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EPIDEMICS RESULTING

FROM WARS

PRINTED IN ENGLAND

AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

DIVISION OF ECONOMICS AND HISTORY

John Bates Clark, Director

EPIDEMICS RESULTING FROM WARS

By Dr. FRIEDRICH PRINZING

EDITED BY

HARALD WESTERGAARD

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

OXFORD: AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

London, Edinburgh, New York, Toronto, Melbourne and Bombay

HUMPHREY MILFORD

1916

INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE DIRECTOR

The Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is organized to ‘promote a thorough and scientific investigation of the causes and results of war.’ In accordance with this purpose a conference of eminent statesmen, publicists, and economists was held in Berne, Switzerland, in August 1911, at which a plan of investigation was formed and an extensive list of topics was prepared. The programme of that Conference is presented in detail in an Appendix. It will be seen that an elaborate series of investigations has been undertaken, and the resulting reports may in due time be expected in printed form.

Of works so prepared some will aim to reveal direct and indirect consequences of warfare, and thus to furnish a basis for a judgement as to the reasonableness of the resort to it. If the evils are in reality larger and the benefits smaller than in the common view they appear to be, such studies should furnish convincing evidence of this fact and afford a basis for an enlightened policy whenever there is danger of international conflicts.

Studies of the causes of warfare will reveal, in particular, those economic influences which in time of peace bring about clashing interests and mutual suspicion and hostility. They will, it is believed, show what policies, as adopted by different nations, will reduce the conflicts of interest, inure to the common benefit, and afford a basis for international confidence and good will. They will further reveal the natural economic influences which of themselves bring about more and more harmonious relations and tend to substitute general benefits for the mutual injuries that follow unintelligent self-seeking. Economic internationalism needs to be fortified by the mutual trust that just dealing creates; but just conduct itself may be favoured by economic conditions. These, in turn, may be created partly by a natural evolution and partly by the conscious action of governments; and both evolution and public action are among the important subjects of investigation.

An appeal to reason is in order when excited feelings render armed conflicts imminent; but it is quite as surely called for when no excitement exists and when it may be forestalled and prevented from developing by sound national policies. To furnish a scientific basis for reasonable international policies is the purpose of some of the studies already in progress and of more that will hereafter be undertaken.

The publications of the Division of Economics and History are under the direction of a Committee of Research, the membership of which includes the statesmen, publicists, and economists who participated in the Conference at Berne in 1911, and two who have since been added. The list of members at present is as follows:

Eugène Borel, Professor of Public and International Law in the University of Geneva.

Lujo Brentano, Professor of Economics in the University of Munich; Member of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Charles Gide, Professor of Comparative Social Economics in the University of Paris.

H. B. Greven, Professor of Political Economy and Statistics in the University of Leiden.

Francis W. Hirst, Editor of The Economist, London.

David Kinley, Vice-President of the University of Illinois.

Henri La Fontaine, Senator of Belgium.

His Excellency Luigi Luzzatti, Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of Rome; Secretary of the Treasury, 1891–3; Prime Minister of Italy, 1908–11.

Gotaro Ogawa, Professor of Finance at the University of Kioto, Japan.

Sir George Paish, Joint Editor of The Statist, London.

Maffeo Pantaleoni, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Rome.

Eugen Philippovich von Philippsberg, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Vienna; Member of the Austrian Herrenhaus, Hofrat.

Paul S. Reinsch, United States Minister to China.

His Excellency Baron Y. Sakatani, recently Minister of Finance; Present Mayor of Tokio.

Theodor Schiemann, Professor of the History of Eastern Europe in the University of Berlin.

Harald Westergaard, Professor of Political Science and Statistics in the University of Copenhagen.

Friedrich, Freiherr von Wieser, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Vienna.

The function of members of this Committee is to select collaborators competent to conduct investigations and present reports in the form of books or monographs; to consult with these writers as to plans of study; to read the completed manuscripts, and to inform the officers of the Endowment whether they merit publication in its series. This editorial function does not commit the members of the Committee to any opinions expressed by the writers. Like other editors, they are asked to vouch for the usefulness of the works, their scientific and literary merit, and the advisability of issuing them. In like manner, the publication of the monographs does not commit the Endowment as a body or any of its officers to the opinions which may be expressed in them. The standing and attainments of the writers selected afford a guarantee of thoroughness of research and accuracy in the statement of facts, and the character of many of the works will be such that facts, statistical, historical, and descriptive, will constitute nearly the whole of their content. In so far as the opinions of the writers are revealed, they are neither approved nor condemned by the fact that the Endowment causes them to be published. For example, the publication of a work describing the attitude of various socialistic bodies on the subject of peace and war implies nothing as to the views of the officers of the Endowment on the subject of socialism; neither will the issuing of a work, describing the attitude of business classes toward peace and war, imply any agreement or disagreement on the part of the officers of the Endowment with the views of men of these classes as to a protective policy, the control of monopoly, or the regulation of banking and currency. It is necessary to know how such men generally think and feel on the great issue of war, and it is one of the purposes of the Endowment to promote studies which will accurately reveal their attitude. Neither it nor its Committee of Research vouches for more than that the works issued by them contain such facts; that their statements concerning them may generally be trusted, and that the works are, in a scientific way, of a quality that entitles them to a reading.

This monograph on epidemics resulting from wars is designed to bring into light an aspect of international conflict that has never been adequately appreciated. An examination of the facts here presented will indicate that until comparatively recent times the most serious human cost of war has been not losses in the field, nor even the losses from disease in the armies, but the losses from epidemics disseminated among the civil populations. It was the war epidemics and their sequelae, rather than direct military losses, that accounted for the deep prostration of Germany after the Thirty Years’ War. Such epidemics were also the gravest consequence of the Napoleonic Wars.

It may appear that a study of war epidemics can have only historical interest, in view of the progress of modern medical science. Plague, cholera, and typhus can be brought under control by modern methods of sanitation. One can point to the fact that in the present great war, the only serious epidemic that has been reported is the typhus fever epidemic in Serbia. When the medical history of the war comes to be written, however, it will be found that the aggregate losses from sporadic outbreaks of war epidemics have been very considerable. A war sufficiently protracted to lead to universal impoverishment and a breakdown of medical organization would be attended, as in earlier times, by the whole series of devastating war epidemics. And even in the case of less exhausting wars, the chances of widespread epidemics is far from negligible. There is much food for reflection in the author’s account of the small-pox epidemic following the Franco-German War. In 1870 the means of coping with small-pox were as nearly perfect as they are in the greater part of the world to-day. This fact did not save Europe from a widespread epidemic, entailing human losses exceeding in gravity the losses in the field. To-day, as in the past, the probabilities of increased morbidity in the civil population, not only among the belligerents, but among neutrals as well, must be entered as a highly important debit item against war.

John Bates Clark,

Director.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

In countries which have the misfortune to be the scene of protracted wars, the mortality regularly undergoes a considerable increase. This is caused chiefly by the infectious diseases which in war times so often appear in the form of epidemics. These diseases, moreover, not only afflict the country in which the war is waged, but are also carried by prisoners, returning soldiers, and in other ways, into the land of the victor, where it is possible for them to spread over a large territory. A report on the loss of human life among that part of a population which does not participate in a war has not yet been undertaken, writings on war pestilences usually confining themselves to the losses within the armies themselves.[^[1]] It is the purpose of the present study to investigate the losses sustained by the non-belligerent part of the population in consequence of epidemics caused by wars.

In doing this it seems advisable to select a few war pestilences which on account of their enormous extent are particularly notable, and to subject them to an exhaustive discussion. This method has the advantage that it will enable us to show in individual cases how it is possible for these pestilences to extend over such a vast territory, under what circumstances they spread from place to place, and how they enter regions remote from the scene of war. For this exhaustive discussion the writer has chosen the pestilences that occurred during the Thirty Years’ War, the epidemic of typhus fever after Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, and the pandemic of small-pox after the Franco-German War of 1870–1. These epidemics afford very instructive examples of what horrible losses both friends and enemies may sustain in consequence of war pestilences.

While the outbreaks of ‘plague’ in the course of the Thirty Years’ War have already been made the subject of a comprehensive account, strange to say there are no such accounts of the other two epidemics; to give a clear picture of these pestilences the writer was therefore constrained to collect the necessary information from widely dispersed sources. In gathering his material a number of large German libraries assisted him most kindly—particularly, the Royal National Library at Stuttgart and the University libraries of Strassburg and Tübingen.

The other parts of the history of war pestilences are set forth in a more general way; for an exhaustive treatment of them would have necessitated several years of preliminary work, which the writer in the short time at his disposal was unable to undertake.

The writer has drawn as much as possible from original sources; this applies at least to the pestilences of the Napoleonic Period, and to the epidemic of small-pox after the Franco-German War. It would have been impossible to deal with the other wars in the same way without consuming considerable time. From the bibliographies it will appear what sources the author has consulted; rarely are quotations given from works which he has not seen, and in such cases it is indicated whence they were taken.

The causes of the origin and spread of pestilences during a war are clear. Every aggregation of people, even in times of peace, at celebrations and annual fairs, in barracks, and so forth, is necessarily exposed to the danger of pestilence; but this danger is ten times as great in large assemblages of troops during a war. The soldiers are then subjected to all possible kinds of hardship and suffering—lack of food, or food which is inferior and badly cooked, sleeping out in the cold and rain, fatiguing marches, constant excitement, and homesickness—and all these things greatly lessen their power of resistance. When large bodies of troops are obliged to remain in one and the same place for a considerable length of time, the additional difficulty presents itself of keeping the locality unpolluted by the excrement of men and animals, and by refuse of all kinds. If an infectious disease reveals its presence in such an aggregation of people, energetic and stringent measures must be adopted, even in times of peace, to prevent it from spreading. In war times it is often impossible to take the necessary precautions, since the attention of the commanders is directed toward very definite objects, to which all other considerations are subordinate. Whether the germ of the disease is already in the place, or whether the soldiers bring it with them, in either case there is danger that the fighting armies will cause the disease to spread over the entire scene of the war, and thus seriously endanger thousands of human lives.

Modern methods of sanitation have done much toward preventing the spread of army pestilences, not only in peace, but also in war. The last few decades have evinced that fact. Whatever attitude we may assume toward the question whether war can ever be wholly abolished, we must all agree that, if war has once broken out, all possible means must be employed to prevent the spreading of pestilence within the armies. Here the interests of the people and of the commanders coincide, since the efficiency of armies is often seriously interfered with by the outbreak of pestilence, and not infrequently the success or failure of a war depends, not upon the outcome of its battles, but upon the appearance or non-appearance of pestilence.

CHAPTER I
WAR PESTILENCES

All infectious diseases may spread in consequence of war and develop into epidemics of varying extent. In the next chapter we shall see how the wars at the end of the fifteenth century favoured the spread of an epidemic of syphilis. In the Union Army, during the American Civil War of 1861–5, both measles and typhoid fever were very widespread, and together they were the cause of 4,246 deaths, or about 1·75 per cent of the total enlistment. Scarlet fever, influenza, yellow fever, relapsing fever, and malaria (if the war is waged in countries where this disease is endemic—especially in the Lower Danube region, in the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy) have also played an important rôle in many wars. But we give the name ‘war pestilences’ only to those infectious diseases which in the course of centuries have usually followed at the heels of belligerent armies, such as typhus fever, bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, and small-pox; we may also include here scurvy, the etiology of which has not yet been definitely determined.

1. Typhus fever (spotted fever, exanthematic typhus—called in France and England simply typhus, in Spain tabardillo[^[2]]—formerly called contagious typhus, hunger typhus, camp fever, and Hungarian fever) is an acute infectious disease of cyclic recurrence, which resembles typhoid fever only in name. From the eighth to the tenth day after infection, often somewhat sooner or later, it begins with a chill, accompanied by nausea, vomiting, violent headache, and psychic depression. In the first few days the patient’s temperature rises rapidly, and on the fourth or fifth day a rash in the form of dull-red spots, as large as a pea, breaks out over the entire body. These spots gradually grow larger, and after two or three days, through the appearance of very small haemorrhages, change into petechiae. The apathy of which the patient first gave evidence now gives way to wild delirium. At the end of the second week the temperature falls rapidly, and in one or two days becomes normal; often, however, the fall of temperature takes from six to eight days. The duration of the entire disease, accordingly, is from two to two and a half weeks. Death usually occurs at the crisis of the disease—from the tenth to the twelfth day—rarely between the sixth and ninth days or after the twelfth.

The danger of the disease varies greatly in different epidemics; statements regarding this point diverge according as we refer to the statistical records of hospitals or to the private practice of physicians. With the latter the number of deaths is smaller, since persons suffering from the disease in mild form less often go to the hospitals. Epidemics in which a quarter of the patients, and even more, have succumbed have frequently occurred, especially in war times, during famines, &c. The cause (infective agent) of typhus fever is not known; according to recent investigations it is spread by vermin; Ricketts and others have fixed responsibility for it upon the body louse. The infection is communicated from man to man, and very often it is contracted from the clothes, linen, and other effects of typhus patients. Recovery from the disease usually renders a person immune against a second attack. Typhus fever frequently appears nowadays in the eastern and south-eastern parts of Europe, in Hungary and Galicia, and also in Spain, Italy, and Ireland.

2. Plague appears in two forms, depending upon the place where the infective agent enters the body: the bubonic plague and the pneumonic plague. In the case of the former the painful plague-sores (buboes) develop, usually two or three days after infection, from the lymphatic glands; these sores,—which appear most often in the region of the groin, less often in the axilla, on the neck, lower jaw, and in other places,—soon suppurate. There is either a development of toxins, which are the cause of the severe general symptoms, or else the bacilli pestis go from the glands into the circulatory system and cause septicaemia, which is quickly fatal. Pneumonic plague takes the form of a catarrhal inflammation of the lungs, causing a profuse and bloody expectoration, which contains large quantities of bacilli. This form of the disease almost always ends fatally in a few days. The mortality of bubonic plague is somewhat lower; the disease has an average duration of eight days, and carries away from fifty to seventy per cent of its victims.

In the Middle Ages an epidemic of plague (black death) ravaged all Europe. At the present time it is still endemic in India, in southern China, in Egypt, in Uganda, and perhaps in other countries, whence it frequently develops into general epidemics.

The infective agent in the case of plague is the bacillus pestis, identified in 1894 by Kitasato, and subsequently, but independently, by Yersin. Rats, which are very susceptible to the disease, play an important rôle in spreading it; in India the outbreak of a plague epidemic is always preceded by the dying of large numbers of rats. Their excrement contains large quantities of bacilli, which may be destructive to human beings. The rat-flea is also known to carry the infection. The infection may be conveyed directly by plague patients, when the buboes suppurate, or when the blood becomes generally infected with the bacilli pestis, which are contained in abundance in the sputum, urine, and excrement, or when the lungs are affected and the patient charges the atmosphere by coughing. One who has recovered from the disease is usually immune for life.

3. Cholera, after an incubation period of two to eight days, begins with frequent (ten to twenty times a day) vomitings of a fluid like rice-water, and incessant retching. The patient, owing to the great loss of water, sinks rapidly; he acquires a corpse-like appearance, loses consciousness, and death may result on the first or second day. If the attack is survived, the patient frequently dies from sheer exhaustion afterwards. The mortality of cholera is great—from forty to fifty per cent of its victims die. In this calculation the numerous cases of cholerine, that are always prevalent during cholera times, are excluded. Recovery from the disease does not protect a person against contracting it again. The infective germ in the case of cholera is the ‘comma bacillus’, discovered by Robert Koch in 1883. The spread of cholera is caused by the penetration of the comma bacillus into the alimentary canal, resulting from contact with objects which have been contaminated by the evacuations of cholera patients; less frequently it is indirectly caused by the pollution, from evacuations, of water used for drinking or washing purposes.

4. Dysentery has always played an important rôle in military campaigns. To be sure, it is not very dangerous, so far as the patient’s life is concerned, but in war times, owing to irregular nursing and scanty nourishment, and the consequent use of unsuitable food, it may spread over a large territory and be very destructive to large numbers of soldiers and other people.

There are two distinct forms of the disease—amoebic dysentery and bacillary dysentery. The latter is caused by the bacillus pyocyaneus, discovered independently by Stiga, Kruse, and Flexner. The disease used to be common throughout Europe; at the present time it appears in Central and Western Europe only in small epidemics, whereas in Eastern Europe it spreads over large territories. It causes frequent, often blood-coloured, defecations, accompanied by griping pains in the abdomen and a distressing pressure (tenesmus). The disease lasts from one to one and a half weeks, but for a long time after recovery the patient’s alimentary canal is very sensitive to improper nourishment. The disease is transmitted either by direct contact, since the evacuations of the bowels contain large quantities of bacilli, or by infected water. Amoebic dysentery, occurring in tropical countries (Southern Europe, Egypt, Southern Asia, Central America, &c.), is much more dangerous; it is caused by an amoeba, carefully studied by Kartulis, and very often acquires a chronic character, sometimes causing abscess of the liver.

5. Typhoid fever (called in England ‘enteric fever’, in France ‘fièvre typhoïde’, in Italy ‘febbre tifoidea’) in many wars has been very widespread among the armies; for example, in the American Civil War, in the Franco-German War (Metz), and in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8. The progress of the disease is well known; between the time of infection and the outbreak of the sickness nine to eleven days usually intervene, sometimes even as much as three weeks. In the first week the temperature of the patient rises slowly, during the second week it remains at about the same height, while in the third week it abates considerably, becoming normal in the course of the fourth week. The spleen enlarges a great deal, and in the second week small pale-red spots (roseola), scarcely as large as a pea, appear on the buttocks and especially on the belly. The patient’s bowel-movements, at first normal, now becomes diarrhoeal, while certain psychic disorders also manifest themselves, usually in the form of a heavy somnolence. In the third week the patient’s life is threatened by complications in the intestines—haemorrhage or perforation. Characteristic of the disease are the anatomical changes of the small intestine—at first enlargement, and later ulceration of Peyer’s patches. The infective agent in the case of typhoid fever is a bacillus, identified by Gaffky in 1882. It lodges in the alimentary canal, and is conveyed by food that has been touched with hands to which matter containing the bacillus has adhered, or else in contaminated water used for drinking or other purposes. From eight to ten per cent of the patients die, while a single recovery usually insures immunity against a second attack.

6. Small-pox has an incubation period of ten to fourteen days. The disease begins with a chill, accompanied by violent headache. On the third day the eruption appears; little papules develop and quickly change into pustules, showing themselves first on the face, then on the back, arms, and hands, and finally on the legs and feet. On the ninth day the pustules suppurate, and after that gradually dry up; if it progresses favourably, the disease is over in two or two and a half weeks.

In the case of small-pox the infective agent is not yet known; infection is caused by contact with a patient, or with objects which he is using or has used. It is particularly dangerous to touch things on which the contents of the pustules have dried, for such articles remain infectious for a long time. Recovery from the disease usually renders a person immune for life. The mortality in different epidemics varies greatly; most dangerous of all is the so-called ‘black small-pox’ (haemorrhagic small-pox, with bleeding in the pustules and under the skin). The total number of deaths in an epidemic of small-pox is dependent upon whether the disease appears in a vaccinated or an unvaccinated community; in the latter case the mortality may reach thirty per cent, whereas in the former case only three or four per cent of the patients die. Vaccination renders a person immune for eight to twelve years, while, if the disease breaks out anywhere in spite of vaccination, the number of fatal cases is very few. It should be noted that small-pox was formerly dreaded, not only because of its danger to life, but also because it frequently leaves a person disfigured for life, and in rare instances causes total blindness.

7. Scorbutus (scurvy) used to be a common disease on ships, in prisons, and in times of famine; it appeared with the greatest malignancy in besieged cities—Thorn, Nuremberg, Alexandria, Port Arthur, &c. The real cause of the disease is unknown, although too much food of one kind, particularly lack of fresh vegetables, together with long confinement in poorly ventilated and dark rooms, are important causative factors. Inasmuch as the disease almost always appears in the form of an epidemic, it is probable that there is a specific infective agent. It begins with a general feeling of weakness; the skin and mucous membranes become pale and sallow, the gums become inflamed and ulcerated, and small and large extravasations of blood take place in the skin and muscles, and at the joints and knuckles. In serious cases haemorrhages occur in the intestines, kidneys, bladder, and uterus. A change of diet and surroundings will quickly cure scurvy; otherwise progressive anaemia will result in death.

CHAPTER II
THE TIME BEFORE THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR

Numerous as are the historical notices in former years regarding the destruction of armies by pestilence, correspondingly few are the detailed reports on the spread of pestilence among the non-belligerent population. The best-known example from antiquity is the Plague of Athens (430–425 B.C.), described by Thucydides. The plague began in the second year of the Peloponnesian War, a few days after the invasion of the Peloponnesians. That it is famous is due to the classical description of it by Thucydides, himself a sufferer from the disease. The Plague of Athens broke out in the Piraeus, a fact which has led to the inference that it was borne thither by mariners from Egypt. At the time of the invasion of the Peloponnesians, thousands of country people fled to the city of Athens, which on the advice of Pericles opened its gates to them; thus more than 400,000 people were crowded together within its walls. The first outbreak of the plague lasted two years, then there was an intermission of a year and a half, whereupon it commenced anew. The second outbreak, according to Diodorus, carried away 4,400 hoplites, 300 cavalrymen, a large (but uncertain) number of other soldiers, and 10,000 women and slaves. The plague also penetrated to other places, sparing, however, the Peloponnesus. The nature of the sickness described by Thucydides cannot be positively determined; it has been referred to as bubonic plague (Sprengel), as small-pox (Krause-Daremberg, Kobert), as typhus fever (Häser, Kanngiesser), as typhoid fever (Seitz), and even as anthrax. All we know for certain is that it was some highly infectious disease, recovery from which rendered a person immune. Krauss and Hecker believe that it was a special disease (‘antique plague’), which no longer occurs.[^[3]]

The Plague of the Antonines, also called the ‘Plague of Galen’, which ravaged Italy in A.D. 166–8, has also been brought into connexion with warlike events. Avidius Cassius, who preceded Verus in command of the army, had been sent to Syria for the purpose of suppressing a rebellion, and there, after the capture of Seleucia, the plague broke out. It was borne by the troops back to Rome, where, after the triumphal procession of 166, it spread far and wide, so that it was necessary to load its victims on wagons and carry them off for burial. The plague spread from Italy to Gaul, to the very banks of the Rhine, and a large part of the province was literally depopulated—decayed and deserted villages were found everywhere. Häser inclines to the view that it was an epidemic of small-pox, while Laveran, Hecker, Krause, and Littré believe that it was neither small-pox nor typhus fever, but ‘antique plague’.[^[4]]

The expeditions of the German emperors to Italy, as well as the Crusades, offer numerous examples of how large armies may be destroyed by disease. So, for instance, in 963 or 964 the army of the Emperor Otto I was attacked by a severe pestilence in Italy—a murderous disease which was usually fatal in twenty-four hours. The German army of Henry IV in 1081–2, but especially after the capture of Rome on June 3, 1083, suffered from plagues in Italy; but the same army fared even worse in 1084, when a plague broke out and carried away, for example, the entire German garrison in Rome. In 1137 Lothair’s army was likewise attacked by infectious diseases in Italy. But by far the most devastating of all was the pestilence which broke out in Rome in August, 1167, shortly after the capture of the city by Frederick Barbarossa, and paved the way to a catastrophe which culminated in the complete annihilation of the German army. At that time many eminent men succumbed to the disease, the army dwindled away in the hands of the leaders, and the soldiers fled in vast numbers in order to escape certain death. Even after the Emperor Barbarossa’s withdrawal from Rome the pestilence continued to rage in his army, and it was a long time before it disappeared from the city. It was the true (bubonic) plague, and usually resulted fatally on the first day. In the winter of 1190–1 a pestilence broke out in Lower Italy in the army of Henry VI; it appeared at the beginning of the siege of Naples and carried away many eminent men. The king himself contracted the disease, and had to be taken to Capua.[^[5]]

The armies of the Crusades fared even worse; the mortality in the First Crusade, before and after the conquest of Antioch (1097–8), was terrible. The pestilence is said to have broken out first among the children and women who accompanied the armies, and its dissemination was favoured by a lack of sustenance and continual rainfall; from September to the 24th of November the pestilence carried away 100,000. The nature of the disease is not known, although it is known to have been very infectious. When a new army of 1,500 Germans arrived, it was quickly attacked by the disease and in a few days almost completely annihilated. Several hundred frequently died in a single day, and as the summer of 1099 was very hot and a number of bodies remained unburied, the pestilence lasted well into that year. In 1100 another pestilence raged among the crusaders. Again, during the Second Crusade a severe epidemic broke out in the army of the Emperor Louis VII at Attalia in Asia Minor; the pestilence spread rapidly among the inhabitants of the city, so that many houses, even entire streets, were depopulated.[^[6]]

During the Third Crusade, shortly after the death of Frederick Barbarossa (June, 1190), a severe pestilence broke out in the army that was besieging Antioch; according to Michaux only 5,000 infantrymen and 700 cavalrymen survived out of the entire German army.[^[7]] At the siege of Acre (Ptolemais), which lasted from August 1189, to July 1191, there broke out in the winter of 1191 a terrible pestilence which played havoc in the pilgrim army; it was caused by an inadequate supply of food, and its symptoms (enlargement of the limbs and falling out of the teeth) betoken scurvy. It also appeared in the army of Saladin, but was much worse in the Christian army, in which from 100 to 200 crusaders died every day. Duke Frederick of Swabia succumbed to this disease on January 20, 1191.[^[8]]

At the time of the crusade against the heretics a serious pestilence broke out in Egypt in the army of the crusaders, which had already, on August 12, 1218, suffered from dysentery; it appeared in December during the siege of Damietta, after a heavy and continuous downfall of rain. ‘The patients’, says Wilken, ‘were suddenly seized with violent pains in the feet and ankles; their gums became swollen, their teeth loose and useless, while their hips and shin bones first turned black and then putrefied. Finally, an easy and peaceful death, like a gentle sleep, put an end to their sufferings. A sixth of the pilgrim army was carried away by this disease, which no medicine could cure.’[^[9]] Only a few patients who survived the winter were helped to recovery by the warmth of spring. It was unquestionably a severe form of scurvy. The besieged, too, suffered from the destructive pestilence, and also from Egyptian ophthalmia. We read further in Wilken: ‘A horrible sight greeted the pilgrims when they took possession of Damietta. Not only the houses, but even the streets were filled with unburied corpses; in the beds dead bodies lay beside helpless and dying invalids, and the infection of the air was intolerable. Of 80,000 inhabitants which the city had had at the beginning of the siege only 3,000 were left, while only 100 of these were healthy.’[^[10]] Other reports say that 10,000 inhabitants survived.

In 1270, during the Seventh and last Crusade, which strangely enough passed by way of Tunis, a pestilential disease broke out in Carthage, carrying away, in addition to many soldiers and men of rank, King Louis IX of France himself and his son, Jean Tristan. This pestilence was dysentery, and it spread even to Sicily, whither the king’s body was conveyed. After the king’s death conditions were even worse, since so many people died that it was impossible to bury all the bodies. The disease also attacked the enemy’s army.[^[11]]

The increased prevalence of leprosy in Europe in the Middle Ages is often attributed to the Crusades.[^[12]] Leprosy was very widespread in Germany, France, Italy, and other countries of Europe before the Crusades; according to Hirsch it appeared in the Roman Empire in the first century before the birth of Christ, but did not become very prevalent until later. Legal regulations governing the marrying of lepers date back as far as the seventh century, while the earliest reports regarding leper-houses come down from the eighth and ninth centuries. Most leper-houses, however, were built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, and although the reverse opinion has been expressed, it is nevertheless improbable that the building of these houses was not due to the increased prevalence of the disease. Inasmuch as leprosy was very widespread in the Orient, where numerous crusaders contracted it, as indicated by the fact that institutions were founded there for its victims, many crusaders doubtless returned with the disease in their systems. But regarding this matter we shall never have absolutely reliable information; for it is assumed that many people suffering from other chronic skin diseases were placed in the leper-houses. A careful study of the available data, however, leads us to believe that wrong diagnoses were not so frequent as to account for the large number of cases of leprosy in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Admittance to leper-houses was regulated by many precautionary measures, and the diagnosis of the disease was made by churchmen, even bishops, who without doubt necessarily acquired a good eye for the disease in the course of time. Not until later, when we may be certain that leprosy was no longer brought from the Orient, was the disease probably now and then confused with syphilis.

The notable pandemic outbreak of syphilis at the end of the fifteenth century was also largely attributable to warlike events. The rapid spread of the disease throughout Central Europe was due, according to contemporary notices, to the Landsknechte (common foot-soldiers). The rough coincidence of this epidemic with the discovery of America has given rise to the view that the disease did not exist in Europe at earlier periods, but was borne thither from America. But we can point to numerous instances in the course of the last century, of how infectious diseases, hitherto unknown, or existing only sporadically, all of a sudden became pandemic (cholera, plague, diphtheria, influenza), although no satisfactory and comprehensive explanation of the phenomenon has been offered. It is generally known that infectious diseases break out in a mild form and last for years, and then suddenly change their character and cause virulent epidemics; this is positively confirmed by the epidemic of small-pox in 1870–2, which will be discussed later. At all events we cannot draw the conclusion from the sudden outbreak of an epidemic of syphilis, that the disease was not present in Europe before.

A serious epidemic of syphilis broke out in the army of Charles VIII of France during his expedition to Naples. Inasmuch as his advance was nowhere opposed, he was able to enter Naples on February 12, 1495. There the French army gave itself over to the most unbridled licentiousness, and the result was that the disease spread rapidly in both the French and Italian armies. Italians and Frenchmen accused each other of having brought the disease, so that the former called syphilis ‘French disease’ and the later ‘Neapolitan disease’. The disbanding of Charles’s army caused the disease to spread far and wide in Europe. ‘Those who had most to do with the further dissemination of the disease,’ says Häser,[^[13]] ‘were the Albanian and Roumanian estradiots serving in the Venetian army, brutal and rapacious adventurers, and also the German and Swiss Landsknechte returning from Italy, who spread the disease over a large part of Europe.’

A large number of writers of the beginning of the sixteenth century bear witness to the fact that the pestilence was borne into Germany by Landsknechte; e.g. Pastor N. Berler (Ruffachische Chronik of 1510), Heinrich Brennwald (1519), Johann Haselbergk (1533), Valentin Müntzer (1550), Nuremberg Chronicle of 1580.[^[14]] In the year 1495 the pestilence broke out in many places in France and Germany; in Strassburg, for example, the disease was planted by Landsknechte who had served in, and been discharged from, the army of Charles VIII; Hans Schott testifies to this fact in his Weltlich Leyenbuch (Strassburg, 1541). The city of Metz tried in vain to ward off the disease; according to the Metz Chronicle, many Burgundians (500 cavalrymen and 700 infantrymen) came to Metz in May 1495, and since the most of them were suffering from mal de Naples, they were not allowed to enter the city. But the soldiers infected the women in the vicinity, and the disease was later borne by them into the city, where it prevailed for four years, not beginning to abate until the year 1500.[^[15]] We also have testimony to the fact that the outbreak of the disease in Nördlingen (1495) was caused by the arrival of Landsknechte.

In a supplementary way we may add here that later wars also caused frequent epidemics of syphilis within narrow confines; instances of this kind are cited by A. Hirsch[^[16]] and H. Schwiening.[^[17]]

In August of the year 1486 English sweating-sickness appeared in England for the first time; it broke out among the troops of Henry VII shortly before his victory at Bosworth on August 22, 1486. And when Henry landed at Milford the disease spread, carrying away many victims wherever it went. ‘Strong and well-nourished people were particularly susceptible to it—more so than old men, children, and poor people. From three to nine, sometimes all the inmates of a house caught it, and it gradually spread over half the inhabitants of the town. The first appearance of the disease is said to have caused more devastation in London (where it broke out on September 21), Bedford, and Cambridge, than the sword, which had been ruling for thirty years in a fearful civil war. According to Forest, an incredible number of people died from it, while Thomas Moore also speaks of the dangerous character of this epidemic. In many places a third of the inhabitants are said to have died from it, scarcely one in a hundred of its victims recovering.’[^[18]] The subsequent appearance of the disease, especially the transplantation of it to the continent in the year 1529, was not attributable to warlike events. In the year 1551 it disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared in 1486.

The disease usually began with a chill, headache, palpitation of the heart, difficulty in breathing, and later a profuse, very malodorous emission of sweat from all parts of the body. The patient quickly lapsed into a state of lethargy. The progress of the disease was uncommonly rapid; ‘in one day either the disease or the patient came to an end,’ says Fracastorius. Any patient who did not succumb, recovered completely after one or two weeks.

From the sixteenth century on notices are more abundant; we now hear of epidemics of typhus fever throughout all Europe, although we do not know positively where the disease first appeared. ‘At all times,’ says Hirsch,[^[19]] ‘as far back as historical investigation is able to follow the course of typhus fever at all, the disease has always been bound up with the most dismal calamities of the nations. The supposition is therefore justified that, in the numerous war-pestilences and famine-pestilences of antiquity and the Middle Ages, regarding which we have no medical reports and must rely only upon the chronicles, typhus fever has played a conspicuous rôle.’ By this, however, Hirsch does not mean to say that the specific disease in all the so-called war-pestilences was typhus fever; on the contrary, he adds: ‘In saying this I by no means wish to imply that I always identify “war-pestilences” and “famine-pestilences” with epidemics of typhus fever; those pestilences, appearing at epochs of general misery, for the most part represent a mixture of diseases, especially catarrh of the stomach, dysentery, scurvy, typhus fever, and frequently malaria and typhoid fever, which not only by chroniclers, but also by medical statisticians, have quite often been lumped together as one disease.’ It is to-day almost impossible to analyse these accounts, in which we can distinguish only individual characteristics of those various diseases. This appears most distinctly in the reports of the chroniclers and historians regarding the war pestilences and famine pestilences of antiquity, and it also explains the futile effort of the historians to reduce to one disease known to us the numerous and complicated symptoms which they have looked upon as the expression of a single disease-process—an effort which has led some of them to the somewhat extravagant conclusion, that they were diseases which are now extinct. The same backwardness, furthermore, characterizes—though to a lesser extent—the descriptions which the physicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wrote of the epidemics of ‘putrid fever’, ‘bilious fever’, and ‘mucous fever’ occurring at that time. Here, too, in many cases it was evidently a question of the simultaneous outbreak of various diseases, the nature of which even the most expert critic could not afterwards determine with certainty.

At the end of the fifteenth century typhus fever was prevalent in many parts of Europe; the first scientific account of it comes from the pen of Fracastorius, who had an opportunity to observe the disease during the epidemics in Italy in 1505–8, and who described it as a disease indigenous to Cyprus and the neighbouring islands and appearing for the first time in Italy.

The names given to the disease were numerous and cannot all be mentioned here; the name ‘Hauptweh’ (headache) or ‘Hauptkrankheit’ (head-disease) was current in Germany, while the additional words ‘ohne Sterbedrüsen’ (without death glands) expressly distinguish the disease from bubonic plague. T. von Györy[^[20]] mentions a large number of synonyms—Hungarian disease, lazaret fever, spotted fever, petechial disease, &c.

In 1490 the disease was borne by Spanish soldiers, who had fought in the Venetian army against Turkey, from Cyprus to Spain, and during the war of Ferdinand the Catholic against the Moors it spread to Granada and did more damage to the Spanish army than the swords of the Moors.[^[21]]

In the year 1490 a serious epidemic broke out in Lorraine, which Maréchal and Didion[^[22]] think was typhus fever; it appeared in that bitter and indescribably cruel conflict between René, Duke of Lorraine, and the people of Metz. Despite the armistice proclaimed on June 18, the pestilence spread far and wide and in August entered Metz, compelling the inhabitants to take to flight; the nobles retired to their castles, and the citizens went out into the country. And although the city was strictly quarantined, the disease spread throughout Lorraine and northern Alsace.

In the year 1528 an epidemic of typhus fever occurred in connexion with warlike events. This pestilence broke out in Upper Italy and spread to Lower Italy, where a war was going on between French troops on the one side and German and Spanish troops on the other. The loss of human life was uncommonly large, 30,000 French soldiers and twice as many non-belligerent inhabitants are said to have died. And the pestilence was also borne from Italy to Germany.

Well known in history is the great pestilence which in 1552 forced Emperor Charles V to raise the siege of Metz, which had been going on for two months (November and December). Maréchal gives us detailed information about this;[^[23]] the Emperor’s army, he says, which consisted of 80,000 German, Spanish, and Italian troops, in addition to the enormous camp-following that always accompanied armies at that time, was reduced one-third by the end of December through desertion, disease, and disablement. According to the report of the Venetian physician, Andreas Gratiolo, the widespread diseases were typhus fever and dysentery. The appearance of these diseases was favoured by the congregating of such enormous numbers of people in tents and inadequate places of shelter, and also by the great dampness and the lack of the necessaries of life. The extreme cold, which prevented the dispersion and isolation of the patients, also favoured the dissemination of the disease. More than 200 men died in the barracks every day, while 10,000 men, all told, are said to have succumbed. It was also observed that the Spaniards and Italians suffered more than the Landsknechte and other German troops, since they could not stand the severity of the climate so well. During the siege, hospital-fever and scurvy raged in the city itself, and after the siege was raised, in the night of January 1, 1553, typhus fever broke out there, having been borne into the hospitals by wounded soldiers from the enemy’s camp, or else brought back by citizens who had been out to inspect the position of the besiegers. During the siege the surrounding country had been most terribly ravaged by the enemy’s soldiers, so that the inhabitants were in the greatest misery, without food and without any source of help. For the spread of typhus fever this afforded a very favourable soil, and it raged furiously in the months of June and July in the villages surrounding Metz.

The battles with the Turks in the east did a great deal toward spreading typhus fever throughout Europe; for that reason the name ‘Hungarian disease’ came into existence. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, hitherto prosperous Hungary, by endless wars with Turkey and by international strife, was brought to the very verge of ruin. Agriculture ceased almost entirely, the development of the country came to a standstill, large tracts of land, such as the Banat region, assumed the appearance of a vast swamp, while at the same time the alternate cold nights and hot days, together with the great dampness, were very unhealthy for the foreign soldiers, who were not accustomed to such a climate. Partly this, and partly the utter lack of sanitation, increased the baneful effects of camp-life. Dirt and refuse accumulated in heaps, vermin multiplied so rapidly that it was impossible to get rid of them, corpses were inadequately buried, while enormous numbers of flies and gnats molested the soldiers and did a great deal toward spreading infectious diseases. The hospitals were in a pitiable condition, and since the soldiers, after their previous experiences, had little hope of leaving the country alive, they gave themselves over to a most dissolute life, in consequence of which the country suffered terribly. Several contemporaries bear witness to the fact that a large part of the German troops never once faced the enemy, for the reason that they succumbed beforehand to ‘Hungarian disease’, which killed more of them than the swords of the Turks. Hence Hungary was called at that time the ‘Cemetery of the Germans’.

‘Hungarian disease’ was typhus fever, which manifested certain unusual characteristics for the reason that the German troops, being unaccustomed to the local foods, inclined considerably toward intestinal catarrh and scurvy, while many of them also suffered from malaria, which weakened their power of resistance. The sudden beginning with a chill, the appearance of lenticular spots on the fourth, fifth, or sixth day, the duration of about fourteen days, the sudden fall of temperature—all these symptoms, mentioned by witnesses, definitely stamp the disease as typhus fever. If the disease has been identified by many historians with bubonic plague, the reason is that in serious cases of typhus fever suppuration of the salivary glands, gangrene of the lower extremities, of the nose and ears, &c., are not infrequent occurrences.

According to Györy,[^[24]] the pestilence which raged so furiously in the army of Joachim, Margrave of Brandenburg, when the latter was in Hungary in 1542, was typhus fever. He assumes that the disease was borne thither by the Italian troops which the Pope had sent to help fight against the Turks, although he cannot base his assumption on any argument save that typhus fever was no rare disease in Italy. It is much more probable, however, that the disease was already endemic in Hungary at that time, whether from of yore, or whether the Turks had brought it there. So much, however, is certain, that the Germans suffered a great deal more from it than did the Hungarians and Turks, who had probably already survived attacks of the disease and had thus become immune.

‘Hungarian disease’ acquired greater importance in the year 1566, when it spread from Hungary over a large part of Europe. It was then that this name first came into fashion. According to Thomas Jordanus, who took part in the expedition, the disease broke out on the island of Komorn during the war of Maximilian II against the Turks; from there it spread further west and forced the Emperor to conclude a treaty of peace which favoured the Turks. After the dispersion of the army the discharged soldiers carried the disease in all directions.[^[25]] Vienna was hit very hard; not only separate houses, but also entire streets, were filled with victims of the disease. The returning Italians brought the disease first to Carinthia, where it broke out severely in Villach, and then to Italy. In the year 1567 the pestilence carried away 400 people in the little town of Villach, and from there it spread to Styria. In the same way it was carried to Bohemia, Germany, Burgundy, Belgium, and Spain.

At the end of the sixteenth century typhus fever appeared in Hungary with renewed virulence; during the siege of Papa it raged with particular severity among the Italian troops, and according to Coberus all the patients in the field-hospital died.

CHAPTER III
THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, epidemics of bubonic plague and typhus fever were frequent occurrences in various parts of Central Europe, but they were usually kept localized by the strict measures that were adopted, in accordance with the best scientific knowledge of the time, to prevent them from spreading; the houses in which the patients lay were quarantined, strangers from infected places were forbidden to enter the cities under penalty of death, the clothes and beds used by the patients were burned, while in the streets and public squares fumigations took place. But in the storm and stress of the Thirty Years’ War such precautions could be taken only to a limited extent, and even when they were energetically carried out, they did no good, since diseases were so frequently borne from place to place. A further consequence of the long war was famine, which was caused by the devastation of the fields and the non-cultivation of the land, due to the lack of workers. This made it easier for pestilences to become unusually widespread throughout Germany. The fact that the scene of the war kept changing was also to a great extent responsible for the gradual dissemination of various diseases, since the regions in which the fighting was going on were always particularly exposed to pestilential devastation.

Unfortunately we possess, for the various pestilences, scarcely any accounts written by physicians, and with a few exceptions must rely upon the information given by chroniclers. In most cases, therefore, it is impossible to state with certainty just what the individual diseases were. Consequently, inasmuch as the word ‘plague’ is used in the chronicles for any serious pestilence, we have adopted it in this same general sense in our account, without necessarily meaning thereby bubonic plague. Certainly one of the most common ‘war diseases’ at that time was typhus fever, and diseases that were commonly called ‘burning, virulent fever’, ‘plague’, ‘head-disease’, ‘Hungarian disease’, and ‘Swedish disease’, were undoubtedly nothing else but that. At the same time real plague, bubonic plague, now and then occurred, and the word ‘plague’ is thus very often used in its proper sense, especially in reference to the pestilences of the years 1630–6. ‘In the history of this calamitous war,’ says Seitz,[^[26]] ‘we see typhus fever like a malignant spectre hovering over the armies wherever they go, in their camps, on their marches, and in their permanent quarters, and preparing an inglorious end for thousands of valiant warriors. Its ravages among the non-belligerent population in town and country caused the inhabitants of many provinces to remember with hatred and loathing the departed soldiers, who were usually accused of having planted the seed of death.’

In general one may say that before 1630 the specific disease was usually typhus fever, and that after 1630 bubonic plague spread along with this disease throughout Germany; the death statistics of the larger cities, adduced at the end of this chapter, lead us to this conclusion. In addition to these two diseases, we find frequent mention of dysentery, scurvy, and, toward the end of the war, small-pox.

Innumerable articles, chronicles, &c., have described in detail the miserable condition of the German countries during the Thirty Years’ War. The following account is largely based upon a notable work by a physician named Lammert, who offers us a chronological enumeration of the pestilences of that time, and also an exhaustive bibliography.[^[27]] Since it is impossible to discuss here thoroughly all the countless epidemics that occurred, we can merely point out their main features and indicate their connexion with warlike events. The figures quoted may be relied upon, if, as is usually the case, they are taken from church-registers; as regards statements taken from chronicles, on the other hand, there is more occasion for distrust. For a correct understanding of the facts, to be sure, we should have to know the exact population of the cities and towns, and this information is only in rare instances available. We must bear in mind, furthermore, that the country-people fled to the cities when armies were approaching, and also that nearly all cities were surrounded by walls and embankments.

The war began in Bohemia. After the battle on White Hill, near Prague (November 8, 1620), the soldiers of Count Mansfeld, who were already infected with typhus fever, marched down the Main to the Palatinate and to Alsace, devastating the country as they passed and leaving severe pestilences behind them. In the year 1625 the main scene of the war was transferred to the north, where numerous epidemics had already broken out in the course of that year. The disorder caused by the war, and especially the wild warfare of Wallenstein, who in the fall of 1625, after mustering his army, had joined forces with Tilly, were particularly favourable to the spreading of disease. Hence in the years 1625–6 we see precisely in North Germany the ‘plague’ doing the greatest damage.

The battle of Barenberg (near Lutter, August 1626) gave the Imperialists the upper hand in North Germany. This ascendancy was taken away from them, however, with the appearance of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who won a complete victory over Tilly in the battle of Breitenfeld (September 17, 1631). After that, Gustavus Adolphus advanced to the Lower Main (Frankfurt and Mayence), and the following year carried the war into Bavaria, which now became the principal scene of the fighting. After the battle of Nördlingen (September 7, 1634), the fugitive Swedish Protestant army, pursued by the Imperialists, retreated through Württemberg, Baden, and Hesse to the Rhine, where the war was now carried on for several years. Both armies were badly infected with disease, and spread pestilence wherever they went. After the battle of Nördlingen the war became decentralized, splitting up into a number of warlike movements throughout all Germany; and everywhere these movements occurred they added, if possible, to the misery of the people.

In the year 1631 that terrible epoch of plague began which reached its climax in the years 1634–5 and lasted well into the following year. Its widespread character was due to the innumerable plundering and devastating marches of the Protestant-Swedish and Imperialist-Catholic armies back and forth across the country, and also to the consequent famine. Everything the brutalized soldiers could not consume themselves or take with them, they destroyed or burned. There was an absolute dearth of farm-workers, and in addition to that, the year 1635 was dry and unproductive. Horrible are the descriptions of the hunger and misery which the people in all parts of Germany experienced at that time. Under such conditions pestilences could spread unhindered; to be sure, they relaxed a little after the year 1638, but by no means ceased entirely. Whenever real plague disappeared, typhus fever, which was prevalent in all parts of the army took its place; and thus diseases were borne from place to place until the very end of that disastrous war.

I. The War in Bohemia and the Palatinate (1618–24)

The year 1620 saw the first warlike events of any importance; at the beginning they were confined to Bohemia, where in November 1619, Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate, had been crowned King of Bohemia. In the first part of the year 1620 typhus fever broke out in Austria and Bohemia among the poorly nourished troops of the Catholic League, carrying away, it is said, 20,000 Bavarian soldiers. After the League’s successful battle on White Hill (November 8, 1620), the disease was borne by Bavarian soldiers back to Upper Bavaria and Württemberg; it is stated that it caused an eruption of red spots over the entire body, and that headache, dizziness, and stupefaction were prevailing symptoms.[^[28]] Munich, by adopting strict measures of precaution—isolation of the patients in houses outside of the city, disinfection of suspected effects and incoming letters, washing in vinegar of money sent in from infected localities—managed to exclude the disease from the city limits. In 1620 the troops of Count Mansfeld conveyed the disease, which was called ‘head-disease’, to Franconia, where in the following year it raged extensively. In consequence of their marauding expeditions, typhus fever also became very widespread in the Upper Palatinate—Neumarkt and Weiden are mentioned as places where it appeared; in Weiden 250 persons died, three or four times as many as in normal years. Count Mansfeld then marched down the Main and along the Neckar to Mannheim, and everywhere his soldiers went they left behind them the germ of typhus fever: e.g. in Boxberg (near Mergentheim), in Neckarelz (near Mosbach), in Eberbach, in Ladenburg and Viernheim (both near Mannheim), and in many other places.

In the following year Lorraine, the Palatinate, and northern Baden became the scenes of Count Mansfeld’s predatory incursions. Since the country-people fled to the cities, the latter became greatly overcrowded; in Strassburg, for example, whither 23,000 country-people had sought refuge, a severe pestilence (chiefly dysentery) broke out and carried away in the course of that year (1622) 4,388 people. ‘Headdisease’ broke out in Wimpfen-on-the-Neckar, after the battle fought there on May 6, in consequence of the arrival of over 900 hundred sick and wounded soldiers; the result was that a large proportion of the inhabitants were taken sick, and a third of them died. In the Palatinate, through which Mansfeld passed on one of his predatory raids, the mortality in town and country, in consequence of dysentery and other diseases, was very great. Again, in Frankfurt-on-the-Main typhus fever broke out in 1622, and 1,785 people died (as compared with 600–700 in normal years). In Mayence and vicinity the disease became very widespread in the year 1624. A plague also broke out in Nuremberg in October 1624, carrying away 2,487 people that year, and 2,881 the following year.

The Palatinate suffered terribly in the year 1623 from the continued marauding of Mansfeld’s army, and in consequence of cross-marches of Spanish and Walloon troops pestilential diseases were conveyed from there to Lorraine. In July 1623, according to Maréchal and Didion,[^[29]] typhus fever or bubonic plague broke out in the village of Lessy and raged furiously for two months. Despite energetic measures that were taken to prevent the disease from spreading, neighbouring and even more or less remote villages were infected, so that in 1624 the entire country was suffering. In spite of the fact that all strangers were forbidden to enter the city of Metz under penalty of death, the disease made its appearance there in May 1625, and in less than ten months carried away 3,000 people. Of the cities surrounding Metz, all of which were infected, Verdun had a particularly high mortality. The epidemic spread from the Palatinate to Württemberg, Baden, Hanau, Nassau, and down the Rhine; for the most part it was typhus fever.

In the year 1623 the army of the Catholic League spread infectious diseases throughout Hesse, particularly in the region of the Werra. When the army withdrew, it left dysentery behind it, for example, in Witzenhausen, Eschwege, and Hersfeld; in July and August it carried away many victims. A pestilential disease broke out on June 3, 1624, in Hersfeld, carrying away from October 4, 1624, to January 1625, 316 persons. In 1625, ‘hunger typhus’ and bubonic plague appeared in Nassau; the pestilence began in Dillenburg on December 18, 1625, and lasted until October 30, 1626, carrying away in this time 378 people—about one-third of the population. The climax of the pestilence came in July. A plague also broke out among the soldiers in Walsdorf-on-the Ems, likewise in Idstein, remaining there for several years.

II. The War in Saxony, Thuringia, Brandenburg, and Pomerania (1625–30)

The years 1625 and 1626 were bad pest-years; according to Lammert, the various epidemics that occurred were partly typhus fever, partly bubonic plague, and partly dysentery. The pestilences spread over Saxony, Thuringia, Silesia, Eastern Prussia, Posen, Poland, and Moravia, and carried away large numbers of people. They were not always directly connected with warlike events, as shown by the fact that many provinces that were spared by the war were attacked by the diseases. On the other hand, the incursion of Wallenstein’s troops into Saxony and Thuringia caused pestilence to become unusually widespread.

From 1625 to the time of the battle of Breitenfeld (1631) Saxony suffered terribly from pestilences that were caused and prolonged by the war, though by no means as terribly as in the years 1631–3. Dresden and Leipzig, comparatively speaking, were but slightly affected. Of 13,000 inhabitants that Dresden had in the year 1626, 341 succumbed to a plague which began in April and disappeared in December; the disease was called ‘burning fever’, ‘spotted fever’, and ‘pestilential spotted fever’, while in the records of the town council we find mention of ‘spots, often the size of a groschen, all over the body’, and also of ‘swellings’. Inasmuch as abscesses and gangrene are often observed in cases of typhus fever, it seems likely that it was that disease.[^[30]] Of 14,500 inhabitants in Leipzig only 122 succumbed to it, although houses in all the streets were infected. Here again, accordingly, we see how slight the danger to life is in the case of typhus fever.

The western part of the present kingdom of Saxony suffered considerably more than the eastern part. In the year 1625 plagues broke out in the cities of Plauen, Reichenbach (1,000 deaths), and Zwickau; the last-named city was revisited in June 1626, and between then and the end of the year 216 people died there. Pestilence also broke out in the vicinity of Leipzig in 1626—in Borna (70 deaths), in Grimma (350 deaths), and in Wurzen, where it appeared in August. The following places nearer Dresden were also the scenes of plagues that year: Rosswein (near Döbeln—376 deaths), Mitweida (outbreak on April 9, 1626—number of deaths before that day 22, between that day and the end of the year, 1,000), Frankenberg (581 deaths), Freiberg (752 deaths in the year 1626—500 of them due to the plague). The village of Dohna, south of Dresden, is also mentioned; in the year 1626 there were 157 deaths there, as compared with an average annual mortality of 60. In the Erzgebirge plagues appeared in various places in the year 1625; 134 people died in Annaberg and 323 people in Zöblitz. In 1626 there were 205 deaths in Schwarzenberg, 178 deaths in Gottesgabe, and 81 deaths in Breitenbrunn. Two towns in eastern Saxony, Bischofswerda and Zittau, are also mentioned; there were 182 deaths in the former in the year 1625.

All Thuringia suffered severely from pestilences in the years 1625–6. In the year 1625 the number of deaths in Eisenach had increased to 315, while in 1626 a plague raged so murderously that 769 persons succumbed to it; other reports say 2,500, but this number doubtless includes the refugees. In the following year the number of deaths decreased to 156. In Ruhla, a neighbouring village, 98 persons succumbed to the plague. In many Thuringian cities the epidemic had already secured a foothold in the year 1625, and was then spread over a very large territory by Wallenstein’s invasion. Schmalkalden was the scene of a plague from June to August, 1625, and in Gotha one broke out at the end of July, 1625, carrying away 722 persons that year and 209 the following year. In Erfurt, which had some 15,000 inhabitants, 3,474 people are said to have succumbed to a plague in the year 1626, the strict ordinances passed by the town council on December 25, 1625, being of no avail. The small communities and cities lying to the north of Erfurt, according to the reports, were very severely attacked; in the year 1625 Ballstädt, with a population of 600, lost 365, while in the year 1626 the number of deaths in Gräfentonna was 510, in Gebesee 275, in Kindelbrück 1,514, in Straussfurth 367, in Weissensee 500, and Cölleda 1,000. In the region south of Erfurt the village of Ohrdruf lost 203 inhabitants in the year 1625, and 143 in the following year. In Arnstadt 1,236 people succumbed in 1625 to ‘head-disease’ and bubonic plague—a number corresponding to one-quarter of the population. Gräfenroda had 1,630 deaths in the year 1625, and Tambach 400 deaths in 1626. Koburg and Rudolstadt were also visited by a plague in 1626, while towns in the vicinity of the latter, Königssee, Schwarza, Tanna, and Schleiz, had 707, 129, 195, and 181 deaths respectively. The neighbouring town of Pössnek in the year 1625 had already lost 1,000 inhabitants. Jena and Weimar both suffered, while there were 228 deaths in Gera and 1,100 deaths in Zeitz due to pestilence. Many other places in Thuringia that suffered from plagues are not mentioned here.

That part of Saxony which corresponds to the modern province of Saxony fared in much the same way as Thuringia, while those parts bordering directly on the kingdom of Saxony were relatively less severely attacked. A plague broke out in Eilenburg in September 1625, and carried away many persons there and in the surrounding country. At Delitsch (west of Eilenburg) a dangerous fever (febris maligna—probably typhus fever) spread through the wandering armies, and before the beginning of autumn carried away 150 persons. In the winter the disease subsided a little, but broke out again in June 1626, and carried away 880 people—in September alone there were 229 deaths, and numerous families were completely wiped out. A plague also raged in the vicinity of Halle; not until the following year, however, did it break out in the city itself, whither it was borne by Imperialist soldiers, and where it caused, from June to December, 3,400 deaths. In Eisleben (east of Halle) a plague began in May 1626, and carried away 30 to 50 people daily, so that the total number of deaths for the year was 3,068. Merseburg lost 341 inhabitants in the year 1626, and a plague raged in Naumburg in the years 1625–6. The town of Querfurt (west of Merseburg) in 1625 was for seven weeks the quarters of 3,000 of Wallenstein’s soldiers; they brought dysentery with them, and the result was that 200 citizens died. In the second half of the following year a plague broke out and carried away 1,400 inhabitants of the city (including 200 soldiers) and numerous inhabitants of the surrounding country. The town and vicinity of Sangershausen were also severely attacked; the pestilence began in the town in June 1626, and reached its climax in September with 570 deaths—1,323 deaths, all told, are recorded in the church register for that year, but the figure is said to be too small. Lammert mentions sixteen surrounding villages in which a total of 2,960 deaths occurred in the year 1626. In Sondershausen 54 people died up to the end of July of that year, 36 in August, 137 in September, and 143 in October; the mortality then decreased, but not until 466 persons had died, 400 of them in consequence of the plague. In the near-by towns of Frankenhausen and Langensalza the number of deaths was 915 and 913 respectively, the latter town having been visited by a plague the year before. Nordhausen, from January 1, 1626, to December 6, 1626, lost 3,283 inhabitants—2,504 natives and 779 refugees from other places. In Stolberg (north-east of Nordhausen) a plague broke out on June 27, 1626, and caused 623 deaths. Quedlinburg, Aschersleben, and Halberstadt were also attacked; in Aschersleben a plague broke out on June 15, 1625, and between then and the end of the year carried away 157 persons. The total number of deaths in the year 1625 was 534, in the following year 1,800 (1,066 in consequence of the plague), not including the soldiers; the years 1627–9 had a remarkably low mortality. In 1626 a plague carried away 549 persons in Gröningen (near Halberstadt). The cities on the Elbe and the surrounding country were severely attacked; a pestilence broke out in Dessau on September 3, 1625, and between then and the end of the year 224 persons were buried—399 in the entire year. The disease reappeared in the summer of the following year, having caused 662 deaths, while only 39 died in the year following. In Aiken-on-the-Elbe (below Dessau) 1,000 persons, including soldiers, succumbed to a plague in the year 1626. In the cities on the Saale, above its confluence with the Elbe, a plague raged furiously; in Bernburg it appeared in the second half of the year 1625, carrying away 1,340 persons in that year (the number of deaths in the following year being 425); Kalbe was also severely attacked. A plague broke out in Magdeburg at the end of June 1625, and lasted well into the next year; the wealthy citizens fled from the city, but were compelled to return by the approach of the Imperialists, and the result was that several thousand inhabitants died. The country to the south-west of Magdeburg, as far as Bode, suffered severely—Osterweddingen, Wanzleben, Gross-Salze, Förderstedt, Egeln, Wolmirsleben, and other places. Several soldiers quartered in Förderstedt had succumbed to a plague in June and July 1626, and had infected the citizens with the disease, which carried away 155 of them. A plague broke out in Egeln in October 1625, and reached its climax in February 1626; from January until August 16 of that year 296 persons died there. In Unseberg, which had been infected in August 1625, some 400 citizens and soldiers were buried in the year 1626, in addition to many who were secretly buried in gardens, thickets, and fields. The plague raged with particular fury in August 1626; in Volmirstadt 246 persons died between July 6 and October 1626—144 in September alone.

In Lower Saxony, in the region between the Elbe and the Weser, most of which to-day belongs to Hanover, a plague raged virulently in the years 1625–7. In Osterode, whither numerous country people had fled from the approaching war, a very severe pestilence broke out; in the Saint Aegidius community alone 1,500 persons died, among them many outsiders. In Klausthal 1,350, in Andreasberg 700, in Einbeck 3,000, and in Hameln 1,143 people succumbed to bubonic plague and ‘head disease’. In Goslar, where the pestilence had appeared in 1625, conditions were rendered particularly bad by the fact that many wounded Imperialists were brought there after the battle of Barenberg (near Lutter—August 27, 1626); most of these soldiers died there, 3,000 deaths due to pestilence having occurred in Goslar in the years 1625–6. Wallenstein’s soldiers also brought pestilence with them to Helmstedt (in the region of Brunswick); here one-third of the citizens died, and 295 houses were rendered tenantless. The university faculty fled several times to Brunswick, the students either going home or enlisting in the army. This plague did not come to an end for two years. The surrounding villages, furthermore, were severely attacked by it; during the siege of Göttingen by Tilly (June to August 12, 1626) it became very widespread, since the city was overcrowded with fugitives. From 50 to 60 persons were buried every day. In near-by Dransfeld 700 people died, in Wolfenbüttel 1,705. In Hanover, where a plague had already broken out in the year 1625, a reappearance of it in March 1626 drove out the garrison. The severity of this plague, which carried away 3,000 people, was increased by the numerous fugitives in the city; about one-third of the population survived. In the city of Nienburg, which was besieged by the Imperialists after the battle of Barenberg, a pestilence likewise broke out among the inhabitants and in the garrison. In Lüneburg it lasted from 1625 to 1628, and in Osnabrück from August 1625 to the end of the year.

In the years 1625–6 Wallenstein’s soldiers carried pestilence into the region north of Magdeburg; in Neuhaldensleben 76 persons were carried away between the end of August and the first of the year, not including those who were buried secretly. The following year it demanded a considerably larger number of victims—583; the maximum was in June—147. In the Altmark (north-eastern part of the province of Saxony) dysentery, bubonic plague, and typhus fever broke out almost everywhere during the years 1625–8. Dysentery appeared in the Danish garrison at Tangermünde and carried away 1,600 people, and on June 29, 1626, the Danes withdrew from the place. Stendal was also visited by a plague after the departure of the Danes; it broke out in July, and in a few months caused 2,511 deaths, the normal mortality being 280–290. Numerous bodies were secretly buried, while many peasants who had fled to the city were among the dead; thus the total number of deaths was estimated at 5,000. In Osterburg 624 people died in the years 1626–8, and in Bismark 163 persons died in the year 1626. In the city of Havelberg 668 persons succumbed to dysentery, ‘head-disease’, and bubonic plague, the latter alone carrying away about 400. A pestilence was conveyed to Gardenlegen by the soldiers of Count George of Brunswick, who had his head-quarters there; the number of deaths there in the year 1626 amounted to no less than 1,514. In Salzwedel 335 persons died in the year 1625, and 451 in the following year, the plague being responsible for 400 of the latter. In Seehausen dysentery first appeared, and soon gave way to ‘war-plague’ (typhus fever), which lasted until 1628; some 200 of the soldiers quartered there died, and as many as 1,100 inhabitants.

Brandenburg also suffered, particularly in the south-eastern part, when Wallenstein’s army, in pursuit of Count Mansfeld, turned into Silesia; there were 386 deaths in Luckau, 900 in Kottbus, 500 in Forst, 112 in Spremberg, and 902 in Jüterbog.

Further north, plagues were considerably less widespread in the years 1625–6. In 1625 typhus fever broke out severely in Lübeck and the surrounding country, carrying away 6,952 people, while in Bremen, which had had cases of plague in 1625, a widespread outbreak in 1627 carried away some 10,000 people, natives and refugees. Mecklenburg, being further away from the scene of the war, suffered somewhat less. In the year 1625 bubonic plague, ‘head-disease’, and dysentery appeared in Rostock, Wismar, Schwerin, Plau, and New Brandenburg. In the following year a plague broke out in Parchim, reached its climax in May, and lasted until November, carrying away 1,600 persons. In Flensburg a plague broke out during the occupation of the Imperialists (1627) and lasted until their departure (1630).

The pestilences of the year 1627 were not very widespread, and this applies also to the territory in Saxony and Thuringia which had suffered so severely in the years 1625–6. On the other hand, the countries in the northern part of Germany, particularly Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein, were severely attacked in those years, owing to the fact that Wallenstein had transferred thither the scene of the war. In the year 1628 Hamburg had taken in a great many foreign fugitives, and the result was that typhus fever soon broke out in the city and carried away many thousands of people. The war brought great misery into North Friesland and the Frisian Islands; the Imperialists and Danes oppressed the people by enforced quartering and extortions of all kinds, and the result was famine and plague, lasting until 1630. In Stade, which Tilly in 1629 had made his head-quarters, both the inhabitants and the garrison suffered terribly from a severe epidemic of dysentery. In the city of Schleswig a plague broke out in September, and again in November, in consequence of the quartering of Imperialist troops; it devastated the entire city, so that 211 houses stood absolutely empty on Christmas Day, 1628. Mecklenburg was revisited in 1629, and on August 13 of that year a plague broke out in Rostock and Teterow. Imperialist soldiers conveyed pestilence to the city of Plau, where they passed the night of November 29; but in 1630 it appeared in a much more severe form there and carried away 600 people. In the year 1630 a plague broke out in Mecklenburg, and in Gustrow one raged from May 7 to the beginning of September.

In the years 1628–9 Pomerania was ravaged by the Imperialists, with resulting pestilence and famine. Greifswald suffered for four years from a pestilence which reached its climax in the year 1631. Grimmen, Stargard (3,500 deaths in the years 1627–30), Freienwalde, and other places were also attacked. In Greifenberg, where soldiers had been quartered in large numbers, it raged with unusual fury; three-fourths of the city were devastated, and when the Swedes arrived only 42 houses were uninfected. Kolberg (on the Persante) in six months lost 3,000 inhabitants in consequence of a pestilence. On account of the oppression caused by the war, many citizens fled from Koslin, which, despite the decrease in population, lost 919 inhabitants in the year 1630. In Stolp 800 people died in consequence of a plague.

A plague was borne into Silesia in July 1623, and in Bunzlau an average of thirty persons per week died; of 760 deaths in the year, 640 were due to the pestilence. Many adults fled to near-by villages and died there. In the following year a plague broke out again in Bunzlau, but as only 130 people died there in 1625, it seemed as though the pestilence was over. In September and October, 1626, however, it broke out again, and of 228 deaths that occurred that year, 149 were directly attributable to the plague. In July 1624 it appeared in Friedeberg and carried away 51 persons. In Löwenberg it began in September 1624; the citizens fled from the city and set up tents in the fields, but in spite of this, from forty to fifty people died every day, and the total number of deaths for the year was some 3,000. In the year 1625 the pestilence was very widespread in Silesia—Hirschberg, Löwenberg, Herzogswaldau, Liegnitz, Neumarkt, Waldenburg, Neisse, and other places were attacked. In Breslau ‘head-disease’ raged from June to the end of that year, carrying away 3,000 people; 1626 was also a year of pestilence for Breslau. In Neustadt (Governmental District of Oppeln) a pestilence raged with particular fury from May till September 1625; for the years 1624 to 1627 the deaths were respectively 198, 420, 175, and 472. On August 21, 1626, an army of 6,000 Imperialists under Count von Merode encamped at Goldberg; most of them were infected with disease; and after their departure a plague broke out with such severity that a large part of the population died.

During this time, from 1625 to 1630, when epidemics were raging almost everywhere in North Germany, South Germany also suffered, since diseases were often brought there by Imperialist troops and wandering rabble. In the year 1626 Württemberg alone lost 28,000 people in consequence of plagues.[^[31]] A pestilence in Augsburg (1628) became very widespread and caused 9,000 deaths. In the year 1629 ‘head-disease’ broke out in Württemberg and Alsace. During the isolation of the city of Hanau (from December 6, 1629, to March 12, 1630) by the Imperialist commander Witzleben, a pestilential disease, which the soldiers had brought with them, broke out and caused many deaths throughout the entire vicinity.

III. The War Years 1630–40

1. North Germany until the Peace of Prague

In the year 1630 began in Saxony—in the wake of marching troops—that deadly pestilence which soon spread over all Germany and was chiefly responsible for the enormous loss of human life there in the course of the Thirty Years’ War. We may safely assume that bubonic plague was the most common disease, although both typhus fever and dysentery were of frequent occurrence. In the years 1630–1 the pestilence was confined for the most part to North Germany; the Electorate of Saxony suffered the worst, 934,000 people, according to the reports, having died there in consequence of the war and of diseases.[^[32]]

The pestilence broke out in Leipzig in October 1630, and carried away 301 persons; it was borne there presumably by two foreign orange-pedlars. In October of the following year it broke out again, when the Imperialists, after besieging the city for several weeks, on September 13 had finally captured it. The number of deaths in the entire year was 1,754. In the year 1632 Leipzig was once more the scene of grave warlike events, and was compelled to live through a second siege by Wallenstein; the plague began in June, became very widespread in August, and from then till October caused a great many deaths, the total number for the year amounting to 1,390. In August 1633, Leipzig was again besieged, and this likewise caused the outbreak of a plague which lasted until December and carried away 761 persons; in 1634 it was apparently over, for of 306 deaths that are recorded for that year, only 24 were attributable to the plague. In the years 1636–7, however, it reappeared with great severity throughout the entire city. The country surrounding Leipzig suffered a great deal in the year 1633, which was the worst plague-year that Saxony passed through. In the year 1632 Altenburg was occupied by the Swedes, who were infected with some pestilential disease, the germ of which they left behind them when they withdrew on January 13, 1633. The disease spread rapidly, acquired a virulent character, and carried away 2,104 persons, among them many foreign refugees. Grimma and Borna were severely attacked in 1633, while Wurzen suffered less severely.

The country north-east of Leipzig suffered severely from plagues in 1631. After the battle of Breitenfeld (September 15, 1631) most of the wounded were brought to Eilenburg, where in a few weeks a plague broke out and spread so rapidly that 300 people died in the month of October alone. After an abatement during the winter, it recommenced in 1632; the number of deaths for that year was 670, although only 492 of them were due to the plague, while the disease did not entirely disappear until 1636. The city of Belgern, after it was plundered by Holk’s troops on October 1, 1632, was visited by a plague; also Dommitsch, Oschatz (where 563 deaths occurred in 1631, and many more in 1633–4), and Ortrand (where there were 800 deaths in the years 1631–3). Plagues raged very frequently in Leisnig, Colditz, and Mittweida, and in the villages and towns surrounding them. In February 1631, Palatinate, Imperialist, and League troops quartered in Leisnig, and the result was that ‘head-disease’ and bubonic plague became very widespread; in the following year they reappeared, causing 443 deaths, while many thousands are said to have died in the country districts. The same was true of the year 1633. A pestilence broke out in Colditz in the year 1631, and in the following year ‘soldier’s disease’ (typhus fever) was brought there by Swedish troops, while in 1633 bubonic plague caused 567 deaths. Mittweida suffered from plague in the years 1631–4, 243 persons dying there in the year 1634. In the year 1630 a very severe plague broke out in Freiberg; 1,147 people died in the course of the year, 1,000 of them in consequence of the disease. In the following year there were 124 more deaths. In the autumn of 1632 pestilence raged so furiously that several thousand people died in a short time—about one-third of the population. Most of the bodies were buried secretly, only about 3,000 regular funerals taking place. In the year 1633 there were 1,632 interments, not including those buried in secret. The plague affected the entire vicinity of Freiberg and spared scarcely a single village; many places were left empty and deserted.

In Chemnitz 1,234 interments for the year 1632 are recorded in the church register, and in the following year the plague raged even more furiously: almost every house was attacked, and the number of deaths amounted to 2,500. In Glauchau and vicinity, as in all Saxony, 1633 was the worst year; 964 people died there in that year. The plague raged most furiously from August to November, and lasted until 1634; many bodies were found in the open fields. In the neighbouring Waldenburg 392 people died in a few weeks in 1633, in Lichtenstein 370, in Thurm 400. In Marienberg, a village lying at the foot of the mountains, 1,000 people succumbed in the year 1633 to typhus fever; the plague spread into the Erzgebirge and caused 2,300 deaths in Schneeberg and 157 deaths in the adjacent Neustädtle. A plague had already broken out in Zwickau in 1632, and in the first part of 1633 it became so severe that 1,500 people died in two months in the summer of that year. The city was full of sick people and dead bodies, and the number of reported deaths for the year 1633 was 1,897; but the total number of deaths, excluding the soldiers, is said to have been no less than 6,000. Entire streets were devastated. Many of the inhabitants fled to near-by villages, and thus spread the infection. Crimmitschau was visited by a plague in 1630 (601 deaths), and again in 1633 (409 deaths); 92 families in the last-named year were completely wiped out. Many neighbouring places were also attacked; there were 700 deaths in Werdau, 300 in Steinpleiss, 150 in Königswalde, &c.

The invasion of Holk caused Vogtland to suffer terribly in August of the year 1632, while his second invasion in the summer of 1633 resulted in an even worse outbreak of disease. In Reichenbach and vicinity, typhus fever, bubonic plague, and dysentery prevailed in the year 1633; at first it was called ‘soldier’s disease’, and later ‘bright plague’ (helle Pest). Of 904 deaths that occurred that year, 785 were due to the plague. In Plauen the number of deaths in 1633 was 1,748, in Oelsnitz 325 (217 due to the plague). Holk himself succumbed to the plague in Adorf on August 30, 1633, while 1,000 of his troops also died.

The eastern part of Saxony was also attacked. In Dresden a plague broke out in 1632 and carried away numerous people; it continued to rage in the following year, since the war prevented the adoption of the usual measures of precaution. In the year 1632 the number of Protestants buried by the church was 3,129, and in the following year it was 4,585. Numerous families were wiped out, and many houses were rendered tenantless. In the year 1634 one half of the inhabitants fell victims to the pestilence, while a large part of the city was devastated in 1635. Since the reports of E. J. J. Meyer and of the town council continually speak of ‘swellings’, the disease was no doubt bubonic plague.[^[33]] In Dippoldiswalde (south-west of Dresden) it raged so furiously in the years 1631–3 that entire families were wiped out; in those years there were 189, 510, and 250 deaths respectively. Pirna is said to have lost 4,000 inhabitants in consequence of the plague in the years 1632–4, while Dittersdorf (south of Pirna) lost 405 inhabitants in the year 1632. The pestilence was borne by Saxon troops to Sebnitz (south-east of Dresden). In Stolpen it raged from 1632 to 1634. In October 1631 the Croats brought pestilence to Bischofswerda, and more than 200 persons died in consequence of it. In March 1632 another pestilence broke out there, carrying away 660 persons, so that more than one-third of the houses stood empty. In the year 1631 there were 1,000 deaths in Camenz. In Bautzen there was a garrison of 500 men, almost all of whom died in the year 1631; including the residents that were carried away by the pestilence, the number of deaths there for that year was about 1,000. Nor did the pestilence disappear from Bautzen the following year.

Lusatia was also the scene of pestilence; only a few places were spared, and in Upper Lusatia 40,000 persons are said to have been carried away by pestilences in the years 1631–3. In the last part of September 1631, dysentery and bubonic plague broke out in Görlitz, which had a Saxon garrison, and carried away some 400 persons (excluding the soldiers) between then and the end of the year. In June 1632 there was a second outbreak of plague; it reached its climax in October, and carried away 6,105 people (including 106 soldiers) in the course of the entire year. In the following year 726 inhabitants and 435 soldiers succumbed to the disease. Zittau suffered severely; as early as 1633 several hundred soldiers and inhabitants succumbed to typhus fever, while in the year 1632 ‘burning fever’, dysentery, and bubonic plague appeared and carried away 1,246 persons (according to other reports, 1,642 persons). Petechial fever and bubonic plague, after a period of inactivity in the winter, recommenced in the first part of 1633; the latter disease reached its climax in September, carrying away 1,860 inhabitants in that year, in addition to many Imperialist soldiers. From October to December, 1634, Saxon and Brandenburg soldiers, after their return from Bohemia, encamped near Zittau, where various diseases soon broke out; the result was that hundreds died, and the entire region became infected.

The Province of Brandenburg was severely attacked by a plague in the year 1631, but in the next year suffered considerably less owing to the fact that the scene of the war was transferred to other parts of Germany. In Berlin 777 people succumbed to a plague in the year 1630, while in the following year it reappeared in a much severer form and carried away 2,066 persons. In Spandau, after the capture of the city by the Swedes on May 6, 1631, famine and pestilence broke out and caused 1,500 deaths. A plague in Potsdam caused 457 deaths between June and December, 1631. Neuruppin, in February of that year, after the occupation of the District of Ruppin by Tilly, suffered from a severe pestilence. Dysentery and ‘head-disease’ broke out in Rathenow in 1631, reached a climax in July, and carried away 662 people (not including those buried in secret). In Prenzlau 1,500 persons, about one-fourth of the population, died in the year 1631, while Havelberg had 227 deaths, Lindow 400, and Kyritz (after the soldiers had quartered there) 231. Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, which had been occupied by the Imperialists, on April 13, 1631, was captured by Gustavus Adolphus, whereupon a severe epidemic broke out and carried away entire families in the course of a few days; the alleged number of deaths was 6,000. Müncheberg (north-west of Frankfurt), Quilitz, Drossen, and Guben were also attacked; there were 365 deaths in Quilitz and 2,000 in Drossen. In the year 1634, when the Imperialists once more devastated the Electorate of Saxony, a severe plague broke out in Luckau, whither many country people had fled; the spread of the disease is said to have been favoured by the fact that the soldiers broke into and robbed the closed houses of the dead. In Seftenberg (near Kalau) a plague broke out in 1630 and carried away 305 persons that year; it remained there until 1633, and spread to many near-by villages.

Silesia, after the devastation caused by the pestilences of the years 1624–7, had a few years of rest. In the year 1632, however, infection was brought there from Saxony, though only to a limited extent. On August 1, 1632, Lauban was obliged to surrender to the Saxon garrison, so that for ten days the city and the surrounding country were crowded with troops; the result was that after their departure a severe epidemic broke out and between July and December carried away 1,400 persons. In the very next year severe plagues broke out all over Silesia, when Wallenstein appeared there for the purpose of driving out the Saxons and Swedes. The plague raged so furiously in Silesia that the armies were almost entirely exterminated, and whole communities were wiped out. Golgau, Bunzlau (and vicinity), Greiffenberg, and Friedeberg were attacked. An epidemic of typhus fever carried away 500 people in Hirschberg in the year 1632, and in the following year it became much more widespread and carried away 2,600 persons. ‘The infected persons are said to have looked very red, like drunkards, and to have died suddenly.’ Almost the entire population of Landshut died in the year 1633. Goldberg (south-west of Liegnitz) had been plundered by Wallenstein’s soldiers on October 4 and 5, 1633, and on October 10 Colonel Sparre quartered 200 ‘badly infected’ soldiers there; the result was that a severe pestilence broke out in the city. In August of the year 1633 such a severe pestilence broke out in Liegnitz that it was impossible to bury the victims in the regular way; deep, broad ditches were dug, and from 100 to 200 bodies laid in them. From August 14 to December 22 the number of deaths is said to have been 5,794. Breslau, which at that time had upwards of 40,000 inhabitants, was visited by a plague in September 1633; in the Protestant parishes 13,231 people died in that year, in the Catholic 4,800. Neumarkt (north-west of Breslau) had 1,400 deaths in the same year, while in Brieg, which had a Swedish garrison, there were 3,439 deaths. The city of Schweidnitz suffered terribly; 30,000 soldiers under Wallenstein and 25,000 Swedish soldiers were encamped there, and the plague was so severe that 8,000 of the former and 12,000 of the latter are said to have died. In the city itself, which was harbouring innumerable fugitives from the surrounding country, sick people and dead bodies soon filled all the streets; on August 25 alone, 300 people died. The number of the dead, including from 2,000 to 3,000 that were buried secretly, and also the outsiders, was 16,000 to 17,000; more than two-thirds of the population are said to have succumbed. The pestilence was borne from Schweidnitz to Peterswaldau and Nimptsch, where from 2,000 to 2,400 persons died. On May 31, 1633, Wallenstein came with his army to Glatz, bringing pestilence with him; in Glatz itself 4,284 people were carried away, while many hundreds died in the surrounding country. Petschkau was almost completely wiped out. In Neisse the number of victims is estimated at 6,000; 5,272 are recorded in the church registers.

Generally speaking, Thuringia was but slightly affected by plagues in the years 1631–3, but suffered terribly in the years 1634–5; for in those years there, as in all Germany, a great famine prevailed. In Koburg a plague broke out in the year 1630; in 1632 there was an epidemic of ‘head-disease’, which carried away 300 persons in October alone, and in 1634 an epidemic of bubonic plague, rendered even more destructive by famine, carried away 1,143 victims. Several pestilences (dysentery and ‘burning fever’) also broke out in the Koburg region, caused by the quartering and ravaging of Swedish troops; the inhabitants died by hundreds. Hildburghausen suffered from a plague from June on; whereas only 106 people had died there from January to May, the number of deaths in June alone was 215. In the following year 534 people died there from starvation and pestilence, while 169 died in near-by Streufdorf. Eisfeld (west of Hildburghausen) in 1632 had been plundered by Swedish troops, and from that time on suffered from pestilence. In Meiningen, in the latter part of 1635 and the first part of 1636, 500 people succumbed to a plague (106 in November alone). Suhl, which on October 16 had been burned by Isolani’s soldiers, and Themar—both near Meiningen—had 1,634 deaths. In the following year 519 people died in Schmalkalden and vicinity—250 in Tambach, 300 in Vachdorf, and 1,600 in Salzungen. In the year 1634 the number of deaths in Eisenach was 1,800, and in the following year 1,600; in the year 1636 there were only 405 deaths there. Erfurt suffered very little in 1635, while Ohrdruf had 1,065 deaths, Wechmar 503, and Arnstadt 464. In Weimar 1,600 people died in the year 1635, among them 500 foreigners from Franconia who had taken refuge there. The cities lying further east in Thuringia had been severely attacked in the years 1632 and 1633, in consequence of the pestilences in Saxony; for example, Gera, which had been infected in 1633 by Holk’s troops, the near-by village of Untermhaus, which in the two years had 211 and 600 deaths respectively, and also many other villages in the surrounding country. A plague in Schleiz carried away 600 persons in the year 1632.

In Rhineland and Westphalia pestilences broke out only sporadically in the years 1630–4, but in 1635 they became more general. In the year 1630 Münster was attacked, in 1631 Arnsberg, and in 1632 a pestilence raged furiously in the Berg country—in Lennep, for example, where the Imperialist troops were for a long time quartered. In Mühlheim-on-the-Rhine a pestilential disease broke out after the departure of the Nassau-Lorraine garrison in 1631. In the year 1632 the Imperialist and Swedish armies stood facing each other in Westphalia for six weeks, and the result was an outbreak of pestilence; 600 people succumbed to it in Bielefeld. In 1635 a pestilence raged furiously along the Rhine; in St. Goar 200 people died in the course of the summer. In that year Westphalia was the scene of warlike events and pestilences; Arnsberg, the villages on the Ruhr, Soest, Unna (near Hamm), Horstmar, and Kroesfeld were attacked. The Governmental District of Düsseldorf (on the left bank of the Rhine) was severely attacked by pestilence; many people died in Geldern, while there were 389 deaths in Strälen, 256 in Nieukert, and 700 in Lobberich.

2. South Germany

(a) Bavaria and Upper Swabia

After the battle of Breitenfeld (September 17, 1631) Gustavus Adolphus passed through Halle and Erfurt to Würzburg, Aschaffenburg, and Frankfurt-on-the-Main. Tilly had marched through Halberstadt, Fulda, and Miltenberg to Würzburg, in order to relieve that city, which had been captured by the Swedes, and then turned south. Thus the principal scene of the war was transferred to Bavaria, which from 1631 to 1634 suffered terribly from the ravages of the soldiers passing back and forth. No part of the country was spared. ‘The Thirty Years’ War’, says Lammert,[^[34]] ‘was particularly fatal and disastrous to Bavaria from the year 1632 on; it converted the country into an uninhabited waste, especially because it was followed by pestilence. Like the Imperialist army under Tilly in the autumn of 1631, so the Swedish army on its marches consumed everything it found, and wherever it went in the years 1632–5 it spread ‘hunger typhus’ and ‘war typhus’ and bubonic plague; all the places along the Main lost at least one-half of their population.’ In September 1632, when Gustavus Adolphus withdrew from Nuremberg, Wallenstein turned south, and there on November 6, 1632, Gustavus Adolphus was killed in the battle of Lützen. After that Wallenstein returned to Bohemia, while the Swedes under Bernhard von Weimar marched back into Bavaria. The acme of misery was reached here in the year 1634. It is impossible to enumerate all the places that were infected by the brutalized, wandering soldiers; the most out-of-the-way and indigent regions, such as the Spessart and the Odenwald, were visited by them, and inasmuch as they brought pestilence wherever they went, the unfortunate villages were subjected to merciless devastation.

1. The region of the Main. Since Gustavus Adolphus first had Horn occupy the bishopric of Bamberg, and himself marched through Aschaffenburg to Nuremberg, while Tilly returned to Ingolstadt and later to Lech, the region of the Main, and later the region north of the Danube, were the first to be attacked by typhus fever and bubonic plague; not until later, from 1633 on, did the pestilences spread more or less extensively in the country south of the Danube.

In Aschaffenburg and vicinity a plague broke out in the summer of 1632 and almost wiped out several villages; the city of Aschaffenburg itself, which lost a large percentage of its inhabitants, was revisited in the year 1635. In Würzburg the pestilence began in August 1632, and in the last part of July of the following year another serious pestilence broke out there, in consequence of which 489 bodies were buried in the cathedral parish alone. The prolonged quartering of troops, notwithstanding all the precautionary measures that were adopted, caused the pestilence to rage with extraordinary fury; not until September did it begin to abate. In the year 1635, when infected soldiers were transferred from Schweinfurt to the stronghold of Marienburg, it appeared once more. In 1632 Schweinfurt lost ‘several hundred people’ in consequence of ‘pestilential purple-spots’ (typhus fever). The total number of deaths was 1,055. In December of the following year another rather large pestilence broke out, and again in August 1635; in the latter year it reached a climax in September and came to an end in December. In Bamberg many people succumbed in 1632 to Hungarian disease, which the Swedes had borne thither in the spring. This disease was also very widespread throughout the entire vicinity. In the year 1634 the Swedes came several times into the region around Bamberg and plundered the country, so that famine and plague caused great misery. In the summer of 1635 Bamberg was once more attacked by an infectious disease (typhus fever), and only two houses in the city were spared. In Kulmbach the plague raged extensively in the first part of the year 1633; the number of the dead was so large that the bodies could not all be buried in Kulmbach, and some had to be taken to the churchyards of near-by villages. In the following year the plague broke out anew, carrying away 60 persons in a single day. In Bayreuth 400 persons succumbed to a pestilence in the year 1632, and in the following year 360 died; it raged even more furiously after the city was plundered by the Master of Ordnance, von der Waal, on August 19, 1634. From July to October 1,927 out of 7,000 inhabitants died, while the average number of deaths amounted to only 167 per annum.

2. The region between the Main and the Danube suffered no less. Nuremberg and vicinity was severely attacked by pestilence in the year 1632. In the summer of that year Wallenstein encamped near Fürth, and Gustavus Adolphus near Nuremberg; they watched each other for a long time without venturing a battle. The country people had all fled to the city. In the Swedish army and in the overcrowded city, which had some 50,000 inhabitants, scurvy and typhus fever carried away many thousands.[^[35]] Only 4,522 bodies were buried by the Church, but many more thousands died. Two weeks after his disastrous attack on Wallenstein’s camp on September 4, Gustavus Adolphus marched south, while Wallenstein turned into Saxony. The plague continued to rage in the vicinity of Nuremberg, and many people contracted the disease by visiting the deserted camp of the Imperialist army and appropriating the left-behind implements, weapons, and kitchen utensils. Scurvy was still raging in Nuremberg in the following year. In the year 1634 the plague broke out and carried away 18,000 persons. In December 1631 Forchheim was besieged by the Swedes under General Horn, and the result was that a pestilence broke out in the year 1632 and carried away 578 inhabitants; the average number of deaths per annum was 45. In March of that year the Swedes had deserted the city, and in June 1634, when they reappeared there, the mortality increased again. In the years 1631–2 Uffenheim suffered a great deal from the predatory raids of the Swedes and also from plague, which in the year 1634 became very widespread there as in all Bavaria, carrying away one-half of the inhabitants of the town. While the Swedes and Imperialists were establishing their camps near Nuremberg, many people from Ansbach and other places fled to Windsheim, which thus became greatly overcrowded; the consequence was that people died there by the hundred, and their bodies were buried, thirty or forty at a time, in large ditches. When the Swedes left Nuremberg and appeared in Windsheim, they left behind them 450 men who were infected with disease; in the entire year 1,564 bodies were counted. In the following year the city was besieged by the Imperialists (October 12–23, 1633), and during this time 360 persons succumbed to a pestilential disease; the number of deaths in the entire year, including the outsiders, was 1,600. Windsheim also suffered greatly in the two following years; at the end of the year 1635 there were only 50 inhabitants left. In near-by Burgbernheim, where typhus fever raged in the year 1630, 155 persons died in the year 1632, 165 in 1634, and 107 in 1636. In Schwabach, which had been plundered by the Imperialists in the latter part of July, 1632, various diseases broke out—‘Hungarian disease, dysentery, and even bubonic plague.’ In the year 1633 there were 298 deaths in Weissenburg; in 1634, on the other hand, there were 642. Eichstätt had 494 deaths in the year 1632, 827 in 1633, and 982 in 1634; in the last year the town was besieged and captured by the Swedes, and for a few days thereafter pestilences raged furiously. The country districts throughout Central Franconia, like these cities, were almost completely depopulated by flight and pestilence.

The Upper Palatinate was also severely attacked by pestilence (typhus fever and bubonic plague), which spread far into the Bavarian Forest. In Amberg an epidemic of typhus fever and dysentery broke out in the year 1633, and in April of the following year bubonic plague appeared; the latter disease carried away from 15 to 20 persons on many days of that month, while in July and August as many as 40 people died every day. In the spring of 1634 Weiden became infected with typhus fever and shortly after that with bubonic plague; from August 17 to November 6, some 1,800 people died. The bodies were corded up like piles of wood, placed in ditches in groups of 200 and 300, and covered with quick-lime. In Schwandorf (north of Regensburg) the Imperialists had encamped in the summer of 1634; after their departure a pestilence characterized by ‘swellings and large unknown spots’ broke out and carried away almost one-third of the inhabitants. In Hemau (north-west of Regensburg), after the Swedes had passed through the town, ‘the malignant pestilence’ (typhus fever) had broken out in the year 1633; and in 1634, after the devastations committed by the troops of Bernhard von Weimar, bubonic plague appeared and carried away one-half of the inhabitants.

3. The cities on the Danube. In the year 1632 Neuburg was occupied by the Swedes; after their departure, on October 18, an epidemic of Hungarian head-disease broke out and carried away many soldiers and citizens (more than 900 in eight months). Again in the two following years pestilence caused great devastation. On April 29, 1632, the Swedes appeared before Ingolstadt, but in a few days withdrew; there was a strong garrison in the city, however, and many fugitives had gathered there. In this overcrowded population typhus fever broke out and carried away large numbers of people. In the following year the disease became even more widespread, and 1,039 people succumbed to it before the end of November. In the first part of the year 1635 the pestilence abated. In the second half of the year 1634 Regensburg was attacked by bubonic plague, and despite all measures of precaution it carried away two-thirds of the population (according to other reports there were 3,125 deaths). The entire vicinity suffered from the plague. The mortality in Straubing during the siege of the Imperialists (March 1634) increased greatly; even in the year before it had been very high (294 deaths). The total number of deaths in the year 1634 is not known, but of three parishes St. Jacob’s alone had 631 burials. Deggendorf and Passau fared similarly.

4. Upper Bavaria and Lower Bavaria south of the Danube. On May 17, 1632, Gustavus Adolphus had occupied Munich, and during his short sojourn of three weeks apparently no epidemic diseases made their appearance among the Swedes. But since typhus fever had broken out everywhere in the vicinity, strict measures of precaution were adopted by the city authorities. According to G. von Suttner[^[36]] 124 people in the quarantine-house before the Schwabinger Tor succumbed to ‘burning fever and headache’ between August and the end of the year. According to a report published in 1632 the poor people suffered in particular, while red spots, continual headache, and later on diarrhoea, characterized the disease. A very severe pestilence broke out in Munich in the year 1634. ‘The epidemic was caused’, says Seitz,[^[37]] ‘by the arrival of 4,000 Spanish soldiers in July of the year 1634; they were called there from Tölz and Weilheim when the Duke of Saxe-Weimar and General Horn were threatening the city. Although shortly after that, in August, a few evidences of disease were noticed, it was not regarded as infectious. Finally, however, a real plague broke out with such fury that four lazarets and a garden outside of the city had to be made ready for the care of the sick. It raged most furiously in the months of October and November, when from 200 to 250 dwellings, among them entire houses, were quarantined every week. Thus it went on until the end of December.’ Unfortunately there exists no medical description of the disease, the most important characteristics of which were chills, accompanied by internal fever, violent headaches, great lassitude, haemorrhage, plague-spots, and swellings. All told, some 15,000 persons are said to have died in the year 1634—about one-half of the total population of the city. The bodies of victims became so numerous that they were piled up in the streets and houses, without attempt to keep a record of the names, and buried in ditches forty at a time. Strict isolation of the patients by closing up the houses was enforced, and the use of the clothes and bedding of the dead was forbidden under severe penalties; such effects were burned outside of the gates. Only two gates remained open, and in front of one of them a garden was made ready to receive strangers who were denied admittance into the city. In February 1635, the pestilence had almost entirely ceased, but in September it broke out anew and did not disappear until February 1637.

In the years 1633–4 typhus fever and bubonic plague were spread throughout all Upper and Lower Bavaria by the continued marauding of the Swedes. The Imperialists, no less than the Swedes, helped to devastate the country, while the Spanish soldiers had the worst reputation of all. Again in the year 1635, especially in the autumn, the pestilence appeared. A plague broke out in Freising after the town was plundered by the Swedes on July 16, 1634 (Landshut had already been captured by them on May 10, 1632), and after their departure they left behind them an infectious disease which was diagnosed by the town-physician as Hungarian fever. A pestilence broke out in the city when it was plundered by the soldiers under Bernhard von Weimar, on July 10, 1634, and carried away one-third of the inhabitants; according to a list furnished by the court the number of deaths was 738, but there were many more with whose legacies the court had nothing to do. The bodies were piled up on wagons and conveyed to cemeteries, while the dwellings of diseased persons were closed. In Dingolfing, which was occupied by the Swedes from July 22, 1633, to June 1634, a plague raged with such fury that it was thought the city would be completely wiped out. Simbach-on-the-Inn and the near-by market-town of Thann suffered greatly from a plague in the year 1634. In Thann many bodies lay for a long time in the houses unburied, while entire families among the poorer population were wiped out of existence. The plague also raged in the surrounding localities, and many bodies lay in the streets as food for scavenger birds. A plague raged in the years 1633–4 in Traunstein, which had already had a few isolated cases of disease in the previous year; 123 people died terrible deaths in the two years mentioned, and also in the years 1635–6. In the year 1634 a pestilence caused 500 deaths in Rosenheim, while severe outbreaks of pestilence were reported from many surrounding places—Aibling, Miesbach, Wasserburg, and Tegernsee.

In Tölz twenty-seven adults succumbed in May and June 1633, to Hungarian disease; a pestilence also broke out in the spring of 1634 and carried away hundreds of people in the months of May, June, and July. From July on, the church-registers contain no more entries; the patients with black swellings usually had but a few hours to live. In Oberammergau ‘wild headache’ raged in the years 1631 and 1633, and many people succumbed to it. In September 1634, the town became infected with bubonic plague, and up to October 28, eighty-four people succumbed to the disease—about one-fifth of the population. The epidemic caused the people to vow that they would produce the Passion Play there every ten years. Murnau, Weilheim, and other places were severely attacked in the year 1634. In Andechs the mortality was increased in the year 1634 by an outbreak of dysentery and typhus fever, and on July 27 bubonic plague also appeared and remained until November, carrying away 200 of the 500 inhabitants of the town. In Landsberg typhus fever broke out very seriously in the year 1630. ‘All over the bodies of the people who contracted the disease’, says Lammert,[^[38]] ‘red spots appeared, and then the victims lost control of themselves and knocked their heads against the walls. Many who seemed scarcely to have contracted the disease died suddenly. Dead bodies were found everywhere, even in public squares.’ In the following year the disease spread even further; the vicinity of Landsberg was infected by the soldiers, who were constantly marching back and forth. After the terrible plundering of the city in April and September of the year 1633, a plague broke out and carried away a large proportion of the few inhabitants that were left.

5. The governmental district of Swabia fared no better than the aforesaid Bavarian countries, while the region on the northern side of the Lake of Constance suffered terribly from the predatory raids of the Swedes and the consequent epidemics. In Augsburg, which from April 1632 to 1635 was occupied by the Swedes, the suffering began when the city was besieged by the Imperialists. During a siege of seven months (September 1634 to March 1635) famine and pestilence did a great deal more damage among the population than the bullets and swords of the enemies. Whereas this population numbered from 70,000 to 80,000 in the year 1624, by October 12, 1635, it had dwindled to 16,422. After the city had surrendered to the Imperialists, people still continued to die in consequence of pestilential diseases; the town council therefore gave orders on July 7, 1635, that all refuse should be removed from the city. Not until the winter did the pestilence disappear. In Memmingen there were 1,200 deaths in 1633, and 1,400 deaths in the following year; the worst year was 1635, when the pestilence is said to have carried away 3,000 persons. The towns surrounding the city were also severely attacked. In Kempten, which was oppressed by the Swedes and Imperialists in the years 1632–3, a pestilence broke out in the year 1634 and lasted well into the next year, carrying away 3,000 people. In the surrounding country, pestilence raged so furiously that many places were completely wiped out. In the near-by towns of Kaufbeuren, Immenstadt, Pfronten, Füssen, &c., the pestilence was likewise very widespread; in 1635 there were 1,600 deaths in Füssen—about one-quarter of the inhabitants.

The predatory incursions of the Swedes extended even to the Lake of Constance. In the year 1634 the number of deaths in Lindau was 800; at the beginning of the year 1633 Weingarten, Wangen, and Tettnang were occupied by the Swedes, who brought infectious diseases with them wherever they went. Tettnang, which in 1633 had more than 2,500 inhabitants, in 1636 had but 150. In Ravensburg a plague broke out in the year 1635, reached a climax in September, and in six months carried away 3,100 people. In Constance Hungarian disease raged in 1633, and is said to have carried away its victims within a few hours; in 1635 bubonic plague also broke out and caused 2,000 deaths.

(b.) South-western Germany

The battle of Nördlingen (September 5 and 6, 1634) was an important turning-point in the war, important for Bavaria for the reason that it freed the country from the predatory incursions of the Swedes, and disastrous to Württemberg, Baden, Hessen, and the Upper and Middle Rhine region, whither the defeated Swedish-Protestant army retreated, and where the fighting was now carried on for the next few years. Nördlingen had been besieged by the Imperialists, who were supported by a Spanish army; Bernhard von Weimar and Horn tried to relieve the city, but were completely defeated in the attempt. The Swedes turned and fled to the Rhine, and in a few weeks the entire south-western part of Germany was filled with Imperialists who had followed in pursuit.

The sufferings of the inhabitants of Württemberg, partly on account of the deeds of violence committed by the Imperialists, and partly on account of pestilences, were frightful.[^[39]] On September 10 the Imperialists entered Stuttgart, which they continued to occupy until March 30, 1638. In the year 1631 the city had 8,300 inhabitants, and in the year 1634 the number of deaths was 936, of which 672 were due to the pestilence. In the following year the pestilence became more widespread, being helped along by numerous fugitives from the surrounding country and by famine; the number of deaths was 4,379, and it was necessary to dig large ditches and bury a hundred bodies at a time. From January to July 1636, there were 319 deaths due to the pestilence, which in the following year raged even more furiously and carried away 945 persons. The mortality was equally high in the year 1638, when the city was occupied alternately by the Swedes and Imperialists; the latter, when they departed in October, left behind them 6,000 diseased and wounded men. In near-by Cannstatt 1,300 people died in 1635. In Esslingen a plague broke out in 1634 and in 1635 became more and more widespread in consequence of the continual marching back and forth of the soldiers. It made havoc especially among the 12,000 fugitives from the surrounding country, who were packed together in stables and barns, and in many cases under the open sky. Owing to the incipient famine the pestilence spread with great rapidity; 12,000 people are said to have died, among them 600 out of 1,000 citizens, notwithstanding the fact that various measures of precaution were adopted (removal of refuse, fumigations on a large scale, &c.). In Göppingen, which was occupied by Imperialist soldiers a few weeks after the battle of Nördlingen, pestilence soon broke out and carried away 656 persons between October 1 and the end of the year (1634); in the following year there were 904 deaths. In the year 1636 Gmünd had a very severe pestilence, which on many days carried away from thirty to forty persons; large graves were dug and from forty to fifty bodies buried at a time. Aalen, in consequence of the continual marching back and forth of the soldiers, of quartering, and of extortions, suffered severely; there, and in the country round about, a plague raged furiously in the year 1634. Krailsheim and Hall, comparatively speaking, fared well. In Hall, the parish of St. Michael, in which the average number of deaths for the years 1621–30 was 112, in the year 1634 had 1,116 deaths (999 in the months of August-December), while there were 372 deaths in the year 1635.[^[40]] The fugitives in the city and the people who died there are not included. In Oehringen, after the town was plundered by the Imperialists from September 13 to 18, a very severe pestilence broke out and carried away 1,131 persons. The neighbouring towns and villages also had a great many deaths due to pestilence—Neuenstein 1,100, Waldenburg 452, and Künzelsau 900. The entire Hohenlohe Plateau was severely attacked by pestilence; in the little town of Grossbottwar, first ‘head-disease’ broke out in 1635, then dysentery, and finally bubonic plague; between the months of July and December 692 persons succumbed to these three diseases. In June 1635, there were 775 deaths in Lauffen-on-the Neckar, 1,609 in Heilbronn, 646 in Weinsberg (out of 1,416 inhabitants), 1,802 in Vaihingen (only 48 in 1631), and 1,019 in Bönnigheim (among them many outsiders).

In the towns on the Upper Neckar and on the northern border of the Swabian Alp a very severe pestilence likewise broke out. Nürtingen was devastated by the Imperialists after the battle of Nördlingen, and in the years 1634–5 there were 1,154 deaths in consequence of a pestilence. The surrounding country also fared badly; for example, Urach and the near-by Alp villages. In the year 1634 a plague broke out in Tübingen, and in the following year it spread widely in consequence of famine, compelling the university faculty to leave the city. The highest mortality was reached in October (386 deaths), while the total number of deaths for the entire year was 1,485. The plague raged no less furiously in Rottenburg-on-the-Neckar. Nor was the Swabian Alp spared; in the village of Gruibingen there were 90 deaths in 1634 and eighty-six deaths in the year 1635. Böhmenkirch was almost completely wiped out. In Gussenstadt, whither many inhabitants of the surrounding country had fled, the usual mortality per annum was 12 or 14; in the year 1634 there were 313 deaths up to December 7, while in the year 1635 there were 137 deaths up to September 23. In the months of November and December (1634) alone there were 157 deaths, and the inhabitants frequently died at the rate of 4–6 per diem.[^[41]]

After the battle of Nördlingen thousands of the inhabitants of the surrounding country fled to Ulm, where epidemics had broken out in the year 1634 and carried away 1,871 persons. In June 1635, the general misery caused a plague to break out there; in the morning many dead bodies would be found lying in the streets and in front of houses. In the course of eight months 15,000 persons were carried away, among them 4,033 fugitives and 5,672 beggars; in the following year only 496 persons died, all told. Even the Black Forest district of Württemberg suffered in consequence of the war and of pestilence; Tuttlingen in the year 1635 had 546 deaths, Calw 772, and Freudenstadt 434; Neuenburg, Nagold, Sulz, and other places were also attacked.

How terrible was the loss of human life in Württemberg in consequence of the war and of pestilence is shown by the fact that the population of the city decreased from 444,800 in the year 1622 to 97,300 in the year 1639; the population in 1634 was 414,536. In the short period of five years (1634–9), in consequence of the invasion of the Imperialists after the battle of Nördlingen, and of the pestilence and famine caused thereby, the country lost 300,000 inhabitants, or about three-fourths of its population.

The northern part of Baden suffered severely in the years 1634–6; Pforzheim lost at least one-third of its inhabitants in consequence of famine and pestilence, while Durlach and Mannheim are also reported to have been attacked.

That part of Hessen lying on the right side of the Rhine was likewise visited by pestilence. In Wimpfen-on-the-Neckar a plague broke out in August, 1635, and in the period between August 12 and December 31 there were 494 deaths there. Bensheim, Zwingenberg, Gernsheim, Babenhausen, and Seligenstadt fared no better. Darmstadt, with 212 deaths in 1633 and 220 deaths in 1634, had an increased mortality, but in 1635 some 2,200 bodies are said to have been buried there; at first it was ‘head-disease’, and afterwards ‘a poisonous pestilence’.

The Lower Main region suffered terribly in the year 1635 from famine and pestilence; the Wetterau, the Palatinate, and Alsace-Lorraine were all attacked. Frankfurt-on-the-Main had been occupied by the Swedes in the latter part of 1631, and after that the mortality increased; whereas in the years 1630–2 the average number of deaths was 1,598, in 1633 it increased to 3,512, in 1634 to 3,421, and in 1635 to 6,943. This includes all the Protestant population, only a part of the Catholic population, and none of the Jews. The large number of country-people who had fled to the city rendered the general condition worse and helped to spread the pestilence. The worst month was September 1635, in which 1,112 persons died. According to a Frankfurt physician, Hörnigk, the crisis came on the fifth or sixth day, while many people contracted the disease not only once, but as many as seven times.[^[42]] We see from this last observation that the various infectious diseases at that time were not distinguished, but were regarded as different stages of one and the same disease.

In near-by Hanau, after it was occupied by the Swedes and Hessians on October 2, 1634, famine and pestilence appeared; in June 1635, an epidemic of bubonic plague broke out there, reaching a climax in August, and gradually disappearing with the beginning of the cold weather. The mortality among the citizens and fugitives was very great, but the statement that 21,000 people died in Hanau is perhaps an exaggeration. Upper Hesse was devastated in 1635 by famine and pestilence; in Giessen, for example, 1,503 people died (according to the grave-diggers’ records), and in Lich, a small fortified town, there were 1,225 deaths, including 22 soldiers and 549 fugitives from the surrounding country.

In the Rhenish Palatinate, after it was occupied by the Imperialists, conditions were terrible; famine and pestilence lasted from 1635 to 1639. In the year 1635 General Gallas retreated from Dieuze to the Rhine, and in the same year serious diseases broke out there (dysentery, typhus fever, &c.), so that the streets and fields were covered with the bodies of his soldiers. Wherever he went these diseases were transmitted to the local inhabitants, so that many places lost more than half of their population. Pestilence was also transmitted to other cities and towns in the Palatinate; in Zweibrücken, which had 3,000 inhabitants, 250 married persons died between August 1, 1635, and April 1, 1636; many villages in the vicinity were entirely depopulated. In Kaiserslautern, which on August 17, 1635, was stormed by the Imperialists under General Hatzfeld, and was thereafter subjected to an inhuman sacking, a severe plague broke out in the year 1636 and carried away large numbers of people. In Worms numerous people succumbed that year to dysentery.

In Alsace an epidemic of bubonic plague broke out in August 1636; it had been brought there by the troops of the Count-Palatine von Birkenfeld and became very widespread among the fugitives in the overcrowded city of Strassburg. From thirty to forty bodies were buried in a single day, and in the entire year there were 5,546 deaths, including 1,000 fugitives and soldiers. The disease continued to reveal its presence until the next spring, and by that time 8,000 persons are said to have died in Strassburg. In the year 1635–6, owing to the perpetual condition of war, which made it impossible to cultivate the fields, there ensued a terrible famine, and this did a great deal to further the dissemination of pestilence. Zabern, where there was a strong garrison, and where many soldiers were quartered, suffered terribly in the year 1634, and again in the years 1635–6 widespread pestilences broke out; in 1636 the Imperialists died there ‘like cattle’.

Lorraine also suffered terribly. In the year 1635 Bernhard von Weimar and Cardinal La Valette were obliged to retreat before Gallas to the vicinity of Metz, where they arrived on October 1; the troops brought fever, dysentery, and ‘Swedish plague’ with them; the last-named disease, which has been held to be typhus fever, became more widespread in Metz in the year 1636 than it had ever been before—it was la plus meurtrière et la plus désastreuse des temps modernes dans notre pays.[^[43]] The precautionary measures of the city administration—cleaning of the streets, isolation of the patients, closing of infected houses—were of no avail. Many bodies were cast into the Mosel, and before the gates of the city the streets and fields were covered with dead men and horses. Also in the neighbouring cities, especially in Verdun and Nancy, the losses in consequence of the pestilence were great.

Conditions were equally bad in the adjacent Luxemburg. ‘The French as enemies,’ says Lammert,[^[44]] ‘the Croats, Hungarians, and Poles as defenders, committed the most terrible devastations in the country through which they passed. Famine, poverty, and a furious pestilence completed the misery. Entire villages were wiped out; in the city of Luxemburg the churchyards no longer had room for the bodies, and places for burial had to be prepared within the fortifications. Throughout the entire province 11,000 persons, one-third of the inhabitants, lost their lives.’

In the year 1637 Count Bernhard von Weimar transferred the scene of the war into southern Baden, where, during the siege of Breisach, from July 5 to December 18, 1638, an epidemic of scurvy caused increased misery. In the year 1639 large numbers of people in the Lörrach district were carried away by the pestilence, among them Count Bernhard himself.

3. North Germany (1636–40)

In North Germany the war against the Imperialists was continued by the Swedes under Banner. On October 4, 1636, the Imperialists were defeated at Wittstock (province of Brandenburg, district of East Priednitz), whereupon the Swedes in that very same year overran Saxony and Thuringia. In 1637, to be sure, they were thrown back into Pomerania by Gallas, but in 1638 they reappeared in Saxony, and in 1639 won a brilliant victory at Chemnitz. Thereupon Banner undertook a campaign into Bohemia, whence, in 1641, he was forced to retire. Shortly afterwards (May 10, 1641) he died in Halberstadt.

These campaigns spread severe pestilences throughout the above-mentioned regions of North Germany, particularly the southern part of Brandenburg and the modern province of Saxony. The largest part of the Altmark resembled a ‘large lazaret’; in Wittstock itself there were 305 deaths in the year 1636, in Bismark 163, and in Salzwedel 193; in Werben a plague broke out after the soldiers had been quartered there and lasted well into the next year. In Stendal it began in June 1636, and carried away 1,992 persons in that year, as compared with an average annual mortality of 120–30; nor does the number include the peasants that had fled to the city, 3,000 of whom died. The pestilence spread over the entire vicinity and wiped out whole villages. In Tangermünde a pestilence broke out even before the battle of Wittstock; it was borne thither by Imperialists and Saxon artillerymen. In Gardelegen, where Banner had his head-quarters, 500 people in the parish of St. Nicholas, and 1,205 in the parish of St. Mary, succumbed in the year 1636 to bubonic plague and other diseases, among the dead being 195 soldiers. In Neuhaldensleben, whither many country-people had fled, a plague broke out in May 1636, and spread throughout the entire vicinity; in many days in September, thirty and more bodies were counted, while the incomplete church register records 778 deaths. The total number of deaths is said to have been 2,560.

Typhus fever and other infectious diseases raged furiously in Magdeburg, and, as before, the country south-west of Magdeburg also suffered. In Gross-Salze, which had received many fugitives, 701 persons succumbed in the year 1636 to dysentery and bubonic plague, among them 329 outsiders; the climax of the pestilence occurred in July, when there were 162 deaths. In Egeln, as in Gross-Salze, a plague broke out in May 1636, carrying away 164 persons (134 of them outsiders) in June, 63 natives and 84 outsiders in July. In Wolmirsleben a pestilence raged from April to the middle of September 1636, and carried away 130 people. In Atzendorf typhus fever and bubonic plague broke out in the spring of the year 1636 and carried away 617 persons, inclusive of outsiders. In Wanzleben 600 persons succumbed in the year 1636 to bubonic plague, and 300 to other diseases and starvation. In Aschersleben a pestilence broke out on April 2, 1636, reached a climax in November with 217 deaths, and carried away, all told, 1,125 persons in that year (including 499 outsiders and soldiers). In Zerbst, where infected soldiers were quartered, the epidemic was particularly widespread; of the fugitives in the city 1,500 succumbed. In Wittenberg and vicinity dysentery and typhus fever broke out in the year 1636, and in the fall of that year bubonic plague also made its appearance and lasted well into the following year, carrying away thousands of people. In Merseburg, in the parish of St. Maximus alone, there were 942 deaths in the years 1636–7, and in Eisleben there were 1,598 deaths (including the outsiders) in the year 1636. Halle and vicinity, in the summer of 1636, had an outbreak of ‘spotted fever with dysentery’ and bubonic plague; the number of deaths was not less than 3,440.

In Thuringia a plague raged extensively in the years 1636–7. In Hildburghausen there were 648 deaths due to a plague in the year 1636, in Jena 691 (not including the outsiders), while in the year 1637 there were 307 deaths in Arnstadt and 525 in Zeitz. In many smaller places dysentery and bubonic plague broke out, having been borne there by soldiers and wandering beggars.

In Saxony (present kingdom) pestilences reappeared after the invasion of Banner in the year 1637. In Leipzig a great many homeless people took refuge; within three months 2,500 persons died there, and in the entire year 4,229 out of 15,000 inhabitants succumbed to various diseases. Pestilences also broke out with renewed strength in near-by cities and towns; by September 1,000 natives and 2,000 outsiders died in Grimma. In Leisnig, fever, ‘head-disease’, and diarrhoea appeared. After the burning of the city by the Swedes, a plague broke out and carried away 2,200 persons in six months, including the outsiders. Colditz, which had suffered great losses in the last six years, had 352 deaths; the population so dwindled away that in the year 1638 it amounted to only 28. In Döbeln there were 674 deaths, in Oschatz 2,000 (including the outsiders), and in Mügeln more than 1,000. The near-by cities, belonging to the governmental district of Merseburg, also had a very high mortality; in Belgern there were 765 deaths, in Delitsch 881 deaths, while in Eilenburg 8,000 natives and outsiders are said to have died. In Dresden, where in the year 1635 only 79 persons had died in consequence of plague, there were 1,097 deaths in the year 1637. In the following years, moreover, cases of plague continued to appear. A high mortality prevailed even in the Saxon Erzgebirge, caused for the most part by typhus fever.

In Brandenburg a severe pestilence raged in the years 1637–8. Berlin was repeatedly attacked in 1637 and again in 1639. In Spandau it raged very extensively, and lasted well into the following year. In Luckau 500 inhabitants died in the year 1637. The pestilence was conveyed to Neu-Ruppin by an infected soldier, and in the church register of that town 600 deaths are recorded. In Gransee a pestilence broke out in May 1638, and in a short time carried away 1,000 persons. Four neighbouring villages were completely wiped out. In Wittstock 1,599 persons succumbed in the year 1638 to bubonic plague and other diseases, and in Pritzwalk 1,500 people died (not including the soldiers and fugitive country-people). In Lychen (district of Templin) numerous fugitives and two-thirds of the native inhabitants died. In Angermünde, but 40 out of 700 families were left, and in Prenzlau a pestilence likewise raged furiously.

Pomerania, while the war was going on between the Swedes and Imperialists, fared no better. In Massow 400 persons succumbed to a plague. In Ueckermünde, in consequence of a plague caused by the capture of the city by the Swedes, only eight men and seven widows are said to have survived the year 1638.

Mecklenburg suffered terribly in the years 1637–8 from the quartering of Swedish troops there. Thousands succumbed in a short time to dysentery and bubonic plague, especially in the months of August and September 1638. Güstrow, in the year 1637, is said to have lost 2,000 persons (most of them doubtless fugitive country-people). Sternberg, the population of which was completely wiped out by the pestilence, stood empty for half a year. In New Brandenburg, where many country-people had taken refuge, 8,000 people died in the year 1638, according to the church register. Bützow had 261 deaths.

IV. The War Years (1641–8)

After the death of Bernhard von Weimar and of Banner, all centralized warfare in Germany ceased, and there began an endless series of futile marches across the country. The great depopulation of Germany, the difficulty of properly nourishing the few that had survived, and the wide prevalence of camp-fever, made it impossible to carry out any more large enterprises. Severe pestilences scarcely ever occurred, for the simple reason that there were so few people to contract and spread diseases. Typhus fever had become epidemic everywhere. ‘In Germany,’ says Schnurrer,[^[45]] ‘where fighting had been going on for twenty-two years, and where soldier-life had almost supplanted civil and rural life, a certain war-plague revealed itself in places where there were soldiers, and where the war had left its vestiges. This war-plague was characterized by a mucous fever, began with a chill, accompanied by coughing, diarrhoea, and, in the case of women, by increased and irregular menstruation; at the same time the tongue became dry, headache and insomnia ensued, and at the crisis either the brain or the throat became inflamed, or else petechiae or purpura (then for the first time observed in Lower Saxony) broke out. Moreover, this war-plague, if it appeared to have passed a crisis on the fourteenth or twenty-first day, manifested a remarkable tendency to relapse. It was quite as infectious as bubonic plague, and was called by several names—Hungarian fever, head-disease, and soldiers’ disease.’ We distinctly see in this description a mixture of various diseases (especially typhoid fever, typhus fever, and others). Schnurrer’s authority was Lotichius, a Frankfurt physician.

The continuation of the war was disastrous to Austria, for the reason that the Swedish general, Torstensen, pressed on to Moravia and Lower Austria. As early as the year 1642 he had undertaken an expedition through Silesia to Moravia and Bohemia; in the year 1644 he advanced again, defeated the Imperialists at Jankau in Bohemia in the spring of the year 1645, and besieged (unsuccessfully) both Vienna and Brünn. In the year 1645 he was hard pressed by the Austrians and compelled to evacuate Moravia and Bohemia. Torstensen’s campaigns resulted in the outbreak of severe pestilences throughout all Austria.

Bohemia had suffered as much as Germany from the hardships of the Thirty Years’ War, while Austrian Silesia, and at times those parts of Austria which bordered on Bavaria, had not been spared. Only in the year 1634 was Austria itself attacked by pestilences, obvious consequence of the fact that both Saxony and Bavaria were badly infected. The incursion of Banner into Bohemia, in the year 1639, had likewise caused a widespread epidemic.

As far back as the year 1644, and hence before Torstensen’s invasion of Austria, severe plagues broke out in Hungary, Croatia, Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Görz. People who contracted the disease usually died in the first three days. Torstensen’s invasion caused the pestilence to spread very extensively. In Vienna it broke out in August 1645, having been borne thither by Rakoczi’s troops, and carried away from thirty to forty people daily. Tuln, St. Pölten, and New Vienna are also mentioned as places that were attacked. Styria was particularly afflicted in the year 1646; the district of Cilli is said to have lost 10,000 inhabitants, while the city of Cilli alone had some 400 deaths. In Graz, as in all Upper Styria, the loss of human life was not so great.

V. War Pestilences in non-German States during the Thirty Years’ War

1. The Netherlands. In the summer of the year 1623 there raged in Mansfeld’s camp in East Friesland an epidemic of typhus fever, which soon spread among the Netherlandish troops and over the Netherlands. Antwerp, Brussels, Ypres, Leyden, Delft, and Amsterdam were all severely attacked. In Leyden 9,897 persons died between October 1623 and October 1624. In Amsterdam 32,532 people died in the year 1624, 11,795 of them in consequence of the pestilence. In the year 1625, Breda, which for eight months had been defended by Flemish and Walloon troops in conjunction with the English and French, fell into the hands of the Spaniards; famine, pestilence, and scurvy had raged so furiously in the besieged city that 8,000 people died there, whereas the well-nourished Spaniards did not suffer at all from pestilence.[^[46]]

In the years 1635–7 typhus fever and bubonic plague again made their appearance in the Netherlands. An epidemic of the latter occurred in Leyden in the months August-November 1635, and carried away 20,000 people in the course of the entire year. The pestilence caused great devastation in Nimeguen during the siege of the city by the French and Dutch; in the summer of 1635 dysentery and typhus fever broke out there, and in November bubonic plague appeared and slowly extended its area in the course of the winter. From April to October 1636 it raged furiously, and spared scarcely a single house; from August 1, 1635, to August 1, 1636, some 6,000 persons died in the city, and the pestilence did not come to an end until February 1637. It also spread to the country around Nimeguen, especially to Montfort, where half of the inhabitants succumbed to it.[^[47]]

2. France. In the years 1620–30 a large part of the country was visited by pestilence, especially the southern provinces during the war of extermination that was carried on against the Calvinists. In Montpellier, after the siege in 1623, a virulent fever (febris maligna pestilens) raged for eight months, and carried away one-third of the people who contracted it. According to Lazarus Riverius the skin became covered with red, livid, or black spots, similar to flea-bites; they appeared between the sixth and ninth days, and developed for the most part on the loins, breast, and neck.[^[48]] In the years 1628–33 France experienced some very severe outbreaks of pestilence, which undoubtedly involved bubonic plague as well as typhus fever. Lyons had 50,000 deaths, Limoges 25,000, while Paris, Angers, Châlons, Aix, Montpellier, Avignon, Marseilles, Agen, Dijon, Vienne, Villefranche, and Toulouse were also attacked. In Montpellier, whither the pestilence had been borne from Toulouse, 5,000 people died between October 1630 and April 1631—almost one-half of the entire population. The city of Digne, where a plague broke out in 1629, had a terrible fate; it was completely surrounded by soldiers, in order to prevent the plague from spreading further, and by April 1630 some 8,500 out of 10,000 inhabitants had died.

3. Switzerland. The proximity of the scene of the war, which brought numerous fugitives into the country, and the marching back and forth of troops through the Grisons, resulted in numerous outbreaks of pestilence in Switzerland. In the year 1622 some 3,000 soldiers were carried away by an epidemic of typhus fever in the county of Mayenfeld. Pestilences raged extensively in Switzerland in the years 1628–9. On August 5, 1628, a plague broke out in Schaffhausen, reached its climax in October of that year, and carried away, all told, 2,595 persons; 2,000 people died in the country around Schaffhausen. In Zug a pestilence broke out in September 1628 and lasted until December 1629, carrying away 468 persons; in Sursee there were 600 deaths, in Sempach 100, in Frauenfeld 400. In Basel the number of deaths in the year 1629 was 2,656. In the same year St. Gall, Toggenburg, and Altdorf were severely attacked. In the year 1635 another pestilence broke out; the constant misery caused by the war, and the consequent famine, brought swarms of beggars and vagabonds from South Germany into Switzerland, which they infected with various diseases. The city of Zürich, for example, on June 14 of one year was compelled to drive out 7,400 beggars. All Switzerland was attacked by pestilence at that time, even the most out of the way valleys.

4. Italy was the scene of severe pestilences in the years 1629–31; according to Ozanam they were borne there by German troops, and according to Häser by French troops. At all events the outbreak occurred in connexion with the war which France was waging in Mantua against Austria and Spain over the succession. According to a Venetian physician, Grossi, the specific disease was not bubonic plague; Häser,[^[49]] however, assumes that both typhus fever and bubonic plague occurred. Lammert seems to think that camp-fever in Upper Italy had little to do with the high mortality. Ozanam mentions buboes, plague-sores, inflammation of the salivary glands, and black and violet petechiae. Death is said to have occurred in from one to seven days. Brescia was first attacked; after the battle of Villabona (May 26, 1629), the pestilence, conveyed by retreating Venetian troops, spread throughout Upper and Central Italy. In Verona the number of deaths was 32,895, in Milan 86,000, in Venice (1630) 45,489, (1631) 94,164, in Mantua 25,000. In the territory of the Venetian Republic 500,000 persons are said to have succumbed to various pestilential diseases. Genoa, Turin, Padua, Bologna, Lucca, Florence, Parma, and other cities were also attacked. Regarding the outbreak of pestilence in Milan, Ozanam gives us no further information.[^[50]] In October and November isolated instances of disease occurred among people who had acquired articles from German soldiers. Strict measures of precaution (burning of all effects, and quarantining of all persons who had come in contact with infected people) prevented the pestilence from spreading. But during the Carnival these measures were carried out less vigorously, and the result was that in the latter part of March 1630 a pestilence broke out in various quarters of the city. Accordingly, two more lazarets and 800 straw huts were erected outside the city, and shelter for relatives of the sick was provided. Notwithstanding this, the pestilence spread to such an extent that some 3,500 persons died every day. In Florence, Grand Duke Ferdinand II adopted energetic measures against the dissemination of the disease; infected people, with or against their will, were taken to the Hospital of San Bonifacio, where the physicians themselves were obliged to remain. Recovered patients were held in quarantine, and their clothes and other effects were burned. Some 9,000 persons are said to have succumbed to the pestilence in Florence.

5. In England typhus fever repeatedly broke out after the year 1622. In the spring of the year 1643 it appeared in the parliamentary army and in the royal garrison during the siege of Reading. The disease, which is described by Thomas Willis, spread from there to Oxford and the surrounding country.[^[51]]

VI. A General Review of the Loss of Human Life in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War

Even if it is impossible to give an accurate numerical account of the losses due to pestilence in the course of the Thirty Years’ War, we have seen in a general way how epidemics of dysentery, typhus fever, and bubonic plague followed at the heels of armies, how they were borne from place to place, and how the devastation of the country caused by the war led to an absolute dearth of the necessaries of life, and thereby helped the pestilences to spread. We have mentioned only those places regarding which we have specific information, and they can be regarded only as examples of how these pestilences appeared; as a matter of fact, however, conditions were very much the same in all parts of the country. At the same time these examples show satisfactorily that the great depopulation of Germany during the Thirty Years’ War was chiefly caused by severe epidemics of typhus fever and bubonic plague.

It will be of interest to assemble the figures (such as have been recorded) relating to the number of deaths that occurred in a few of the larger cities during the Thirty Years’ War. We include Basel among those cities, since, being situated close to the border of that part of Germany where the war was carried on during two rather long periods, it was necessarily attacked by the prevalent pestilences. At the same time Basel affords an example of how quickly these pestilences disappeared from the cities, even in the seventeenth century, if external conditions permitted the authorities to take the necessary measures of prevention and precaution, and if the cities were not constantly being reinfected. We give the total number of deaths, and merely remark that the population in all German cities in the course of the Thirty Years’ War decreased considerably. In the case of Leipzig, Dresden, and Frankfurt-on-the-Main the still-births are included, but not in the case of Augsburg, Basel, and Strassburg. As a rule the country-people who fled to the cities are not included among the dead; only in the case of Strassburg, and perhaps also in that of Breslau for the year 1633, are they included.

The total loss of human life in the Thirty Years’ War can be estimated only approximately. The statement attributed to Lammert, that the population of Germany, which amounted to sixteen or seventeen millions before the war, had dwindled down to four millions after the war, is perhaps an exaggeration. Other estimates state that Germany lost one-half of its population. In the case of a few states we have more exact figures, which probably approach more closely to the actual loss. Thus the electorate of Saxony, which was much larger in area than the modern kingdom of Saxony, in the years 1631–2 is said to have lost some 934,000 persons. The population of Bohemia is said to have decreased during the Thirty Years’ War from three millions to 780,000. In Bavaria 80,000 families are said to have been wiped out. The population of Württemberg decreased from 444,800 in the year 1622 to 97,300. The population of Hesse decreased by about one-quarter. So much, however, is sure: that in the regions where the war was carried on for several years the population decreased by far more than one-half. The most positive proof of this is afforded by the hundreds of burned-down and unrebuilt houses found in so many German cities, and the numerous unpeopled, or almost unpeopled, places which Germany had to show at the end of the war.

CHAPTER IV
THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

(a) Central Europe

The Thirty Years’ War left Germany for several decades in such a weakened condition that Louis XIV was able to perpetrate all sorts of outrages upon the unfortunate country. The result was a series of protracted conflicts in the countries on the Rhine. The German Emperor, however, was unable to fight with much vigour, partly because of disruption in the interior of the German Empire, and partly because the advancing Turks were gravely menacing its eastern boundary. After Louis XIV had come to terms with Holland in the Peace of Nimeguen (1679), in order to secure for his protégé the Archbishopric of Cologne, which was then vacant, he invaded Germany without declaring war, and his troops committed horrible devastations in the Palatinate and in northern Baden. A German army was organized to oppose the French, but it accomplished very little. Regarding the pestilences of that time not much is known, although it is certain that typhus fever was present in the armies. Thus we learn from a physician named R. Lentilius[^[59]] that in November 1689, ‘burning head-disease’ or ‘Hungarian disease’ was disseminated by Bavarian soldiers who, under Max Emanuel, had taken part in the successful siege of Mayence (ending on September 11), and who afterwards returned home to pass the winter. Typhus fever was conveyed by them to Gundelfingen, Lauingen, Höchstädt, Donauwörth, and Wendingen (all of them places on the Danube between Ulm and Ingolstadt), causing a great many deaths. In many places—for example, in Gundelfingen—the epidemic lasted well into the following year.

In the very first year of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–14) Augsburg suffered terribly from camp-pestilences, which also spread among the non-belligerent population. In the year 1703 the city was occupied by the French and Bavarians fighting as allies, and was afterwards besieged by the Imperialists and the English.[^[60]] The number of deaths in Augsburg (excluding the still-births) was:

Seitz reports that the troops along the Rhine were again infected with petechial fever in the year 1712; Metz, on the other hand, expressly says that no pestilences occurred at that time.

In the year 1733 a conflict again broke out between France and Germany over the Polish succession. In the year 1734 typhus fever appeared along the Rhine; in the spring and summer the outbreaks were sporadic, but in the fall, when troops were stationed along both sides of the Rhine, a virulent typhus broke out in many places, as in Heidelberg, Heilbronn, and Germersheim; the disease was borne even to Lorraine by French troops returning from the siege of Philippsburg.[^[61]]

In connexion with the War of the Austrian Succession (1741–8), which Maria Theresa waged in conjunction with England and Hanover against Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, France, and Spain, we know of several outbreaks of pestilence. In the year 1742 Bavaria was overrun by Austrian troops; a severe pestilence broke out in that year in Ingolstadt and carried away several thousand of the strong French garrison there. A large number of civilians also died.[^[62]] It is stated that the French garrison at Amberg lost 1,200 men, and that 400 of the inhabitants perished; it is very probable that the specific disease was typhus fever.

An unusually severe epidemic broke out in the year 1742 in Prague; on November 26, 1741, the city was stormed by the Bavarians and French, and shortly afterwards it was besieged by the Austrians under the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The number of men in the French garrison was 13,000, and the siege lasted until December 25, 1742. Almost all the French physicians and surgeons died; on the bodies of the inhabitants of the city appeared petechiae, which, it is stated, were not observed among the French. All told, 30,000 people are said to have been carried away by the epidemic in Prague. The high mortality was due to the wrong treatment of the disease by the French physicians, who held it to be inflammatory and sought to cure it by means of drastic phlebotomy. ‘Cette grande mortalité,’ says Ozanam, ‘fut attribuée au traitement suivi par les médecins français, qui, malgré l’avis de ceux du pays, saignaient les malades jusqu’à ce qu’ils expirassent sous la lancette, et par l’abus qu’ils firent de l’émétique qu’ils administrèrent jusqu’au 7^e, 8^e, 9^e, et 10^e jour.’[^[63]] (The high mortality was due to the treatment given by the French physicians, who, despite the advice of the local physicians, bled the patients until they expired under the lancet, and overdosed them with emetics as far along as the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth day.) The Prussian army in Silesia was also infected with typhus fever, and it was not long before all the corps and the native population were attacked.[^[64]]

The Austrian and English army, the so-called Pragmatic army, which in the year 1743 operated in the region of the Main, and which on July 27, 1743, won a victory at Dettingen (near Aschaffenburg), suffered severely, according to Pringle[^[65]], from dysentery and hospital fever. The hospital for the English army was situated in the village of Fechenheim (near Hanau); all the patients sent there, even those who had some mild form of sickness, were infected with a camp-fever, which according to the description must have been typhus fever, and almost one-half of them died. The inhabitants of the village were also attacked, and nearly all of them succumbed. According to Neuwied, the disease was brought there in the evacuations of the sick and carried even to England by returning English soldiers.

The Seven Years’ War was attended by several epidemics of typhus fever. Notwithstanding the long duration of the war, they did not become very widespread, inasmuch as the armies were comparatively small, and as the scene of the fighting, in accordance with the military tactics of Frederick the Great, who opposed first one and then another Power, kept changing, and thus caused no one region to suffer for any great length of time. A severe epidemic of typhus fever broke out in Silesia in the year 1758; it raged in both the Austrian and Prussian armies, and spread to many places, for example, to Breslau, Schweidnitz, and Landshut, where the civil inhabitants also became infected. In Breslau, according to Grätzer,[^[66]] the number of deaths among the evangelical population was:

According to Süssmilch,[^[67]] the number of deaths among the Catholics in the year 1758 was 5,135; thus the total number of deaths in the entire civil population was 9,223. In addition, the following military persons were buried: 5,470 Prussian soldiers, 2,153 Austrian soldiers, 18 Swedish soldiers; also 755 wives and children of soldiers, and 953 paupers and outsiders. The total number of interments in Breslau in that year was 18,572. The great mortality lasted from January to June; of 9,349 military persons buried, there died in:

In the year 1757, in which there was a high mortality in a large part of North Germany that was unaffected by the war, there was an unusually large number of deaths in Dresden; in the year 1760, when the city was beleaguered by Frederick the Great, a ‘virulent epidemic fever’ broke out and again caused a great increase in the death-rate. The number of deaths in Dresden (excluding the still-births) was:[^[68]]

The increased number of deaths during the Seven Years’ War in the countries where the fighting took place is shown by the following figures (which include the still-births) for Berlin and Leipzig:

Typhus fever also appeared in the western scene of the war, where the Imperialist and French troops were fighting against the Prussians. When the united Imperialist and French armies besieged Eisenach for two weeks, the disease broke out in both military hospitals in the city and afterwards spread among the inhabitants, causing many deaths.

(b) Eastern Europe

During the numerous wars that were waged in eastern Europe in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, epidemic diseases frequently made their appearance. After the siege of Vienna (1683), typhus fever broke out in various parts of Hungary, particularly in Pressburg, where many soldiers were congregated. The disease spread from the soldiers to the civilians, and the pestilence lasted from November 1683 to the spring of 1684. After the return of the Prussian troops from Hungary, typhus fever broke out in many parts of Germany; for example, in Minden.[^[71]]

At the beginning of the eighteenth century bubonic plague broke out in Constantinople and spread from there to the Lower Danube countries and to Russia, particularly to Ukraine. According to Hecker,[^[72]] this dissemination was greatly furthered by the adventurous campaign of Charles XII of Sweden, so that the epidemic included all eastern Europe and gradually embraced north-western Germany and Sweden. Fleeing Swedish and Polish soldiers, after the battle of Pultowa (July 8, 1707), conveyed the disease to Silesia. Danzig was severely attacked in that year, and a few cases occurred there in the year 1708; but in the following year a very severe pestilence broke out, reached its climax in September, and between January 5 and December 7, 1709, carried away 32,599 persons. From Danzig the plague spread to Courland, Livonia, Pomerania, Denmark, and Sweden. In Copenhagen 20,822 persons died in the year 1710, in Stockholm 40,000, in Karlskrona 16,000.

In the years 1716–18, when Austria and Turkey once more came to blows over the Turkish occupation of Morea, which belonged to the Venetians, bubonic plague broke out in Constantinople and also among the Turks who were shut up in Belgrade. The Austrian army, which was encamped outside of Belgrade, was apparently not attacked by that disease, although some 4,000 men succumbed to intermitting fever, head-disease, and dysentery.[^[73]]

During the war waged by Russia and Austria against Turkey (1736–9), bubonic plague appeared along the Lower Danube. ‘It broke out there,’ says Häser,[^[74]] ‘first during the war waged by Austria and Russia against Turkey, and the result was that the war was terminated unexpectedly, and in a manner unfavourable to the Christian arms. At the time of its appearance in Ukraine (July 1738) the disease was conveyed by Austrian troops to Temesvar; from there it gradually spread over all Hungary, mostly along the banks of the Theiss to the boundaries of Carniola, Moravia, and Austria, and also along the Carpathian Mountains to Poland and Bukowina. The devastation caused by the pestilence continued for seven years, and the measures adopted by the authorities proved of little or no avail.

The severe epidemic of bubonic plague during the Russo-Turkish War of 1769–72 has been carefully investigated by Hecker.[^[75]] The Turkish army, in consequence of inferior nourishment, was badly infected with intermittent fever, dysentery, and typhus fever when it set out from Constantinople in March 1769. When the Russian troops advanced, the Turks retreated after an engagement near Galatz. Since the disease had been conveyed on ships from Constantinople to Galatz, where many Russians succumbed to it, the city was evacuated. On the way to Jassy every trace of the pestilence disappeared, and in Jassy the soldiers were quartered in the houses of the citizens. Since patients suffering from contagious diseases had not been isolated in the military hospitals there, in the middle of January typhus fever broke out in them, accompanied by glandular swellings in the groin. Four weeks later a Jew and his two children were taken sick in the city and died, the Jew having bought a fur coat in the hospital. Since the Russian commander-in-chief did not hold the disease to be bubonic plague and did nothing to prevent it from spreading, in March 1770 it spread far and wide in Moldavia and Wallachia. Not until the end of April was the presence of bubonic plague officially admitted; and then the well-qualified physician Orraeus was commissioned to make an investigation.

From Jassy the disease was conveyed to Botoshany, which also lies in northern Moldavia, and there it soon developed into a severe epidemic and carried away more than 800 out the town’s 2,500 inhabitants; the rest fled to Carpathia. ‘The patients,’ says Hecker,[^[76]] ‘lay in tents, and without care or medical help awaited an almost certain death. The city itself afforded a sight of complete disorder; the houses were deserted and stood with open windows and doors, the air was poisoned with the odour of accumulated refuse, and the general devastation bore silent witness to the most extreme misery. In addition to that, there were multitudes of savage, ravenous dogs, which dug up the dead and menaced the sick.’

Conditions were just as bad in Jassy when Orraeus arrived there on May 10; of the inhabitants and of the Russian garrison more than half had died, while many streets were entirely depopulated. Since the persons infected with the disease were placed out in a near-by forest, where they were left without care, many patients were concealed inside the houses and their bodies afterwards secretly buried in gardens and cellars. There was no medical help, since both of the Greek physicians had fled from the city. On May 20 the Russian troops, at the instigation of Orraeus, withdrew from Jassy; a convent was converted into a hospital, and soon after that the pestilence began to subside. By June 22 it had disappeared.

In Wallachia the disease broke out somewhat later than in Moldavia, and with considerably less severity. In Bucharest it lasted until May.

In Bender, situated in Bessarabia on the Dniester, there was a mild epidemic of bubonic plague after the city had been stormed on September 16, 1770. The carrying-off of war-booty caused new pestilences in the army and in the population of Podolia and Little Russia. For a short time in the last part of September the main army also suffered from plague in its fixed quarters on the Pruth.

The Turkish army, which passed the winter in Bulgaria, was severely attacked by plague, but no further information about this outbreak is available.

In February 1771, Moldavia and Wallachia suffered very little from plague, although there were occasional outbreaks here and there (for example, in Bucharest) until the year 1773; but these were always of short duration.

The transplantation of this disease into neighbouring countries, especially Russia and its capital, was of particular importance. In consequence of the widespread occurrence of bubonic plague in Moldavia and Wallachia when the war broke out in the spring of 1770, large numbers of fugitives from those parts gathered along the border of Transylvania, where a quarantine establishment was opened at Törzburg (south-west of Kronstadt). In Rukur, a border-village of Wallachia, whither large numbers of people fled daily, a Jewess succumbed at the end of April to bubonic plague, and in the course of the next eight weeks 60 more people died. From there the pestilence spread to neighbouring localities, in which 615 out of 3,000 inhabitants (including 31 outsiders) died. The climax of the plague was in September. It gradually spread throughout the border-towns of Transylvania, but only in occasional instances did it reach the interior of the country; all told, there were 1,024 deaths from the pestilence in Transylvania in the year 1770.

Since all the supplies of the Russian army were conveyed to it on Polish wagons, Polish peasants contracted the disease in the infected countries, and then spread it throughout Poland. Jewish pedlars, who purchased clothes, furs, and war-booty in the Russian camp, likewise helped to spread the disease. In Poland the plague became unusually widespread, particularly in Podolia, Volhynia, and in the eastern part of Galicia; 47 cities and 580 villages, according to Chenot, were attacked, and 275 of the latter were almost completely wiped out. The total loss in these regions is estimated at 250,000. But the disease penetrated no further into Poland, and Warsaw did not suffer at all.

Southern Russia was attacked later than Poland—not until August 1770. Kiev was the first of several cities in which the plague broke out; the disease, which was borne there on infected wares from Podolia, carried away 20,000 people, about one-fifth of the population of the city. Fugitives from Kiev conveyed the pestilence to many cities and villages in Little Russia, while troops returning from Bender helped to spread it in the north. In Nieskin, a city in Ukraine, the plague caused horrible devastation; it broke out there for the second time in the year 1771, and carried away from 8,000 to 10,000 people.

It was generally believed that the severe epidemic of bubonic plague which raged in Moscow in the year 1771 was directly connected with the expedition against the Turks. At that time the city had some 230,000 inhabitants; the streets, full of filth, were narrow, and the houses, most of which were one-story wooden structures, stood close together. According to Hecker, the beginning of the plague is obscure; fugitives from the scene of the war, and wool imported from Poland or Ukraine are both given as the original means of dissemination, but inasmuch as the disease was so widespread in the south, it is probable that it was conveyed to the north in various ways. Schafonsky, writing in Russian, described the plague in an excellent book, of which Hecker made use; the description by a surgeon named Samoilowitz,[^[77]] who did good service during the plague, contracted the disease himself, and was roughly treated in a revolt, according to Hecker, lacks scientific merit and is unreliable. In November and December, 1770, there were a few suspected cases in a hospital in the eastern part of the city; Schafonsky diagnosed the disease as bubonic plague, while the medical officer of the city called it typhus fever. By means of strict isolation and other measures this outbreak was soon entirely checked. As early as January and February, however, indubitable cases of plague had occurred, but they were kept secret. The epidemic really began in the Imperial cloth-manufactory, where 3,000 working-men were employed; not until 130 people had died within eight weeks, was this fact made known on March 9, 1771. Since many of the working-men lived in the city and had meanwhile conveyed the disease to their homes, the measures of prevention came too late. The patients were now taken to a convent in Ukresh (near Moscow), while all the rest of the employees were quarantined. But these measures merely helped to spread the disease, since many of the working-men, in order to escape being quarantined, fled and concealed themselves in the city. When it became known that bubonic plague was present in Moscow, the nobility fled to the country. The people themselves refused to listen to any advice; nobody believed in contagion, and in September there was actually a revolt in the city against the measures that had been adopted to check the epidemic. The compulsory confinement in hospitals of infected people and the quarantining of their families led to numerous concealments. In July the pestilence had already become very widespread; many houses in the suburbs were empty, the courts of justice and workshops were closed, and, since nurses and grave-diggers were dying off rapidly, convicts were employed to do their work. In the southern part of the city a convent was converted into a hospital, and at the end of July only one attendant was on hand there to take care of 1,000 patients. The epidemic reached its climax in September, when from 600 to 1,000 persons died every day. By January 1772, the pestilence had disappeared. From the month of April 1771 on, the number of people that contracted the disease and the number that died were officially recorded; the number of deaths (excluding the bodies buried in secret) was:

The number of deaths, which at that time averaged 7,000 per annum in Moscow, thus increased to 58,000 (including some 1,000 secret burials), and at least 52,000 were directly due to the epidemic. About 150 priests were victims of their calling.

During the pestilence there was constant intercourse between Moscow and the surrounding country, since the necessaries of life had to be brought to the city, where clothes and household goods were to be bought very cheaply. Thus most of the villages and cities in the surrounding country were infected. Some of the latter were almost completely depopulated, while the estate-owners found protection by shutting themselves up in their manors. Of the more distant cities Jaroslav-on-the-Volga was very severely attacked, while Borowsk, Kaluga, and Tula suffered somewhat less. St. Petersburg was the only city to prohibit outsiders from entering, and it was consequently spared.

CHAPTER V
THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NAPOLEON’S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN

The twenty years of fighting that followed the French Revolution, and into which all Europe was drawn, were everywhere accompanied by outbreaks of pestilence, many of which were very serious. At the very beginning of the first Coalition War (1792–7) they played an important rôle. A severe epidemic of dysentery broke out among the Prussian troops when they were advancing into Champagne, and this was chiefly responsible for the failure of the invasion. Typhus fever had also appeared and caused a great many deaths among the Prussians, as well as among the inhabitants of the Departments of Meuse, Moselle, Meurthe, and Ardennes.[^[78]] When the badly infected army of the Allies retreated, after the engagement at Valmy (September 20, 1792), it left behind its sick in various cities and villages, and thus infected the French army that followed in pursuit. In Longwy itself (which had remained in the power of the Allies until October 22), and in the immediate vicinity, the streets were filled with the bodies of soldiers who had succumbed, partly to exhaustion, and partly to dysentery.[^[79]]

Verdun suffered terribly during the siege of the Allies, and at the end of August was obliged to surrender. The chief cause of the widespread occurrence of disease there was the fearful lack of sanitation; ‘à Verdun,’ say Maréchal and Didion[^[80]] ‘une des causes les plus puissantes d’infection était le dépavement de la ville au moment du siège. Tous les jours on jetait de chaque maison au milieu de la rue des immondices de toute espèce, des déjections humaines et animales, des débris, des végétaux, qui se mêlant à la boue se liquéfiaient et se putréfiaient par l’action des pluies. Les agents de la ferme des boues ne pouvaient rien contre tel foyer. Il s’en échappait une odeur infecte, quand quelque voiture venait à passer, et l’on voyait souvent des personnes frappées de spasmes, prises de vomissements et même asphyxiées en traversant les rues.’ (One of the most potent causes of the infection at Verdun was the unpaved state of the town at the time of the siege. Every day refuse of all kinds was thrown from each house out into the street—the evacuations of men and animals, rubbish, and garbage—and there it mixed with the mud, liquefied and rotted through the action of the rain. The officials in charge of street sanitation were powerless. All this filth emitted a foul odour when a carriage drove through it, and one often saw people seized with convulsions and sickness, or even suffocated while crossing the streets.) There was no more thought of taking proper care of the sick and wounded in Verdun at that time, than there was in the later French wars; they lay in numbers on rotten straw, in their own excrement, two or three of them sharing a single blanket. The result was that two-thirds of the patients died.

Pont-à-Mousson, where three military hospitals were erected, also had a severe epidemic, as did Metz; the hospitals could not accommodate the many patients that came streaming in from all directions. Typhus fever continued to appear sporadically in the next two years; from 1792 to 1795 as many as 64,413 patients were received into the Metz hospitals, and of that number 4,870 died.

In the years 1793–4 typhus fever was frequently conveyed into Germany in consequence of the warfare along the Upper Rhine. In May 1793, it was brought to Frankfurt-on-the-Main by French prisoners-of-war, whom the Austrians on their march through the country had left behind. In addition to the cases of ‘putrid fever’ in the military hospitals, a few cases were also observed in the city; until November the disease raged extensively, but in the winter it increased in fury and did not disappear until the summer of 1794. ‘The descriptions of putrid fever,’ says L. Wilbrandt,[^[81]] ‘while they make no mention of exanthema, nevertheless positively prove that the disease was none other than exanthematic typhus, war-typhus. The facts that the disease described was highly infectious, and that it is expressly stated that diarrhoea was not observed, lead us to this conclusion.’ In the report of the health-officer, issued at the end of July 1793, it is nevertheless asserted that ‘the disease was of a putrescent nature, involving spots and purpura’. The transportation of French prisoners caused the epidemic to spread to Günthersburg and from there to Bornheim, but only in a mild form.

A short article by Canz[^[82]] informs us about the spreading of typhus fever from the Rhine to the Black Forest. The disease was borne by French prisoners to Hornberg (near Triberg), where in the autumn of 1793 they spent four weeks. Owing to numerous outbreaks of ‘infectious nerve-fever’, a war-hospital for such patients was established at Hornberg, which had some 1,000 inhabitants. In November the first patients appeared in the town, and the epidemic lasted until the beginning of June of the following year; scarcely a single house was spared, especially among the poor, and often entire families contracted the disease. All told, sixty people died, including eight outsiders who had been brought to the hospital. According to Canz, infectious nerve-fever also made its appearance in Kinzigtal, in the Rhine region, and in several parts of Swabia. ‘In some cases,’ he says, ‘petechiae appeared between the fifth and eighth days on the breast, arms, and back; at first they were very small and rose-red, but later they turned yellow, brown, and finally blue and black, occasionally taking the form of large blue blotches, like suggilations.’

French prisoners also conveyed typhus fever to Bavaria. According to Seitz,[^[83]] this was the case, for example in Regensburg, where the disease raged furiously in December 1793. ‘There is no doubt,’ he says, ‘that the germ of this disease was brought there by French captives, since many contracted the disease and succumbed to it on the transport-ships on which they were carried; and Schäffer (a physician in Regensburg) also saw many people contract the fever who had come in contact with them.’ Typhus fever was disseminated all along the Danube—Donauwörth, Neuburg, Ingolstadt, Vohburg, Kehlheim, Donaustauf, Pfatter, Straubing, Deggendorf, and other places. Kulmbach was also infected by the French soldiers.

During the Coalition War violent conflicts took place in western France in the Vendée, where the Royalist population had risen against the new potentates. When Nantes was besieged by the Royalists in 1793, a furious outbreak of typhus fever occurred in that city.[^[84]] The prisons and hospitals were greatly overcrowded, the city was filled with dirt which nobody took the trouble to remove, and many carcasses were left unburied. In the latter part of September the disease broke out in the prison of Saintes-Claires, where the prisoners were very closely packed together. According to le Borgne, the official inspector said of this prison: ‘Tout manquait dans cette maison—l’air, l’eau, les aliments, les remèdes, tout jusqu’aux moyens d’ensevelir et d’enterrer les morts.’ (Everything was lacking in the building—air, water, food, remedies, and even the means for covering and burying the dead.) Without beds, without even straw, the prisoners had to lie on the damp ground and be scantily fed on bad bread and water. Regarding the Le Bouffay Prison, we read: ‘Des morts, des mourants, et des prisonniers nouvellement infectés gisent sur le même grabat! Les cachots répandent des miasmes putrides, et les lumières s’éteignent lorsqu’on entre dans ces cloaques empestés!’ (Dead, dying, and recently infected prisoners lie on the same pallet! The cells reek with putrid miasma, and the lights go out when one enters these pestilential sewers.) And regarding the L’Entrepôt Prison we read: ‘La maladie était si intense à L’Entrepôt que, de 22 sentinelles qui y montèrent la garde, 21 périrent en très peu de jours, et que les membres du Conseil de salubrité, qui eurent le triste courage d’y aller, en furent presque tous les victimes.’ (The disease was so intense at L’Entrepôt, that twenty-one out of twenty-two sentinels who went on duty there died within a very few days, and almost all the members of the Board of Health who had the sad courage to go there fell victims to it.) The hospitals were so crowded that three or four persons were obliged to occupy the same bed. After December the disease also spread to the city; of 300 grave-diggers employed by the Revolutionary Committee, the majority were taken sick and many died. The total number of deaths in the city and in the prisons was estimated at 10,000.

In Italy very severe pestilences spread in a very short time over the entire peninsula, and even to Sicily, in consequence of the war that had been going on there since 1796. These pestilences were unusually severe in both camps during the siege of Mantua (1796–7). (We shall learn more about this in the tenth chapter.) In the year 1799 the French troops under Scherer were forced to retreat in disorder before the victorious advance of Suvarov and the Austrians, and they took refuge in Nice. There, in the autumn of 1799, a severe epidemic of typhus fever broke out in the French army and soon spread to the non-belligerent population, one-third of which was carried away by it.[^[85]] In consequence of the removal of the patients the disease was conveyed into southern France, infecting Aix, Fréjus, Marseilles, Toulon, and even Grenoble.[^[86]]

The disease spread much more widely in the direction of Italy, where it soon attacked the entire coast of Liguria. A terrible epidemic of typhus fever occurred in Genoa in 1799–1800, when 14,000 people succumbed within six months.[^[87]] Rasori had noted the first cases as early as the summer of 1799; the patients were fugitives from Upper Italy, commercial travellers and military persons. Not until the end of the winter and in the spring did the disease become very widespread; it attacked principally the poorer people. Rasori held the disease to be ‘nosocomial fever’ (typhus fever), and his description of it makes this diagnosis seem undoubtedly correct. Regarding the increased prevalence of typhus fever during war-times, we are informed by the following table of deaths, compiled by Ozanam:[^[88]]

We note the increase in the year 1796, then the decrease when the war was interrupted in the year 1798, and the renewed increase when it began again.

Likewise in southern Germany various epidemics of typhus fever broke out during the second Coalition War (1799–1802), and they too were caused by the war and the constant marching back and forth of soldiers. Many places in Bavaria and Swabia were also attacked in the year 1799.[^[89]]

A very severe epidemic of typhus fever broke out in connexion with the war between France and Austria in 1805; it devastated all Moravia, Bohemia, Upper and Lower Austria, Galicia, and Hungary. After the battle of Austerlitz (December 2, 1805) hospital fever appeared among the wounded in Brünn, and carried away hundreds of French, Russian, and Austrian soldiers. The pestilence soon spread among the non-belligerent population, which in the months January-May 1806, suffered terribly. According to Hain,[^[90]] the number of deaths in Austrian Silesia was:

In Vienna, which on November 13, 1805, had been occupied by the French, a severe epidemic of typhus fever soon broke out in consequence of the overcrowded condition of the hospitals. The transportation of so many prisoners of war, particularly Russians, along the military roads to Strassburg, caused the germ of typhus fever to be scattered along the entire route; Landshut, Munich, and Augsburg are three Bavarian cities that are said to have been attacked.[^[91]] In Augsburg the number of deaths was:

Epidemics also broke out away from the military roads, as in Ingolstadt, Hof, and Nuremberg.[^[92]]

In Württemberg, infected prisoners were also transported through Göppingen, Cannstatt, and Vaihingen. In the months of November and December 1806 the number of deaths in the French military hospital at Solitude was rather small, but in January 1807 serious diseases were brought there by Russian and Austrian prisoners.[^[93]] Regarding Pforzheim, a town in Baden with upwards of 5,000 inhabitants, we have more detailed information;[^[94]] in December and January transports of Russian prisoners arrived there, bringing with them ‘putrid fever’. ‘Curiosity, pity, a sense of duty, and the distribution of food brought many citizens and servants in contact with them, and they were almost all infected.’ Military hospitals were erected inside and outside the city; and it is stated that those who were directly infected by the Russians suffered much more severely than those who contracted the disease later on. Diarrhoea was rare, but on the skin appeared ‘red spots of varying size and shape, usually like flea-bites; they developed first on the neck and breast.’ The climax of the epidemic was in the last part of January and the first part of February; in May it disappeared. Of 183 patients treated, Roller lost 26 by death. The total number of deaths in Pforzheim due to the pestilence was 130 (civilians), 77 of them being between the ages of twenty and sixty. The total number of deaths, which in the years 1801–5 had averaged 163, in the year 1806 was 346; in the years 1807–10 the average number of deaths was 196.

Typhus fever also appeared in France in the winter of 1805–6, having been brought there by prisoners of war; Autun, Semur, and Langres were attacked.[^[95]]

In Napoleon’s war against Prussia (1806–7) typhus fever broke out in the provinces of East Prussia, where the second half of the war was waged. According to Hufeland,[^[96]] the disease appeared wherever the soldiers went in the fall, winter, and following spring; he diagnosed it as putrid fever, nerve fever, and typhus fever. Hufeland, to be sure, often points to the fact that the disease of 1806–7 was in several respects different from that of 1803; in particular, the disease of 1806–7 was characterized by a long period of incubation, lasting diarrhoea, meteorism, blood in the evacuations of the bowels, and a long convalescence. But since Hufeland expressly says that the disease lasted twenty-one days, and at the same time mentions petechiae and the fact that the disease often broke out suddenly, there can be no doubt that it was typhus fever. The peculiar mixed character of his description can be explained only by the assumption that epidemics of typhus fever and typhoid fever appeared simultaneously, and that the two diseases were regarded as one and the same. Gilbert[^[97]] expressly mentions ‘éruptions pétéchiales’ in his description of these epidemics in the military hospitals. In Königsberg typhus fever raged in the hospitals and among the inhabitants, 6,392 of whom died. In Thorn, Bromberg, and Culm, all of which had military lazarets, the disease spread from them to the civil population. In Danzig, which in the spring of 1807 passed through a siege of seventy-six days, the condition of health was good, whereas typhus fever raged among the French besiegers. In 1805–6 the disease was conveyed by Russian troops to Silesia, where it broke out in Trachenberg, Adelnau, Ostrowo, Wohlau, Neisse, and Leobschütz.[^[98]] German prisoners brought typhus fever with them to France, where it broke out in the first part of January 1807, in the Departments of Aube and Yonne.[^[99]]

Typhus fever raged less furiously during Napoleon’s war with Austria in 1809. After the battle of Wagram it appeared in the overcrowded hospitals of Vienna, and also in Tyrol. Since the war had first been waged in Bavaria, the disease had also broken out there (in Landshut and Augsburg), but had nowhere become very widespread.

Typhus fever broke out in the form of very severe epidemics during the long struggle of the French in Spain and Portugal in the years 1808–14, since here the French army suffered terribly in consequence of unremitting hardships, the scanty supply of food, and the poor hospital arrangements. While in the Spanish Peninsula the French army is said to have lost 300,000 men in consequence of disease, and 100,000 men in consequence of the enemy’s arms. A particularly severe epidemic raged in Saragossa when that city was besieged by the French in the months of June, July, and August 1808, and again in the months of December-February, 1808 and 1809; of 100,000 inhabitants 54,000 succumbed to typhus fever, and of 30,000 soldiers 18,000 fell victims to the same disease, so that the city was forced to capitulate.[^[100]] In the year 1810 yellow fever caused great devastation in the southern part of Spain, attacking Cadiz, Cartagena, and Gibraltar; in 1811 it raged furiously in the provinces of Murcia and Valencia,[^[101]] but the epidemic was confined to the coast.

From Spain typhus fever was frequently conveyed by transports of prisoners to France; the border districts through which the prisoners passed were the first to be attacked, as, for instance, the town of Dax (near Bayonne). Ozanam says:[^[102]] ‘La France en ressentit les effets depuis les Pyrénées jusqu’aux environs de Paris, sur toutes les routes suivies par les prisonniers espagnols, et l’Angleterre en fut infestée au retour des débris de ses troupes du même pays. En France la ville de Dax, frontière de l’Espagne, fut une des premières à éprouver les ravages des maladies épidémiques, qui accompagnent toujours les armées. La situation basse et marécageuse, jointe à l’encombrement de son hôpital par des militaires atteints du typhus nosocomial, ne tarda pas à favoriser la propagation de la contagion, et elle fut bientôt transmise aux environs. Les prisonniers espagnols y contribuèrent encore, et le caractère contagieux de la maladie ne fut pas plus douteux, lorsqu’on vit les employés au service des hôpitaux et à celui du transport de ces militaires en être tous atteints.’ (France felt the effects (of the disease) all along the routes followed by the Spanish prisoners—from the Pyrenees to the environs of Paris, while England was infected by the remnants of its troops when they returned from France. The town of Dax, situated near the border between France and Spain, was one of the first places to experience the ravages of the epidemic diseases which always accompanied the armies. Its low, marshy situation, together with the fact that its hospital was overcrowded with soldiers infected with nosocomial typhus, greatly favoured the propagation of the contagion, which soon spread throughout the vicinity. The Spanish prisoners also helped to spread it, and the contagious character of the disease was no longer questionable when the attendants at the hospitals, as well as the men who had charge of transporting the sick, were seen to contract it.)

The Spanish prisoners were sent far into the interior, and caused outbreaks of pestilence wherever they went. In consequence of the strain and exertion involved in their transportation, and also of the inferior food, typhus fever soon became very widespread among them. Diseased and wounded men were always carried in the same wagons, while it was often necessary to remain for a considerable length of time in camps, where sick and healthy men lay side by side on straw; thus many died on the way. In order to prevent the disease from spreading to the civil population, it was arranged that the buildings designated for the prisoners should lie away from the town where the soldiers were quartered, or that the prisoners should be sheltered in barracks. All intercourse between the prisoners and the inhabitants was forbidden, and after their departure the straw used by them was burned, and the buildings they had occupied were fumigated.[^[103]]

Since, however, it finally became necessary to house the sick in hospitals, it was absolutely impossible to prevent the disease from spreading. The result was that the following places in Central France were attacked: Limoges, Guéret, Châteauroux, Issoudun, Moulins, Nevers, La Charité, and Bourges.[^[104]] As people everywhere were afraid of contracting the disease, the prisoners were transferred as soon as possible to near-by districts, and this merely helped to spread the disease. According to Boin, Bourges, in the year 1809, became the rendezvous of all Spanish prisoners, who were housed there in barracks and in public hospitals; of 653 prisoners of war received in the public hospitals, 103 died. In the city itself only a few cases of typhus fever were observed. The highly contagious nature of the disease was well known to Boin, who says:

‘Les dames religieuses de la Charité, chargées du service des salles, les élèves en chirurgie, les servans, les gardes de nuit, le casernier, les gendarmes qui escortaient les voitures remplies de prisonniers malades, le chapelain, le secrétaire du commissaire des guerres, les personnes que la charité évangélique a fait imprudemment entrer dans les salles, ont été frappés de la maladie. Tous ont couru des risques, quelques-uns ont succombé.’ (The nuns who had charge of the rooms (in the hospital) at La Charité, the medical students, the attendants, the night-watchmen, the porter, the gendarmes who escorted the carriages conveying sick prisoners, the chaplain, the secretary of the War Commissioner, and the persons who imprudently allowed a sense of duty and charity to induce them to enter the rooms—all contracted the disease. They all ran risks, and some of them died.) Nevertheless, Boin did not hold the disease in Bourges to be typhus fever, but a ‘fièvre maligne putride’; he also adds that he failed to observe petechiae in a single instance. The physicians sent by the Government, on the other hand, diagnosed the disease as ‘hospital fever’. Inasmuch as there is no doubt expressed anywhere else regarding the appearance of typhus fever among the Spanish prisoners (Ozanam speaks expressly of the appearance of petechiae on the second, third, or fourth day), it was undoubtedly that disease which broke out in Bourges.

Not only the French, but also the English troops were attacked by typhus fever in Spain and Portugal; they are said to have lost 24,930 men in consequence of diseases, and 8,889 men in consequence of battles and skirmishes. The disease was conveyed to England by returning soldiers, but was confined there to a few houses. After the battles of the year 1808, which went against the English, the badly infected English troops were transported on ships in stormy weather to Plymouth, where from January 24, 1808, to January 24, 1809, some 2,427 of them were received into the hospitals. Of that number 824 were suffering from typhus fever, and 1,503 from dysentery; all told, 405 died.[^[105]]

CHAPTER VI
THE EPIDEMICS OF TYPHUS FEVER IN CENTRAL EUROPE FOLLOWING UPON THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN AND DURING THE WARS OF LIBERATION (1812–14)

1. General Observations regarding Typhus Fever

Typhus fever, as a specific disease, was well known to the military physicians during the age of Napoleon, since, as set forth in the previous chapter, it regularly appeared during the numerous Napoleonic wars in the form of widespread epidemics. In France the simple word ‘typhus’ was often used to denote the disease, and the custom still prevails there. In Germany the disease was called infectious nerve fever, war plague, lazaret fever, &c.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was generally believed that great hardships, colds, lack of the necessaries of life, and the consequent consumption of spoiled foodstuffs give rise to fevers, and that these fevers, in accordance with the epidemic character of the year and of the season, and also in accordance with the severity of the hardships undergone, might develop into dysentery and typhus fever. At all events, even the eminent physicians of the day, men like Hildenbrand of Vienna[^[106]] and Hufeland of Berlin, who in the course of two decades had abundant opportunity to study the disease, assumed that it is possible for typhus fever to break out spontaneously. It was believed that this fever, originating spontaneously, gradually developed the power of infection. Hufeland’s position was self-contradictory, for he assumes that the disease can break out spontaneously and yet that it can be warded off by means of isolation.[^[107]] He says: ‘A proof of the fact that this disease can spread only through infection is offered by the stronghold of Küstrin, which, being closed up tightly during the entire year of 1813, was free from disease, whereas all the surrounding country, even the army of the besiegers, suffered terribly.’ Whereupon Hufeland immediately adds: ‘The war carried on among us and by us with such unheard-of exertion and hardship caused the disease to break out several times anew throughout our country, and hence it could but become general.’ That it is possible for typhus fever to break out spontaneously and subsequently spread by infection was everywhere believed, even by French physicians. It is hardly necessary to say, however, that the theory of the spontaneous origination of the disease does not accord with modern views. The severe hardships undergone, the hunger and cold, the effluvium of gangrenous wounds, the moral depression, and the many other bad effects which characterized this war more than any other, necessarily decreased the soldiers’ power of resistance and increased their susceptibility to infection. Incidentally, all sorts of telluric and meteorological phenomena, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, the great heat and dryness of the year 1811, the meteors of that year—all these things were at the time brought into causal connexion with the war pestilences of the years 1813–14.

‘Many people stated positively’, says Hufeland,[^[108]] ‘that they contracted the disease almost immediately after they had occupied small, narrow rooms in company with infected French soldiers, or after they had washed their clothes or waited upon them. This frequently happened in small houses that undertook, for a small profit, to shelter invalid soldiers quartered upon the wealthier citizens. Many asserted that they contracted the disease by passing the night in small inns in the towns and villages around Berlin, and on the roads from Königsberg, Danzig, and Frankfurt, and by sleeping on beds or straw which had shortly before been used by infected Frenchmen or Russians. A certain number of men contracted typhus fever by serving as attendants, in order to earn a little money, in the local French military hospital. In this way many of the servants and attendants employed there, as well as numerous surgeons and apothecaries, contracted the disease and subsequently infected the members of their families who brought them home and took care of them, and who, in turn, infected the other inhabitants of the house and of the neighbouring houses.’ Further on, Hufeland adds that only those inmates of the hospital contracted the disease who, as servants and attendants, had been in close and constant contact with the patients.

In the years 1813–14 a large number of physicians were carried away by typhus fever; it was estimated at that time that some 500 of them throughout Germany (excluding the surgeons) fell victims to the disease—in Silesia alone 63 physicians died, in Leipzig 17, in Württemberg 17, and in Baden 35.[^[109]]

Emphasis was always laid upon the fact that the clothes and other effects of people who had succumbed to typhus fever were highly infectious. The wide prevalence of the disease among the Jewish inhabitants of Vilna was attributed to ignorance or disregard of this fact; for when orders were issued to destroy such clothing, the Jews, out of sheer avarice, disobeyed them. The persons who acquired such effects in this cheap and illicit manner usually paid the penalty themselves; in addition, they did a great deal toward spreading the disease.

The military hospitals were also largely responsible for the dissemination of typhus fever; Parenteau-Desgranges[^[110]] called them outright ‘centres de contagion’. The cities in which military hospitals were erected were always severely attacked by the disease. It was generally complained, even by the French physicians, that the French hospitals were poorly arranged and badly managed—even simple cleanliness and competent attendants were lacking. Patients suffering from infectious disease were placed together with others suffering from some mild form of sickness or from a wound, thus giving the infection the best conceivable chance to spread. Let us read how a French physician describes the conditions in Verdun during the severe epidemic of typhus fever that raged there in the years 1792–5:[^[111]]

‘The disease spread with no less severity from other sources of infection, such as the temporary hospitals established in the Convent of Canons of Saint Nicholas, in the Monastery of Saint Vannes, and in the barracks. The unfortunate patients, thrown in heaps on the damp stone and earth floors, scarcely having under them a few mats, or perhaps some dirty straw, filthy with their excrement, three of them often sharing a single blanket of coarse wool, presented the most dismal picture one could possibly imagine. At least three-quarters of the patients died. They were buried in huge ditches dug in the vicinity of the ramparts, and in the gardens surrounding the abbeys of Saint Vannes and of Saint Nicholas.’

The German Central Hospital Management, which was founded in the latter part of November 1813, and from which Bavaria and Württemberg held aloof, sought to introduce certain improvements into the military lazaret system, but it was unable to accomplish a great deal, owing to the lack of hospitals, physicians, and all the means necessary for the treatment of sick and injured people.

Very dangerous for the dissemination of the disease was the belief that the placing of typhus fever patients together with other invalids did no harm, but rather that the congregating of numerous typhus fever patients by themselves caused the contagion to develop with especial severity. The Saxon staff surgeon Neumann, for example, writes in regard to this question:[^[112]] ‘Anybody who lies in a bed to which the poison is still clinging will without fail contract the disease; on the other hand, I have often seen people suffering from other forms of sickness lie alongside of typhus-fever patients and escape infection, provided they had nothing in common, did not touch one another, or make use of one another’s linen. Hence I draw the conclusion that the poison of typhus fever, like the poison of bubonic plague and small-pox, cannot enter the system from a distance, not even from a very short distance, and can be communicated only by close and direct contact. This seems to contradict our experience that the intensity of the poison is greatly increased when several patients lie side by side. Accordingly, I warn all military physicians not to congregate all their typhus fever patients in a single room by themselves; for few would come forth from such a room alive, while the poisoned atmosphere of the room would pervade the entire lazaret, infect the physicians and attendants, and finally spread throughout the immediate neighbourhood. People think that they can prevent the disease from spreading by congregating and isolating the patients, but as a matter of fact this has the opposite effect. This is clear when we consider that the mere being together of unhealthy people causes the poison to develop, and that not only the people themselves, but also the very exhalations from their bodies, are sufficient to spread the infection. For example, if a considerable quantity of dirty clothes or linen is allowed to accumulate in a pile, and after a short time is picked up, the usual result is that the people who do the work experience a severe attack of typhus fever.’

Very often conditions made segregation impossible, even when it was desired, or else the French generals refused to permit it. Consequently, infection was so frequent in the hospitals that the disease at a very early date acquired the name ‘hôpital fever’ (fièvre d’hôpital).

The fact that the weather conditions exerted some influence was not to be overlooked; in the year 1813, when the warm weather began, the disease abated a little, whereas in the year 1814 it ceased altogether at the beginning of the warm weather. The reason for this was that the cold weather forced people to huddle together in houses, and that bathing and washing, particularly among the soldiers and poor people, was less frequently and profusely indulged in; another reason was that the heavier clothing worn in winter facilitated the breeding of vermin.

Failure to take measures of precaution, if the disease once broke out in a neighbouring place, also contributed greatly toward the dissemination of it. ‘If typhus fever was present in any military halting-place, frequently nothing was done to prevent it from infecting the next place, where it had not yet made its appearance; or, if anything was done, it was often merely to issue an order which was not complied with.’[^[113]] At the same time, to be sure, one must take into account the fact that sheer ignorance rendered useful measures impossible. If this ignorance prevailed in the highest places, nothing better was to be expected of the small cities and towns.

That the ‘contagious typhus’ prevalent during the Napoleonic wars was the same disease which we call typhus fever is very certain. The physicians of the middle of the nineteenth century, when views of typhus and typhoid fever had cleared up somewhat, have confirmed this fact.[^[114]] The descriptions of the disease are almost invariably reproductions of the same picture, the sole difference being that it was much more severe and fatal among the half-starved soldiers on their return from Russia, and among soldiers packed together in strongholds, than it was among people who were less afflicted by the war and who lived at a distance from the military routes.

As a rule, the disease broke out eight or nine days after infection. It began with a general indisposition, which lasted several days, or, if this indisposition failed to appear, with a chill, great languor, loss of appetite, and weakness in the limbs; frequently brain disorders also manifested themselves, at first in the form of a mild stupefaction, singing in the ears, violent headache, somnolence, or wild delirium. The exanthema usually appeared between the fourth and the seventh day. Hufeland describes it as ‘an outbreak of red spots, covering most of the body; they were mostly of a violet tinge, but were not sharply defined, and often gradually merged into the colour of the rest of the skin’. It was frequently asserted that the petechiae now and then failed to appear at all, even in severe cases. Jörg says expressly:[^[115]] ‘Sometimes they broke out sparsely, one here and one there, and in such cases it was easy to overlook them.’ After the disease had progressed for two or three weeks the patient’s temperature went down, and there were few fatalities after the twenty-first day. Convalescence was of short duration, provided the outbreak had not been preceded by exhaustion due to hardships. In regard to abdominal and intestinal symptoms, great dissimilarity was observed; Hufeland states that when there were no complications, an autopsy revealed not the slightest change in the intestinal organs, and Horn says that ‘the colour of the intestines was often almost natural.’ The severity of the disease varied greatly; it was particularly fatal among the soldiers homeward-bound from Russia, more than half of whom died. It is frequently asserted that the majority of those who were thus directly infected succumbed to the disease, and that it carried away some ten per cent of the civil inhabitants who contracted it.

Of course it would be a mistake to say that all the epidemics of that time were epidemics of typhus fever; undoubtedly typhoid fever carried away large numbers of people, since it is to be assumed that the disease was endemic in many cities. But owing to the inaccuracy of the descriptions and the lack of autopsies, it is usually impossible to distinguish the diseases with certainty. Even when the results of autopsies were made known, the condition of the intestines was often described so inaccurately that we cannot even make out whether or not there were intestinal ulcers, which are the most important pathological-anatomical symptoms of typhoid fever. But the initial chill, the short duration of the disease (three weeks), the presence of petechiae, the rapid fall of temperature, and the shorter convalescence, all of which are ever-recurring symptoms, enable us to distinguish the epidemic of the years 1812–14 with certainty from typhoid fever.

Through the influence of the works of Hildenbrand and Hufeland the larger part of the medical world of that time came to look upon contagious typhus as a specific disease; other views, however, were vigorously supported, for example, by Markus of Bamberg, who held it to be an inflammation of the brain. The difference of opinion regarding the character of the disease was important, not only theoretically, but also practically, in view of the therapeutic practice of the time; for those who regarded the disease as an inflammation of the brain had naturally, in accordance with the methods then in vogue, to resort to bleeding. But all unprejudiced observers came to the conclusion that bleeding was harmful, and that it killed all the patients upon whom it was frequently practised. Very soon the beneficial influence of fresh air and cold came to be recognized, and the latter was often provided by means of cold-water baths and douches. ‘It was a universally confirmed principle, derived from experience, that the warmer the patients were kept, the more severe was the disease, and the colder they were kept, the milder the disease.’ How beneficial fresh air was for the patients was shown by the fact that those who were kept out in the open air withstood the disease much more easily than those who were kept shut up in houses and hospitals, and that it was much less dangerous to transport patients from place to place in the open air, than to keep them shut up in overcrowded hospitals. ‘Thousands of patients’, says H. Häser,[^[116]] ‘survived even the most severe forms of the disease without human help of any kind. Many, especially physicians, attributed their recovery to the fact that for weeks at a time they were constantly being transported in the cold winter from one halting-place to another, and were not compelled to lie in overcrowded hospitals, where typhus fever and dysentery raged most terribly.’

In dealing with the epidemic of typhus fever of the years 1812–14 we have a double epidemic to consider. The one was disseminated directly by the returning remnants of the ‘Grand Army’, and after causing terrible devastation in East Prussia it spread, in a relatively milder form, to other parts of Germany. The other epidemic broke out during the great battles in Saxony, which lasted several months, and from there spread virulently over a large part of Germany. In order to avoid repetition, the following account will treat of the dissemination of the two epidemics jointly.

2. The Russian Campaign and Typhus Fever in Russia[^[117]]

Napoleon began to make preparations for his Russian campaign as early as the year 1811; troops were assembled in Westphalia, Hamburg, Saxony, Holland, on the Rhine, and near Verona, and several hospitals were founded, as in Danzig. An army of 550,000 men was organized to take part in the expedition into Russia; it consisted of Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and Poles. How this army was destroyed on its march to and from Moscow, and in what a pitiable condition the remnants of it arrived in Germany, is well known. Since it is our purpose to point out here how that severe epidemic of typhus fever spread abroad from those remnants, we can deal but briefly with the prevalence of the disease in the army itself.

In consequence of the great heat, of the lack of drinking-water and good food, and of the continual bivouacking (the peasants burned and deserted all the villages along the way), the army suffered greatly even on the march to Moscow. After crossing the Polish border the soldiers were severely attacked by dysentery and diarrhoea; Kerckhoffs estimates that no less than 80,000 men were suffering from dysentery at the beginning of August 1812. Typhus fever broke out, very sparsely, to be sure, as early as the latter part of July, when the army arrived at Vilna; there were also cases in the hospitals at Minsk, Vilkomir, Globokie, and Mittau, but the disease was not yet so infectious as it proved to be later. After the battle of Smolensk (August 14–18) large numbers of wounded soldiers (between 6,000 and 10,000 according to various reports) were brought to that city, and from that time on, typhus fever and other diseases (hospital fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, gastric fever, &c.) continued to spread throughout the army. On September 14, Moscow was entered, and on September 15 the city was in flames. The army then had peace until October 19, when the return march began. During their sojourn in Moscow the soldiers were very improperly nourished, eating almost nothing but salted meat and fish, and drinking large quantities of wine and spirits. According to Lemazurier, the number of sick and wounded soldiers in Moscow was 15,000. The most common disease even in Moscow was typhus fever; according to Scheerer, when Napoleon’s army withdrew from the city it left behind several thousand typhus-fever patients, almost all of whom died—only the stronger patients were taken along on wagons.

The horrors of the return march are well known. Thousands froze to death in the extreme cold of November, horse-meat and melted snow were the sole means of nourishment, and any soldier who lay down was irretrievably lost. Between Moscow and Smolensk, which was reached on November 9, one-half of the soldiers who had started out from Moscow died; the number of sick soldiers was enormous, and typhus fever raged more and more extensively. On December 8 Vilna was reached, but there the army was not given a moment’s rest; two days later the Russians advanced and captured 30,000 of Napoleon’s soldiers who could go no further.

In pursuing the French army the Russians also suffered severely from diseases; according to Ebstein,[^[118]] between October 20 and December 14, 1812, they lost 61,964 men, most of whom died of ‘nerve fever’ (typhus fever).

In Vilna, which was greatly overcrowded, typhus fever raged furiously. The large number of sick and exhausted soldiers that were left behind, owing to the extreme cold (the thermometer went down as low as –28° Réaumur) sought shelter, partly in private houses, and partly in hospitals. The latter, for the first few days after the arrival of the Russians, were in a terrible condition; sick men and dead men were packed together in the cold, unheated rooms, the former lying on rotten straw, completely deserted, and without care or nourishment. The corridors and courts were filled with dead bodies and with refuse of all kinds, while in the rooms themselves there was no less filth, since nobody removed the excrements. ‘The courts and corridors of the hospitals’, says Gasc, an eye-witness,[^[119]] ‘were so covered with dead bodies that it was necessary to walk over heaps of them in order to enter the rooms.’

Not until after the Emperor of Russia arrived in Vilna was some semblance of order restored. But it was then too late; almost all the patients in the hospitals were infected with typhus fever, and according to Gasc and Lemazurier the great majority of the 30,000 French prisoners died. For owing to the long series of extreme hardships which the soldiers had undergone, the disease broke out in its most severe form, causing wild delirium, very large petechiae, abscesses, and gangrene. Many patients succumbed within twenty-four hours, and recovery was very slow for those who survived the attack.

In a short time the disease spread throughout the city, not so much because the soldiers were quartered in private houses, as because the Jews got possession of the clothes of the dead. Of some 30,000 Jewish inhabitants no less than 8,000 died. In February and March all classes of society, even the wealthiest people, were attacked. The disease also spread to the surrounding country; Lemazurier says that between the middle of 1812 and the beginning of 1813 some 55,000 bodies were buried in Vilna and vicinity, and that the estimates made in Wittepsk, Smolensk, and Moscow were in proportion. The pestilence spread southward and eastward, and according to Faure, in February 1813 thousands of French prisoners died in the overcrowded hospitals in Orel. The same writer says that all of the French soldiers who fell into the hands of the Russians succumbed to typhus fever.[^[120]] We may safely assume that the civil inhabitants of all places in that part of the country were also attacked, even though we have no figures or statistics to confirm the assumption.

The pestilence also raged extensively in the region of the Baltic Sea; St. Petersburg was severely attacked by it. According to Parrot,[^[121]] in the last months of the year 1812 there were a great many cases of ‘nerve fever’ in Dorpat; in Riga the military hospitals were overcrowded, and out of a population of 36,000 and a garrison of 20,000 there were 5,000 sick. The mortality in the hospitals was very high, since, on account of the extreme cold, two-thirds of the small windows were covered with boards and hay.

Regarding conditions in Warsaw we have more detailed information. According to Wolf,[^[122]] two distinct epidemics raged there after the end of December 1812; the one was an epidemic of typhus fever (probably typhoid) and appeared only among the soldiers; the other was an epidemic of typhus fever, which did not attain to epidemic dimensions until January 1813, although a few isolated cases had been observed in Warsaw in the last months of the year 1812. ‘This disease was almost invariably accompanied by a spotted exanthema, which, if the disease was at first rather difficult to diagnose, often gave the first clue. In the case of many people the eruption was so severe and so general, appearing even on the face, that it resembled measles.’ The comparison with measles was also drawn by other observers. Typhus fever was conveyed to Warsaw by the Austrian auxiliary corps, and it quickly spread to the French hospitals, which were in a wretched condition. Later the Russian army also brought typhus fever to the city. A great many civilians in Warsaw contracted the disease; according to Wolf, the epidemic reached its climax in February, and lasted until the end of the year 1813. The lower classes suffered more than the upper classes from the disease, which, moreover, seems to have raged much more furiously in the vicinity of Warsaw than in the city itself.

3. The Appearance of Typhus Fever in North and Central Germany

On the return march from Moscow to Vilna the remnants of the army had all taken the same route; for, though all bonds of discipline were loosened as far back as Smolensk, nevertheless the instinct of self-preservation kept all the soldiers from abandoning the common line of march. This was also the case during the march from Vilna to the Niemen, where the extreme cold caused untold suffering. After crossing the river, however, the few unfortunate soldiers who had survived the awful misery of the march, hungry, clothed in rags, with torn shoes, alive with vermin, with frozen and gangrenous limbs, scattered in all directions, some going home, and others to strongholds that were in the hands of the French. Thus typhus fever, with which all parts of the army were infected, was spread in a comparatively short time over a large part of Germany.

At first the eastern provinces of Prussia, through which these remnants of the army passed, were attacked by the pestilence; owing to the fact that so many were infected, measures of precaution were everywhere futile. ‘Adynamic fever’, says Kerckhoffs,[^[123]] ‘spread also among the civilians, who were not only afflicted by the terrible scourge of our passing armies, but also became the victims of a murderous contagion. It was a fatal present which we gave them, and which caused such a high mortality among the inhabitants of the country through which we passed. Wherever we went, the inhabitants were filled with terror and refused to quarter the soldiers.’ In the more distant parts of Germany, in the western provinces of Prussia, in Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg, where people had perceived the danger, it was easier, in the first months of 1813, to guard against the dissemination of typhus fever, since the number of returning soldiers was small and it was accordingly feasible to enforce orders regarding quarantine. With the approach of spring the disease began to abate a little even in the north and east; in the month of April it had almost entirely disappeared from the French troops there, while in May and June the condition of health among them, according to Kerckhoffs, was very good. But in July typhus fever broke out again, and since the Russian army was also infected with it, the disease became uncommonly widespread throughout Saxony and Silesia during the months of fighting that ensued. After the battle of Leipzig, when southern and western Germany were overrun by French fugitives and prisoners, typhus fever once more broke out in that part of the country with greater severity than ever before; even in the province of Brandenburg and in the adjacent regions the pestilence raged, having been borne thither by French prisoners.

In Lithuania, and East and West Prussia, typhus fever raged extensively in the winter of 1812–13. According to H. A. Göden,[^[124]] who had charge of a large military lazaret in Gumbinnen, the epidemic spread continuously from the border of Russia to Berlin. ‘It appeared most virulently’, he says, ‘in the cities of Gumbinnen, Insterburg, Tilsit, Königsberg, Elbing, Marienwerder, Konitz, and Landsberg; it followed along the military roads, and broke out most severely in the halting-places and in those cities where French military lazarets were established.’ In Gumbinnen typhus fever broke out suddenly in the latter part of November, immediately after the arrival of the fugitives, and spread rapidly. At first it appeared in houses where officers and soldiers were quartered; as a rule, several members of a family contracted the disease simultaneously, and only rarely was one member spared. The pestilence raged most furiously in the months of January and February; the town had some 6,000 inhabitants, and frequently 20, 30, or 40 people, including entire families, died in a single day. In the military lazarets the mortality was considerably higher. In March the pestilence began to abate, and in May it disappeared altogether.

In Königsberg the pestilence began in the month of December 1812 and came to an end in May 1813; excluding the soldiers who died in the military lazarets, the following deaths were recorded there:

In the year 1812 there were 2,648 deaths in Königsberg, whereas in the following year there were 4,403. In the first part of January, when the city was evacuated by the French, 10,000 people, according to Stricker, were left behind. The entire province of East Prussia, according to Gurlt, lost 20,000 inhabitants by typhus fever.[^[125]]

Danzig, which was besieged by the Russians from January 11 to November 29, 1813, suffered terribly. A French army of 35,900 men, under General Rapp, was in the city, and during the siege it was exposed to all sorts of privations as well as to extreme cold. As early as February typhus fever had become very widespread; from January to May, 11,400 soldiers died in the hospitals (4,000 in March alone), while 5,592 inhabitants succumbed to the disease in the course of the entire year.[^[126]]

Silesia was hit extremely hard. The pestilence was conveyed there in the months of October, November, and December 1812 by transports of Russian prisoners, and it appeared in Trebnitz, Striegau, Krottkau, Friedenwalde, Trachenberg, Breslau, Parchwitz, Quaritz, &c. The officers on duty, the persons who lifted the patients from the wagons, the physicians, and the sick-attendants were always the first to be infected.[^[127]] With the opening of spring the disease disappeared, but broke out anew after the battle on the Katzbach. In Breslau the disease appeared in a very virulent form, since the infected soldiers were housed there in overcrowded lazarets, which in the month of November took in some 6,300 patients daily; numerous physicians (statements vary between 16 and 22) also succumbed to typhus fever. Among the civil inhabitants, to be sure, the disease did not become very widespread; out of a population of 62,789, only 3,055 died in the year 1812, 3,095 in the year 1813, and 3,301 in the year 1814. From the middle of September 1813 to February 1814, 478 civilians and some 1,800 soldiers succumbed in Breslau to typhus fever; the total number of soldiers that died between the middle of September and the beginning of March was 3,400.[^[128]] In the governmental district of Liegnitz, having a population of 600,000, according to Kausch[^[129]] only 13 physicians (excluding the surgeons) died. The disease was borne by transports of infected soldiers into other parts of Silesia, and at the end of the year 1813 all the military lazarets in Silesia were infected. In Waldenburg and vicinity (Obersalzbrunn, &c.) typhus fever broke out after the soldiers had marched through on October 20 and November 25, 1813, and seventeen days later the disease was very widespread, all the members of many families having contracted it. In Bunzlau typhus fever raged with unusual fury; in the military lazaret 12,000 men are said to have died between June 1813 and March 1814.

Presently typhus fever appeared, with the arrival of the remnants of the Grand Army, in regions further away from the Russian border. Häser[^[130]] describes the manner in which the disease spread, always along military roads, as follows:

‘French soldiers returning from Russia’, he says, ‘spread the contagion of various diseases over a large part of Central Europe. Almost naked, or clothed in torn and half-burned rags, without shoes, their feet covered with straw, and their frozen limbs covered with festering sores, they marched through Poland and Germany. Typhus fever and other diseases associated with it marked their course. The inhabitants of the country were forced to house the sick; but teamsters also conveyed the infection to villages which the soldiers did not visit. The disease raged most furiously in the hospitals, which scarcely anywhere were able to meet even the most modest demands made upon them.’

Regarding the appearance of typhus fever in Berlin we are informed by Hufeland and Horn.[^[131]] First to occur there (in the months of February and March 1813) were numerous cases of ‘nervous fever’, which was doubtless typhoid fever. Still it is likely that cases of typhus fever also occurred at that time, for Horn, in writing about ‘nervous fevers’ in the Charité, describes the exanthema with the same words that Hufeland uses in reference to later cases. Among these patients there were already some who had returned from Russia.[^[132]] At all events, in the first part of March 1813 there occurred cases of contagious typhus, which was brought to Berlin by French, and later by Russian soldiers; the observed ways of infection, regarding which Hufeland informs us, are mentioned above. In the middle of April there were 246 typhus-fever patients in the Charité. In order to prevent the disease from spreading in this hospital, Hufeland adopted strict measures of precaution. The patients were all carefully isolated on the second floor, which was shut off by means of a grating. The newly-arrived patients were supplied with clean, fresh linen, their clothing was disinfected for several days in hydrochloric acid, and then washed in boiling water containing lye, while objects of no value were burned. The sick-rooms were constantly ventilated by leaving the windows open, and were thoroughly cleaned every day. The physicians, surgeons, and attendants, before they entered the sick-rooms, had to put on black mantles of glazed linen, and on leaving the rooms they had to wash their hands and faces in cold water and rinse out their mouths. In this way the disease was prevented from spreading in the hospital itself.

After the battle of Leipzig typhus fever broke out anew in Berlin; according to Horn, 144 cases of ‘nerve fever’ were received into the Charité in January 1814, 92 in February, 54 in March, 14 in April, 8 in May, and none in June. Regarding the total mortality in the epidemic of typhus fever in Berlin, which in the year 1813 had about 155,000 inhabitants, the following table, compiled by Gurlt,[^[133]] gives us information; there died in: