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.