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]
_Year._ _Deaths in Hospital._ _Deaths in City._
1794 392 812
1795 477 911
1796 761 1,000
1797 1,038 900
1798 549 803
1799 489 809
1800 705 1,100
1801 929 1,200
1802 519 1,006
1803 404 1,036
1804 418 1,087
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:
July (1805) 3,965
August 3,945
September 4,204
October 4,735
November 4,410
December 4,501
January (1806) 16,399
February 14,588
March 14,140
May 9,087
June 6,292
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:
1805 1,189
1806 1,840
1807 1,165
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]