rats and mice were eaten. Since the scarcity of provender made it necessary to slaughter almost all the horses, the soldiers were supplied with large quantities of horse-meat. On November 1 the granaries, in which were kept the provisions of the garrison, were destroyed by fire, resulting in the loss of about two-thirds of the provisions. This made it necessary to reduce the soldiers’ bread-rations, and the bread with which they were supplied was made of half-burned flour and of rusks fished out of the stinking Mottlau; ‘it was so disgusting that only ravenous hunger could induce anybody to eat it.’[[334]]
In consequence of hunger and the unnatural food eaten, the mortality among the civil inhabitants, the number of whom had dwindled down to 16,000, became very high; the number of deaths per week in the month of October was no less than 50–80, to which, according to Blech, must be added the deaths among the poor which were no longer reported. In the first part of November there were some 80–90 deaths per week. On November 29 General Rapp surrendered the city to the Russians and Prussians; but since the conditions of capitulation could not be agreed upon until January 1, 1814, there was an interval of about a month during which the French garrison, but not the civil population, was supplied with food; consequently the death-rate among the citizens remained high. Furthermore, the besiegers, among whom a virulent typhus had been raging since October, communicated the infection to the inhabitants, 107 of whom succumbed to it in the last week of November, 133 in the first week of December, and 138 in the following week. On December 1, permission was obtained to establish a market, and from that time on, the citizens could once more provide themselves with food in a regular way.
The loss of human life inside the besieged stronghold was terrible; of the 35,900 troops in the garrison, 15,736 according to Friccius died in the lazarets; at the time of the capitulation only 16,532 men were left, and of these 1,482 were sick and had to be left in the city. According to Blech, a total of 5,592 civilians died, 1,142 of them in the last three months (October-December) of the year; the number of deaths in December alone was 473. Toward the end of the siege some ninety persons died of starvation.[[335]]
3. The Siege of Torgau (1813)[[336]]
On May 10, 1813, when Napoleon had appeared in Saxony, and the King, after considerable hesitation, had decided in his favour, the Saxon garrison of Torgau, at that time a place of 5,000 inhabitants, was replaced by a French army-corps. In the course of the summer large transports of sick soldiers from various lazarets arrived at Torgau, and on July 18 alone 3,000 sick men and 1,000 convalescents came from Dresden. Consequently the number of sick in the stronghold was very large even before the siege began; all public buildings had been converted into lazarets. But even these were not numerous or large enough to accommodate all the patients, who numbered some 6,000 in the month of September, so that the occupants of houses along entire streets were driven out of their homes, which were used for lazarets and barracks. ‘A virulent, putrid fever’ raged in all the lazarets, and at least one-third of the persons who contracted it died; the inhabitants and the Frenchmen quartered in the homes of citizens were at first spared by the disease.
After the battle of Dennewitz (September 6, 1813) the head-quarters of the third and fourth French army-corps was transferred to Torgau, where also numerous fugitives took refuge; at the same time the large French head-quarters from Dresden arrived, so that the size of the garrison was increased by 10,000 men and 5,000 horses. After the battle of Leipzig the stronghold was besieged by the Prussians, and presently the supply of food ran low and the uncleanliness in the streets and houses grew incredibly worse. ‘Then the pestilence began to spread at an alarming rate among the inhabitants and among the Frenchmen quartered in the homes of citizens, so that the entire city of Torgau came to resemble a large, overcrowded lazaret.’[[337]]
‘The regular lazarets now became veritable hot-beds of misery; they were scarcely able to accommodate the large number of patients, who numbered at least 12,000, and whom it was necessary to place so close together that they almost touched one another. There was a lack of straw and of other necessities, of sick-attendants and physicians, of effective remedies, and especially of order and proper superintendence.’ The patients suffered partly from severe, fetid diarrhoea, and partly from typhus. In the courtyards there were enormous accumulations of dirt and refuse, and the doors leading into many of the sick-rooms could scarcely be opened owing to the collections of foul matter which covered the floor ankle-deep; in order to reach the sick it was necessary to wade through this and to climb over dead bodies. Absolutely no thought was given to keeping the rooms warm. ‘Thus it is quite natural that among these horrible surroundings the slightest wound, the most insignificant indisposition, could easily have a fatal termination, and that it was like sentencing a man to death to bring him to the lazaret.’ The number of deaths exceeded 8,000 in the month of November alone.
Equally terrible were the conditions in the other parts of the city; all the private houses were overcrowded with patients and filled with dirt. A sickening odour permeated the atmosphere; in the ditches around the fortress and in every corner of the city lay dead horses, rotting straw sacks, ragged uniforms, and even human corpses. Refuse of the worst kind was piled up in the streets, often as high as the second story. ‘At this time’, says Lehmann, ‘Torgau looked more like a lazaret than a city inhabited by healthy persons; for who would have been able to find a house in which there were no persons suffering from nerve-fever? Parlours, bedrooms, halls, stables, kitchens, and cellars—all were filled with patients.’ The barracks and guard-rooms resembled hospitals. In a few weeks more than 600 inhabitants died; entire families were wiped out by the epidemic, and there was scarcely one which was not mourning the loss of one of its members.
Up to the beginning of December the number of patients steadily increased; in the lazarets alone, 300 soldiers died every day.