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:

December (1812) 430

January (1813) 581

February 802

March 622

April 608

May 327

June 196

July 178

August 157

September 160

October 151

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:

1812. 1813. 1814.

_Total _Total _From _Total _From

deaths._ deaths._ Typhus._ deaths._ Typhus._

January 422 500 31 680 170

February 457 544 57 596 118

March 444 740 233 781 85

April 476 719 227 653 55

May 584 752 184 443 28

June 396 518 85 434 19

July 417 460 29 541 14

August 338 551 20 454 5

September 370 467 22 577 16

October 425 621 34 430 13

November 356 555 105 412 11

December 571 585 157 565 11

————— ————— ————— ————— ———

Total 5,256 7,012 1,184 6,566 545

Typhus fever appeared throughout the entire province of Brandenburg.

Maier[134] gives us some information regarding the city of Brandenburg,

where ‘infectious nerve-fever’ disappeared in the latter part of May

1813, and where, after the battle of Leipzig, it again broke out, but

did not become very widespread. On October 27 prisoners from Baden and

Hesse were quartered there; they remained until October 31 and then went

on to Ruppin. Among them were some convalescents from a military lazaret

in Saxony, who infected the occupants of all the houses in which the

prisoners were quartered. Between November 5 and December 6 there were

38 ‘nerve-fever’ patients in the Altstadt and 7 in the Neustadt, a small

number of whom died. Typhus fever raged very furiously in Jüterbog after

the battle of Dennewitz, carrying away entire families.

After his defeat in Russia, Napoleon had quickly returned to France, and

there, by means of new conscriptions, had in a short time assembled an

army of very young men, who had never done military service and were

therefore not accustomed to the hardships of war and, in particular,

were much more susceptible to infectious diseases than the troops that

had served under him before. In April, when the army of the Allies had

arrived at the Elbe, Napoleon with his newly-gathered army left the

Rhine and marched to Saxony, which from then until autumn was the main

scene of the war. Since the Russian army was still infected with typhus

fever, contracted in the winter campaign, and since, furthermore,

isolated cases of the disease were still occurring among the remnants of

the French troops that had returned from Russia, the inevitable result

was that Saxony was not only completely impoverished by the protracted

war, but was also terribly afflicted by war pestilences.

In Saxony typhus fever had already become very widespread in the first

few months of 1813; all the places through which the military transports

passed were attacked, as Sorau, Guben, Lübben, Görlitz, Leipzig, and

Weissenberg; while places in which military hospitals were erected fared

even worse, as Schneeberg, Zwickau, Chemnitz, Freiberg, and

Augustusburg. The severe epidemic in Annaberg (in the Saxon Erzgebirge),

lasting from March to May 1813, has been described by Neuhof.[135] In

March a Saxon field-hospital was established there, and presently

everybody who came in contact with the hospital contracted typhus fever.

In neighbouring Thum, where the patients passed only one night, many

citizens succumbed to the disease.

Dresden, in the first few months of the year 1813, was not attacked by

the disease, notwithstanding the fact that soldiers and officers

returning from Russia were taken sick and died there; only in rare

instances were citizens, in whose homes officers had been quartered,

attacked, and the disease did not rage at all extensively.[136] On the

other hand, typhus fever raged furiously in Dresden after Napoleon’s

successful battle at Bautzen (May 20 and 21, 1813), when large numbers

of wounded soldiers were brought to Dresden and placed in lazarets,

which soon became greatly overcrowded. The less-severely wounded were

housed in the homes of citizens, who were compelled to receive them and

suffered terribly in consequence of it. The result was that typhus fever

spread from the soldiers to the civilians. After the battle of Dresden

(August 26, 27), from which Napoleon again emerged victorious, but

especially during the short siege of Dresden (from the middle of October

to November 11), the epidemic increased in both extent and fury. The

increased mortality is shown by the following table, which includes only

the residents:

January 184

February 199

March 188

April 194

May 289

June 257

July 264

August 474

September 882

October 659

November 960

December 944

According to Fischer, one person out of every ten that contracted the

disease died, while the mortality in the French military hospitals was

incredibly high. In the course of the year 1813 no less than 21,090

soldiers died in Dresden, while in the same year 5,194 residents died;

3,273 civilians died in the year 1814, and 1,785 in the year 1815. The

average number of deaths per annum among the civil inhabitants was

2,304.

Regarding the terrible conditions in Dresden at that time, a pastor

informs us in a letter:[137]

It was a gruesome sight to see the wagons full of naked corpses,

thrown together in the most horrible positions, drive away from the

hospitals and set out for their destination. Many bodies are said to

have been cast into the Elbe. The terrible days began about the

middle of May, when many house-owners were obliged to quarter as

many as two, three, and even four hundred men. Presently persons

suffering from wounds, scurvy, and infectious disease began to

arrive from Bautzen, some straggling along piteously on foot, others

being rolled along in ghastly groups on pushcarts. This

disease-spreading mass was now housed in the homes of citizens,

since the twenty-five hospitals were no longer able to accommodate

them. The houses, yards, streets, and public squares were full of

dirt and refuse. Dearth of food, resulting from the breakdown of

means of supply, added to the general misery. Entire families were

wiped out, and many houses are still standing empty (1814). Wagons

bearing the dead clattered on all the streets, and there were few

inhabitants who did not wear some outward sign of mourning for lost

relatives.

Leipzig suffered even greater hardships. The pestilence was conveyed

thither by French soldiers in February 1813, and on the 27th of that

month there were thirty-eight fever patients in the Jacobsspital. In the

summer of 1813, when the war was going on in Saxony, the disease raged

there furiously. After the battle of Dresden a large percentage of the

wounded were brought to Leipzig, and more than 20,000 sick and wounded

soldiers were kept there for several months. As usual, typhus fever

broke out in the city in consequence of it, and carried away large

numbers of soldiers and citizens. After the battle of Leipzig upwards of

30,000 wounded soldiers, mostly Frenchmen, were housed in the city.

‘Virulent nerve-fever,’ says Beitzke,[138] ‘which had been prevalent in

the city for some time, now broke out with tenfold severity, not only in

the city itself, but also in the surrounding country, and carried away

large numbers of people. The arrival of the cold weather, which helped

to check the disease, was under these circumstances a great blessing.’

In the year 1813 some 80,000 French soldiers, according to the hospital

lists, succumbed to wounds, war-typhus, and other diseases, in Leipzig.

From February 1813 to January 1814, seventeen young physicians died

there of typhus fever. The number of civilians buried in Leipzig in the

year 1813 was 3,499, in the year 1814 it was 2,022; the average number

of interments in the years 1810–12 was 1,443, and in the years 1815–17

it was 1,187. The number buried (including the still-births, but not the

soldiers) was, by months:[139]

1813. 1814.

January 98 450

February 121 276

March 206 244

April 202 152

May 178 159

June 200 120

July 290 85

August 189 107

September 176 118

October 311 111

November 743 96

December 785 104

Most of those carried away were adults; the following table indicates

the relation between the age of the victims and the mortality:

_Years of Age._ 1812. 1813. 1814.

1 356 517 456

1–10 161 310 305

10–20 29 174 76

20–30 91 362 157

30–40 87 492 173

40–50 104 559 207

50–60 126 409 208

60–70 124 358 234

Over 70 119 256 155

In reference to the year 1813, in which typhus fever caused the greatest

devastation in Leipzig, we see how the mortality among persons between

the ages of ten and sixty increased between fourfold and fivefold, while

among very young children and very old men, it increased by at most one

hundred per cent. In the year 1813 more men than women died (1,900 men

and 1,599 women), whereas in the following year the reverse was the case

(1,009 men and 1,013 women).

Typhus fever spread throughout all Saxony. In Plauen, which was at that

time a city of 6,800 inhabitants, the following number of deaths,

according to Flinzer,[140] were due to typhus fever: 4 in 1812, 32 in

1813, 59 in 1814, and 5 in 1815. These figures do not include the

foreign soldiers that died. According to Flinzer, the specific disease

before the year 1819 was usually typhus fever. In the year 1814 the

total number of deaths in Plauen increased to 440.

Numerous sick, wounded, and captive soldiers were quartered in Zwickau

after the battle of Leipzig. There and in the surrounding villages, in

consequence of the erection of a hospital, typhus fever had already

appeared in September, but in Zwickau itself, thanks to timely measures

of precaution, it gained no headway. In the year 1812 only 183 civilians

died there, 376 in the year 1813, and 260 in the year 1814; 380 soldiers

died there in 1813, and 14 in the year 1814.[141]

The pestilences spread all over the country, even into the most remote

corners of the Saxon Erzgebirge; Annaberg and the neighbouring towns of

Marienberg, Weipert, and Geyer were again attacked, although less

severely, according to Neuhof, than in the spring. In March the disease

disappeared entirely.

The Saxon strongholds along the Elbe fared worst of all; regarding the

terrible devastation caused by typhus fever in Torgau we shall have

something to say in the tenth chapter. Magdeburg and Merseburg were also

severely attacked; this is evident from the fact that one-half of the

physicians in Magdeburg (nine in number) succumbed, according to Roloff,

to hospital fever.[142] In Wittenberg, whither typhus fever was borne in

February 1813 by infected French soldiers, and where it had subsequently

disappeared, the mortality was very high during the siege, which lasted

from October 28, 1813, to January 14, 1814; of 6,000 or 7,000

inhabitants, upwards of 4,000 had left the city before the siege began.

In the course of seven months (July 1813 to January 1814) 590 people

died there, whereas the average number of deaths had been only 300 per

annum. When the city was captured by the Prussians the death-rate

increased; no less than 331 persons died between January 14 and April

14, 1814.[143]

After the battle of Leipzig the defeated army marched back through

Weissenfels, Naumburg, Weimar, and Erfurt to the Main. There was now no

active effort made to supply food to the army, which still numbered some

100,000 men; the soldiers had to eat whatever they could pick up along

the way. ‘Extreme misery and exhaustion’, says Beitzke,[144] ‘led to

great excesses; the places along the route were made to suffer, and

worst of all, the region through which the French army hurried back was

generally infected with the germ of typhus fever.’ ‘The route of the

army, clear to Mayence,’ says Giraud,[145] ‘was again strewn with

corpses and débris.’

In Weissenfels some 3,000 soldiers are said to have died in the

hospitals, and also 600 civilians, within a year. In Altenburg, which

had suffered from typhus fever in the spring of 1813, 1,650 men and 55

officers died between October 2 and December 1 of that year. In

Eisenberg (in Saxe-Altenburg), according to Greiner,[146] a lazaret was

established in the fall of 1813, but there were but few cases of typhus

fever transmitted to citizens owing to the adoption of all measures of

precaution. On the other hand, the disease was conveyed to numerous

near-by villages, in which large numbers of sick and convalescent

soldiers were quartered. ‘The Cossacks did the most toward spreading the

disease, for wherever any of them were quartered, one could count with

certainty upon an early outbreak of nerve-fever.’ In November 1813, a

severe epidemic of typhus fever broke out in Gera, and the mortality in

four months was seven times as high as usual. In Zeulenroda (south of

Gera) the pestilence was not very severe; it was brought there by sick

and convalescent soldiers, who were quartered in the houses.[147] Jena,

on the other hand, was very severely attacked: the epidemic began in

November 1813, and lasted until March 1814.[148] According to Gurlt, the

usual number of deaths in normal years in the districts of Weimar and

Jena was from 1,750 to 1,850; but in the year 1813 no less than 3,948

people died there, and in 1814 there were 3,363 deaths.

After the battle of Lützen (May 2, 1813) some 8,000 wounded French and

Prussian soldiers came to Erfurt, necessitating the immediate erection

of lazarets. After the battles in August, when the scene of the war

moved closer to Erfurt, the misery in the city was greatly increased,

resulting in a rapid dissemination of typhus fever. In the latter part

of August, when 9,000 sick and convalescent soldiers arrived in the

city, the citizens were obliged to quarter them; the number of soldiers

that succumbed to typhus fever was appalling, while as many as 17

civilians often died in a single day; in the week before the battle of

Leipzig 504 soldiers died in the hospitals. On October 20–23 the French

lazarets were cleaned out as thoroughly as possible. During the siege,

which began on October 25 and lasted seventy-three days, the misery was

extreme, and typhus fever raged more and more furiously. From November 1

to November 17 some 400 civilians died, while no less than 1,472

soldiers died in the military hospitals; 143 soldiers died on December 9

and 10. The houses of a few citizens were rendered absolutely

tenantless. In the year 1813 Erfurt lost 1,585 citizens, as compared

with an average of 554 for the years 1811–12; the number of deaths in

the year 1814 was 1,121. Typhus fever also raged so furiously among the

Prussian besiegers, that the lazarets were soon overcrowded, and it was

necessary to house the troops in other places.[149]

In Fulda, which was forced to take in thousands of sick soldiers, typhus

fever soon began to spread rapidly, as it also did in the country

surrounding the city. In Giessen, where a Russian field-lazaret for

1,800–2,000 men was erected, the epidemic soon spread to the civil

inhabitants.

At Hanau the French retreat was opposed by General Wrede with an army of

50,000 Bavarians and Austrians, a much smaller number than the French

had. The two days of fighting that ensued (October 30 and 31, 1813)

caused the pestilence to develop murderously. Kopp has given us a good

description of this epidemic in Hanau.[150] Since the beginning of the

war the city had always had a military hospital, which lay outside the

city. During the battles in Saxony the number of sick and wounded

increased, so that it was necessary to erect a second lazaret within the

city. Many sick-attendants and sub-surgeons contracted typhus fever,

which was prevalent in the hospitals, and several cases also occurred in

the city, especially among people who quartered soldiers for money in

their homes; many soldiers were thus crowded together in small rooms,

and among them were a great many convalescents from Saxon hospitals. The

infectious nature of the disease and its consequent dangerousness was

shown by the fact that as a rule entire families gradually contracted

it, although the epidemic was confined to individual houses. The

engagement at Hanau, from which the French emerged victorious, resulted

in the unfortunate city being stormed and plundered. ‘Even while the

battle was going on,’ says Kopp, ‘a corps of the French army scattered

throughout Hanau. This corps had brought with it from Saxony the germ of

infection; for the region around Dresden could be looked upon as the

great breeding-place where, in view of the enormous assemblage of people

representing so many nations, and owing to the concurrence of so many

unusual factors, the soil was uncommonly fertile for pestilential

diseases.’ After the engagement a multitude of French prisoners, greatly

weakened by hardships and hunger, came to the city. The dissemination of

typhus fever was especially helped along by the fact that many poor

inhabitants engaged in looting on the battlefield, and took home with

them the knapsacks and other effects of the dead. The clothing of the

dead came into the possession of those who were charged with burying

them, and later got into the hands of the poorest families in the city

and in the neighbouring villages. ‘I often entered the houses of poor

people,’ Kopp goes on to say, ‘and found the entire family suffering

from typhus fever, and on the walls of the low sick-room the uniforms,

shirts, and other effects of the dead soldiers would still be hanging.’

The result was that the number of patients greatly increased after the

battle, and in less than two weeks an epidemic began to develop; at

first it was rather mild, but later on it carried away large numbers of

people, and lasted until the end of February, having reached its climax

in December. From December 1, 1813, to January 4, 1814, 248 people died,

whereas the normal mortality for the month of December was but 30. The

total number of deaths, including the soldiers, between October 26 and

March 1 was 613, while in ordinary years only 125 people died, on the

average. The middle class suffered worst of all, while of the upper

classes three physicians and several clergymen died. Of the 192

typhus-fever patients that Kopp himself treated, 21 died (10·9 per

cent), but these figures do not include a rather large number of very

mild cases. People of all ages and both sexes were attacked; children

suffered less than adults, while old people and heavy drinkers were the

most liable to succumb. The disease lasted from two to three weeks;

death usually occurred on the fourteenth to twentieth day, often

somewhat sooner.

Frankfurt-on-the-Main suffered terribly in the year 1813 from enforced

quartering. Even in the spring, after the newly-organized French armies

had passed through the city, the Frankfurt lazarets were overcrowded

with sick and wounded soldiers from Saxony, which was then the scene of

the war. Accordingly it was decided in Frankfurt to build barracks

adapted to the expected requirements; and in order to protect the city

as much as possible from the infection of typhus fever, the barracks

were erected outside the city limits, before the Allerheiligen Tor, and

were situated in the Pfingstweide along the Main. The building of these

barracks was a large and very expensive undertaking, but they

undoubtedly served a very useful purpose by protecting the inhabitants

for a considerable length of time against the infection of typhus

fever.’[151] On September 21 and 22 large numbers of sick and wounded

soldiers came to Frankfurt; they filled all the lazarets, and many of

them had to be quartered in the homes of citizens. From that time on

typhus fever began to spread throughout the city. Fortunately for

Frankfurt, the retreat of the French army from Hanau to Mayence passed

by the city, since the French generals were afraid that they would be

unable to get their troops out of Frankfurt again. On October 29 all the

sick and wounded French soldiers in the Frankfurt hospitals were taken

out and conveyed by boat to Mayence. The hospital on the Pfingstweide,

which had room for 1,480 patients, was immediately cleansed and made

ready for the army of the Allies, who were marching into Frankfurt in

large numbers. Typhus fever now reached its climax. The arrival of the

German and Russian armies almost doubled the number of people in the

city; the soldiers were quartered in the homes of citizens and

immediately infected them with the pestilence. On January 14, 1814,

there were more than 4,000 typhus-fever patients in the city alone,

while in the district their number far exceeded 6,000. How the mortality

among the civil inhabitants was thereby increased is shown by the

following figures, which include only the deaths in the civil

population:

July (1813) 86

August 83

September 93

October 103

November 328

December 289

January (1814) 264

February 248

March 212

April 132

May 135

June 76

Four physicians and seven surgeons succumbed to the epidemic in

Frankfurt. Of 668 typhus-fever patients taken in by the Hospital zum

Heiligen Geist, 100 died. Generally speaking, Frankfurt-on-the-Main

fared pretty well, for the reason that most of the patients were housed

outside the city; the lower classes, particularly servants and maids,

suffered the most. In the city itself the disease was confined chiefly

to the narrow streets of the Altstadt. In March and April the pestilence

began gradually to abate, and in May it ceased altogether.

After leaving Hanau the retreating French army went on to Mayence and

France. The great loss of human life due to typhus fever during the

siege of Mayence will be discussed in the tenth chapter. Wiesbaden[152]

was attacked very severely; 800 men are said to have died in the

military lazaret there, while of the native inhabitants, who numbered

4,000 at that time, 466 contracted the disease and 141 succumbed to it.

From Mayence the pestilence spread and infected the Rheingau; the

outbreak in Oestrich (below Hattenheim on the Rhine) is described by

Thilenius.[153] In October sick and wounded French soldiers were taken

down the Rhine, and in the latter part of that month 500 soldiers on

three boats were held up by a severe storm at Oestrich, where the bad

weather compelled them to remain for twenty-four hours. The patients,

contrary to orders, left the ships and were taken in by the inhabitants

of Oestrich. Before they went away fourteen of them died; a number had

already died on the boats. On November 7 five or six citizens of

Oestrich contracted the disease; before the 9th more than thirty had

been taken sick, and on the 10th there were 93 typhus-fever patients in

the city. All told, 330 people in Oestrich contracted the disease, and

103 succumbed to it. In the latter part of November neighbouring places

were infected by dispersed French soldiers, by the small lazarets of the

troops of the Allies, by visits to the sick, and by participation in

funeral ceremonies. Particularly hard hit was the town of Kiedrich,

where 336 people contracted the disease and 69 succumbed to it.

As in Oestrich, so in Winkel (near Rüdesheim), according to J. B. von

Franque, the pestilence broke out on November 5, 1813, when a boat-load

of infected French soldiers was driven ashore there; sixty or seventy of

the patients entered the village of Winkel, where they were housed in a

schoolroom. Presently a large number of the inhabitants (91 all told)

contracted the disease, and 31 of them died. In the small neighbouring

community of Espenschied the pestilence broke out in a Prussian military

lazaret and spread to all the houses with the exception of one.

Kraft[154] gives us some interesting information regarding the

appearance of typhus fever in Runkel-on-the-Lahn (above Limburg). This

outbreak affords an example of how quickly the pestilence spread in

small places. Shortly after the arrival of the Allies, traces of lazaret

fever revealed themselves there, and in the latter part of November

1813, several sick soldiers were brought there and housed in the homes

of citizens. Presently typhus fever broke out all over the town; in the

first part of December the castle at Runkel was converted into a

lazaret, and it was very soon filled with patients. The poor allowed

themselves to be employed for short periods as sick-attendants, and the

result was that they either contracted the disease themselves or else

conveyed it to their homes; it was not long before the entire town, as

well as the surrounding country, was infected. The convalescents from

the military lazarets were not isolated in separate houses, but taken to

the surrounding towns and villages (for example, Weyer, Villmar,

Münster, and Erfurt), many of whose inhabitants were taken sick. The

pestilence raged far and wide; at the climax of the epidemic (February

to the middle of March) entire families lay sick, and a great many

physicians and surgeons were attacked; the disease disappeared about the

middle of May. In Runkel itself, which had 850 inhabitants, 214

contracted the disease and 70 died; the total number of deaths between

December 1, 1813, and July 1, 1814, was 94, whereas the normal number of

deaths for an entire year was but 17. In the village of Münster, which

had 760 inhabitants, 86 were taken sick and 22 died; and in the village

of Weyer, which had 727 inhabitants, 179 were attacked and 58 died; the

average number of deaths per annum in both villages was 12. As in these

small places, so in all the towns and cities the pestilence broke out

wherever a sick soldier of either army passed.

From October 28 on, transports of half-dead typhus-fever patients for

several days kept arriving at Limburg itself, where they were sheltered

in a convent. In only eight days several inhabitants living near the

lazaret, and also several sick-attendants and their families, contracted

the disease. In consequence of the quartering of Russian and Prussian

troops in the homes of citizens, and also in consequence of the erection

of a permanent hospital in the city, into which hundreds of patients

were received every day, typhus fever broke out with great severity

among the inhabitants; the climax of the epidemic came in January. Of

600 civilians who contracted the disease 76 died.

In the Grand Duchy of Nassau, to which the last-named places (Wiesbaden,

Oestrich, Rüdesheim, Runkel, and Limburg) belonged, and which had some

270,000 inhabitants, the number of people who contracted the disease and

the number who died from it, according to the reports of the church and

town authorities, was recorded for the period between October 1, 1813,

and April 1, 1814. According to von Franque, the following figures were

compiled in reference to the civil population in the Governmental

Districts of that time:

_Governmental _Due to Typhus Fever._ _No. Deaths from

District._ all causes._

〃 _No. Patients._ _No. Deaths._ 〃

Ehrenbreitstein 11,522 2,409 3,680

Weilburg 2,173 419 680

Wiesbaden 29,349 6,179 8,099

—————— ————— ——————

Total 43,044 9,007 12,459

Altogether, fourteen per cent of the population were attacked by typhus

fever, and three per cent succumbed to it; scarcely a single community

was spared.

Epidemics of typhus fever also occurred further down the Rhine; Coblenz,

for instance, was severely attacked. According to Bernstein,[155] a

small epidemic broke out in Neuwied in January 1814, having been borne

thither by a Prussian corps under General Kleist, which left behind

eighty-two sick soldiers, many of them suffering from ‘nerve-fever’. The

disease spread in a rather mild form throughout the city, but lasted

only four weeks.

Typhus fever likewise appeared in North Germany, which was not directly

infected by French soldiers retreating from Leipzig. Hamburg was

attacked with great severity. In March 1813, the Russian colonel,

Tettenborn, by means of a bold _coup de main_ had captured Hamburg, but

he was unable to hold it, and on May 30 the French returned. Marshal

Davoust erected strong fortifications and drove out all the poorer

inhabitants, most of whom had come from the neighbouring Altona, and

thus made ready for a long siege, which did not begin until the end of

the year, although the blockade was complete by the middle of January.

Large quantities of filth accumulated in the streets, since all

working-men were employed at the redoubts and hospitals. Food became

more and more scarce. ‘On such a fertile soil’, says Th. Deneke,[156]

‘typhus fever flourished. The disease spread rapidly from the hospitals

throughout the entire city, since not only were all arrangements wanting

for the isolation of the patients, but half-recovered patients were

actually discharged from the hospital and quartered in the homes of

citizens. Of the garrison, which at the beginning of the siege numbered

some 25,000 or 30,000 men, sixty or seventy, at one time as many as 100,

died every day between the first part of February and the last part of

March, and they were all buried outside the Steintor, close by the

town-moat. No less than 10,700 bodies were interred there, 8,200 people

having succumbed to typhus fever, and 2,500 to wounds; among those

buried were numerous prisoners. Regarding the number of inhabitants that

died we have no information. The condition in the hospitals must have

been terrible; since there was not sufficient room or the proper

facilities to take care of the patients, the physicians and attendants

did their duty only under constraint, and the managing officials in many

instances grossly abused their authority; one of them, the director of

the Legert Military Hospital, for example, ended characteristically by

becoming in 1824 the leader of a band of robbers in France.’ Seven

physicians fell victims to the pestilence in Hamburg. The city did not

surrender until May, after the capture of Paris, whereupon typhus fever

appears to have disappeared quickly.

From Hamburg typhus fever was conveyed by fugitives in all directions;

Altona was attacked with particular severity. As mentioned above,

thousands of the poor driven from Hamburg had been received in Altona.

‘The people, driven from their homes by fear,’ says Steinheim,[157]

‘streamed through our gates and went about seeking shelter. At the same

time the gates of Hamburg were closed, and swarms of unhappy people, the

dregs of Hamburg’s population, straggled with the sad remnants of their

property, bent over more by sorrow than by the weight of their burden,

through our gates and found protection, nourishment, and shelter in our

homes; it was a heart-rending sight.[106] They were housed, partly in

barracks, stables, and barns, and partly in the houses of the

lower-class citizens, whose homes were thereby ‘so crammed full that not

a single corner was left unoccupied by some poor stranger’. More than

17,000 refugees were received in Altona, whose normal population at that

time amounted to some 24,000. At the beginning of January, when the very

cold weather came (the thermometer often went down as low as –20 degrees

Réaumur), all the cracks and openings in the doors and windows were

stopped up to prevent the entrance of the outside air. In the latter

part of December 1813, typhus fever broke out in these overcrowded

quarters and carried away large numbers of people. The exact number is

unknown; according to Mutzenbecher 1,138 fugitives, all told, died in

Altona. According to other reports sixty-eight per cent of the patients

in the hospital succumbed. The epidemic reached its climax in March, and

with the coming spring it began to abate, partly because it became

feasible to house the fugitives in better quarters, and partly because

the warmer weather rendered better ventilation possible.

The disease was also conveyed from Hamburg to Eppendorf, but no

information regarding the number of deaths there is available.

In Lübeck typhus fever broke out in March 1814, among refugees from

Hamburg, and carried away 613 people. According to Gurlt, typhus fever

was conveyed to Bremen, partly by the army of the Crown Prince of

Sweden, and partly by fugitives from Hamburg; the epidemic is said to

have been rather mild.

In Mecklenburg typhus fever began to spread after the erection of a

military lazaret in Malchow (October, 1813), and after the erection of a

second lazaret by the Swedes in Wittenburg (near Schwerin).

In Kiel typhus fever did not appear until the beginning of the year

1814; Weber[158] attributed the outbreak there to the Swedish military

lazaret, in which physicians and nurses frequently contracted the

disease. At first the poorer people were attacked (probably because the

sick-attendants were of that class), and later the well-to-do. The

pestilence, mild at first, soon became very severe. The disease also

broke out in other places in Holstein; Pinneberg was severely attacked,

and the disease was also observed in Schleswig. It is remarkable that,

according to Weber, no exanthema was observed in Kiel; it must, however,

have been present in a scarcely noticeable form, since a rash appeared

on the entire skin of convalescents. The disease always began with a

chill, and was characterized now by obstinate constipation, now by

diarrhoea; no patient who survived the thirteenth day died. And even if

an exanthema was not observed, there can be no doubt that it was typhus

fever which raged in Kiel. Weber himself calls the disease contagious

typhus.

4. THE APPEARANCE OF TYPHUS FEVER IN SOUTH GERMANY

Typhus fever was conveyed to various places throughout South Germany by

the few soldiers that returned from Russia. Nowhere did it become very

widespread, since the authorities soon realized its dangers and

prevented it from spreading by means of appropriate measures of

precaution. A change took place, however, after the battle of Leipzig,

when large numbers of fugitive and captive French soldiers came into the

country, and when troops, particularly Russians, kept constantly

marching back and forth across the country and spreading the infection.

Another important cause of the appearance of the disease there was the

fact that lazarets were erected in South Germany during the campaign in

France, for the purpose of sheltering the sick and wounded soldiers that

were transported back from France.

Regarding the dissemination of typhus fever in Bavaria we are very well

informed in a dissertation by F. Seitz.[159] As among other divisions of

troops, so also among the Bavarian division, typhus fever raged

extensively. On the march from the Vistula to the Oder thirty or forty

men contracted the disease every day, and some of them also suffered

from diarrhoea, dysentery, and other diseases; so that when

Crossen-on-the-Oder was reached only 113 officers and 2,253 men were

left. During the sojourn in Crossen and during the march through Saxony

in March, the number of the patients increased, and by the middle of

March there were only 1,000 able-bodied men left. Thus they arrived at

the Bavarian border. ‘The rumour of the wide prevalence of nerve-fever

in North Germany,’ says Seitz, ‘and the apprehension that the disease

might be conveyed into Bavaria by soldiers returning from the field of

battle, had preceded the arrival of the first warriors. Nevertheless

people did not wish to forgo the pleasure of sheltering in their homes

the soldiers, who had been exposed to so many hardships and privations,

and of helping them to forget their past troubles; and in performing

this philanthropic duty they lost sight of the necessary caution which

prudence demanded.’

The infection of an entire family in Regensburg by a soldier discharged

from the hospital (in February 1813), and reports regarding infection in

other places, resulted in the adoption of strict measures in the

border-towns. All returning soldiers, if it was suspected that they were

infected with disease, were examined by a commission, and if the

suspicion was confirmed by this commission, they were not allowed to be

quartered in the homes of citizens, but were obliged to find shelter in

barracks and lazarets, or in suitable buildings outside the town.

Patients were sent to the military hospitals of Bayreuth, Bamberg, and

Plassenburg (near Kulmbach); as soon as these hospitals were filled up,

a new one was erected in Altdorf. Strict isolation of the patients was

enforced, and this prevented the further dissemination of the disease

among the civil inhabitants. To be sure, a few people contracted the

disease after coming in contact with soldiers; for example, in Amberg,

Sulzbach, Burglengenfeld, Grafenau, Cham, Nuremberg, &c. On the other

hand, there were a great many typhus-fever patients in the military

hospitals, especially in Bamberg. There typhus fever caused a high

mortality among the soldiers; but, thanks to strict measures of

precaution, only a few civilians were taken sick (about 100 out of

20,000 inhabitants), while of several physicians that contracted the

disease only two succumbed to it. About the middle of the year 1813

typhus fever disappeared in Bavaria, without having demanded many

victims. The ‘nerve-fevers’, which were prevalent during the summer (for

example, in Regensburg from July to September), are not regarded by

Schäfer as contagious, and must be looked upon as cases of typhoid

fever.

In November, on the other hand, after the battles near Leipzig and

Hanau, typhus fever broke out suddenly in many places in Bavaria, and in

December raged furiously. The orders, issued in the spring of 1813,

prohibiting all persons suspected of carrying disease from crossing the

borders could no longer be enforced. Says Seitz:[160] ‘When French

prisoners began to march across the country on their way from Saxony and

Würzburg to Bohemia, the pestilence spread among the inhabitants of the

cities and of the flat lands. Typhus fever raged in its most terrible

form among these poor prisoners of war; many succumbed to it in various

places along the route, and thousands died in the hospitals. That the

disease, which haunted all defeated armies like a ghost, would

necessarily reap an abundant harvest among them, was clear to every

physician who observed the physiognomies of these warriors as they were

being led away in captivity from the vicinity of their fatherland into

remote regions. Their pale faces and emaciated forms bore witness to

hunger and sorrow, to a long deprivation of the usual necessaries of

life and to lack of vital energy, to exhaustion caused by the long

marches from Hanau to Leipzig, when in the ardent struggle to reach

their fatherland they had used up their last ounce of strength.

Whosoever was brought by profession, sentiment, or curiosity into

contact with these unfortunate soldiers sooner or later contracted the

disease. Physicians, police-officers, servants, national guards (who

watched over the prisoners), country-people (who carried the patients),

messengers (who brought food to the soldiers in their quarters), were as

a rule the first to be attacked.’

The Grand Duchy of Würzburg was next attacked. In Würzburg itself, where

there were 2,000 or 3,000 French patients in the hospitals, the

pestilence broke out furiously wherever the soldiers went. In Miltenburg

more than 100 persons contracted the disease in the latter part of

December; in the district of Mellrichstadt the number of typhus-fever

patients was 429 (121 deaths), and in the district of Bischofsheim there

were 1,067 patients and 328 deaths. According to Seitz, the number of

deaths throughout the entire Grand Duchy of Würzburg, which at that time

had a population of 344,500, was 2,500, while no less than 16,000 people

contracted the disease. In Nuremberg the pestilence did not become very

widespread; it broke out in the first part of November and lasted until

the middle of January; 150 persons, all told, contracted the disease.

Dinkelsbühl was severely attacked; in the month of November a large

number of French prisoners suffering from typhus fever and diarrhoea

were housed there in the Carmelite Monastery, and in a short time some

200 of them died. Between the 25th and 30th of November typhus fever

spread to the civil population, and, in a few days, more than 100 people

contracted the disease and 10 died; the number of patients increased

until December 12, and then decreased, until the pestilence disappeared

in the latter part of January; 448 persons, all told, contracted the

disease and 89 succumbed to it. In the middle of November it was

conveyed by a transport of French prisoners to Bamberg, where it spread

with such fearful rapidity in the military hospital there, that twenty

persons died every day and all the sick-attendants and medical

assistants contracted it. The disease soon spread throughout the city,

even infecting people who had in no way come in contact with the sick

prisoners. Epidemics of typhus fever were reported in twenty-one

villages in the surrounding country.

All Upper Franconia, through which transports of prisoners were taken to

the Bohemian border, suffered terribly from the pestilence. The disease

was first observed in the towns and villages lying to the north of

Bamberg, whither it had been conveyed by dispersed troops immediately

after the battle of Leipzig (in Nordhalben, Hof, and other near-by

villages). Later on it also appeared in the districts further south. The

region between Bayreuth and Münchberg was, comparatively speaking, less

severely attacked. On the other hand, typhus fever raged furiously in

the military hospital on the Plassenburg, where at the end of December

there were some 700 persons suffering from the disease. In Kulmbach, a

town lying at the foot of the mountain, more than 100 persons contracted

the disease.

While French prisoners were bringing typhus fever into the country from

the west, Austrian and Russian troops were also bringing it from the

east. To be sure, the authorities were enjoined to restrict the foreign

troops to the use of ten military roads that passed through the country,

but the Austrian and Russian leaders frequently ignored these

instructions. Consequently the pestilence spread over the entire region,

a fact which Seitz confirms with numerous specific instances; regarding

the extent to which it raged in Munich, he gives us no information.

Typhus fever was conveyed to Regensburg by French prisoners. ‘Toward the

end of the month [December],’ says Schäfer,[161] ‘typhus fever was

conveyed to Regensburg by French prisoners, some of them sick and some

of them well, but all of them scantily clad and half-starved. They were

quartered in the dance-halls, and those that were sick were taken to a

convent which had been hastily converted into a hospital. There the

civil inhabitants, owing to the lack of appropriate arrangements, were

obliged to distribute food among the sick, and the result was that the

fever finally became general. Not until then was the advice which the

physicians had given at the beginning heeded; they had urged, namely,

that the patients should be cared for by the hospital-attendants

themselves, that each one should have his own separate attendant, and

that only those persons should be allowed to enter the hospital whose

presence was absolutely necessary.’ By February, according to the

official report, 308 persons, all told, contracted typhus fever in

Regensburg, and 51 succumbed to it.

In Ingolstadt an unusually severe epidemic broke out after the arrival

of the French prisoners. In the first part of December the number of

prisoners that died every day was no less than ninety, but after the

middle of the month the mortality was somewhat lower. On December 18

there were 845 typhus-fever patients in the hospitals, and the number of

deaths on this day amounted to only twenty-seven. From then to the end

of the month only fifteen or twenty persons died per diem. On December

10 several civilians contracted the disease; on December 18 the number

of civilians suffering from the disease was thirty-six, and about an

equal number on December 30. The total number of deaths among the

prisoners of war amounted to 2,000. Typhus fever also appeared along the

Danube on both sides of Ingolstadt.

In the course of the winter, typhus fever was also borne into southern

Bavaria by Austrian troops; it broke out in the towns along the military

road, e.g., in Vöcklabruck, Traunstein, Rosenheim, and Landsberg. Places

which the soldiers did not visit were also attacked by the pestilence.

In Weilheim (west of Lake Starnberg) the disease broke out repeatedly

after soldiers had marched through the place; up to April 8 no less than

885 persons had contracted the disease there, and some 100 had succumbed

to it.

According to Seitz, 18,427 cases of the disease and 3,084 deaths

attributable to it were officially recorded in Bavaria between October

1813 and June 1814; the lists kept by the Governmental Districts were

undoubtedly very incomplete, but on the other hand we must assume that

the contagious and non-contagious ‘nerve-fevers’ (typhus and typhoid)

were not always distinguished. For the several districts Seitz furnishes

us with the following figures relating to the number of people who

contracted and succumbed to typhus fever:

_The Region of the_ _No. Patients._ _No. Deaths._

Main 5,752 1,067

Rezat 2,135 32

Regen 1,627 290

Upper Danube 4,613 1,003

Lower Danube 1,338 270

Salzach 1,815 259

Isar 1,147 163

This does not include the number of deaths among the prisoners of war,

nor among the native and foreign soldiers. For the Main region, Seitz

also furnishes figures relating to the age of the patients; of the 5,752

persons who contracted the disease 453 were children, 1,345 were young

men and women, 3,657 were of middle age, and 297 were old men and women.

As in Bavaria, so also in Württemberg, typhus fever broke out in two

epidemics; the first, which was less extensive and less severe, was

caused by soldiers returning from Russia, and the second broke out in

consequence of the passing of troops through the country after the

battle of Leipzig. According to Elsässer,[162] in the first part of the

year 1813 there were 165 cases of typhus fever and twenty deaths due to

it reported from fifteen different localities. In the month of July the

disease disappeared from Württemberg. At the end of the year 1813,

however, the disease was again borne into the country, partly by French

prisoners, and partly by Russian soldiers. ‘Throughout Württemberg’,

says Lohnes,[163] ‘this fever appeared wherever foreign troops had

tarried. Consequently contagious typhus first appeared in the northern

lowlands, while the region around Tübingen and the southern and eastern

part of the country at the beginning did not suffer at all. But in

December, when large bodies of troops marched through the highlands, the

southern part of Württemberg, these fevers followed the soldiers’ lines

of march. At first it was the French prisoners who carried lazaret-fever

with them wherever they went, and a very severe form of the disease too;

later on, these fevers always broke out wherever the Russian soldiers

went, although very few of the soldiers themselves were infected with

them. Frequently persons contracted the disease who had no sick soldiers

in their homes. As a rule the disease in such cases was mild, but it was

very dangerous wherever patients were left or congregated in large or

small hospitals.’

As early as the month of February, the disease had reached its climax in

Württemberg; in March it began to abate rapidly, so that in the first

part of the summer only 150 patients could be counted in fifteen

Governmental Districts. From then until the end of the year it broke out

only sporadically. Braun,[164] who asserts that more than half of the

physicians in Württemberg contracted typhus fever, mentions the names

and residences of seventeen physicians who succumbed to it; we see from

this list that the disease was prevalent throughout all Württemberg. The

disease was also conveyed to the southern part of Upper Swabia.

According to Dillenius, 1,300 sick soldiers were sent in the first part

of the year 1814 from France (especially from Mülhausen in Alsace) to

the military hospital at Tettnang; twenty-four of them died on the way,

and in the course of the following four months five times as many

succumbed to typhus fever in the hospital.[165]

Baden suffered severely from typhus fever; in Karlsruhe, for instance,

typhus fever raged from October to December 1813. But Baden suffered

particularly, for the reason that all the sick soldiers in the Bohemian

army were sent back there from France. Their number far exceeded all

expectations, since typhus fever was uncommonly prevalent in the field

army in France, and the soldiers arriving from there infected the

hospitals. Even when the Austrian and Russian troops marched through the

country the number of ‘nerve-fever’ patients was very large. Freiburg im

Breisgau, at that time a city of 9,000 inhabitants, suffered very

severely in consequence of enforced quartering; some 210,000 soldiers

were housed in the homes of its citizens. In the garrison lazaret and

university hospital, which together had room for 500 patients, no less

than 1,200 patients were crowded together in December 1813; almost all

of them were suffering from diarrhoea and typhus, and owing to the lack

of linen they were compelled to lie in their own dirty clothes on sacks

of straw. Every morning two large wagonloads of dead bodies were driven

away for burial. As usual, the pestilence spread to the civil

population, carrying away entire families. On October 12, 1813, the

former Abbey of Thennenbach was converted into a military lazaret, in

which two weeks later some 1,200 patients were sheltered, although it

had adequate room for only 700. Between December 27, 1813, and March

1814, 567 soldiers succumbed there, most of them to typhus and

dysentery. The epidemic reached its climax about the middle of January,

when as many as thirty persons died per diem. After the middle of

January the number of deaths rapidly decreased.[166] Northern Baden was

also attacked. In Mannheim the sick and wounded French soldiers who

arrived after the battles of Lützen and Bautzen were led around the city

and taken to Spires. Thus typhus fever did not appear in Mannheim

itself, where the condition of health was subsequently also good. The

statement of the _Rheinische Merkur_, that out of 13,000 patients in the

military lazarets in Mannheim 3,347 died, according to Gurlt,[167] is

incorrect; the number of deaths was no more than 346.

Regarding the total number of deaths due to typhus fever in Baden no

information is available; at all events it was very large. This is shown

by the fact that in the last part of 1813 and first part of 1814 no less

than thirty-five physicians and thirty surgeons of the first class fell

victims to the pestilence.[168]

In November 1813, thousands of scattered French prisoners came to

Darmstadt; many of them were suffering from typhus fever, which soon

spread throughout the city. Many places in that part of the present

Grand Duchy of Hesse which lies south of the Main were severely attacked

by the epidemic; as many as 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants of many places

contracted the disease. But by July 5, 1814, it had everywhere

disappeared.[169]

5. TYPHUS FEVER ON THE LEFT BANK OF THE RHINE; FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND

The continued retreat of the French army passed from Mayence through

Metz to Paris, and the route of the retreat was marked by patients left

behind. In this way the epidemic of typhus fever was quickly

transplanted to the north-eastern part of France. Alsace-Lorraine, the

Palatinate, Champagne, and Burgundy were all attacked in succession. The

epidemic raged from Kreuznach to Strassburg; the dispersion of the

retreating army caused even the smallest villages to suffer, so that the

pestilence appeared in Worms, Frankenthal, Spires, Oppenheim,

Neustadt-on-the-Hardt, Dürkheim, Landau, Alzey, Trabach, Zweibrücken,

Weissenburg, Hagenau, Zabern, and in other places. Mörs (near

Frankenthal) was almost completely wiped out.[170] The following places

in France are mentioned as having been attacked by the pestilence:

Saint-Avold, Courcelles-Chaussy, Mars-la-Tour, Sierck, Cattenom,

Pont-à-Mousson, Toul, Nancy, Étain, Verdun, Bar, Longwy, and Sedan.

Thouvenel describes the epidemic of typhus fever in Pont-à-Mousson,

which broke out in December 1813, when transports of sick soldiers

arrived there, and spread to all the surrounding towns and villages; it

increased in severity until the middle of March, and by June had almost

disappeared. He describes in emotional language the endless succession

of wagons that arrived every day:[171]

Who of us will not remember as long as he lives those harrowing

scenes, which one cannot describe without shuddering? Who will ever

forget those hundreds of wagons filled with unhappy wounded men who

had had no medical care since leaving Leipzig; and packed in with

them were sick men suffering from dysentery, typhus fever, &c.,

almost all of them dying of inanition, weakness, and filth, as well

as of disease. Those unfortunate men piteously begged only for a

place in a hospital already filled with dying men, only to receive

in reply a forced refusal. And so they were under the cruel

necessity of going further to die, with the result that they

infected all the towns and villages along their route, wherever they

were granted a generous hospitality.

Strassburg, comparatively speaking, suffered but little. As early as

December 1, the prefect of Strassburg had issued orders that a special

building should be set aside in every town for the reception of sick

soldiers that arrived there, and that they should under no circumstances

be housed in the homes of citizens. In October and November

convalescents had been quartered in the residences of citizens, who had

subsequently been infected. In November the number of typhus-fever

patients, which averaged ten or fifteen per month, increased to

thirty-six, and in December to 100. In accordance with the

above-mentioned decree all newly-arrived soldiers were examined by a

Board of Health; the sick were sent to the hospital, and the healthy

were quartered with citizens. ‘Notwithstanding this,’ says

Reisseisen,[172] ‘the healthy ones infected a large number of

inhabitants through their old woollen overcoats, which were thoroughly

saturated with the miasma of the hospitals. The clothes that were sold

privately were particularly dangerous, so that in the latter part of

December strict orders were issued to keep watch for the old clothes and

burn them. In the first part of January, when the rather lax siege

began, typhus fever spread irresistibly throughout the city; in that

month the pestilence reached its climax with 175 deaths. On January 22

the prefects ordered general fumigations in all public buildings, and

recommended that the citizens should also fumigate their homes. The

result was very successful; in February 112 people died, in March 75,

and in April 27, and then typhus fever disappeared. No foreign troops

marched through the stronghold, and although all the French prisoners of

war passed through the city, no more citizens were infected by them, for

the reason that they were quartered in the fortifications.

The devastation caused by the pestilence in Metz was no less than

frightful. Maréchal and Didion[173] give us a picture of this severe

epidemic. On November 19, 1813, some 5,000 sick soldiers were assigned

to that city; it was necessary to see that they were sheltered, and at

the same time measures were adopted to prevent the disease from

spreading. According to the report of the astute Mayor of Metz, Baron

Marchant, the 5,000 soldiers, all of them suffering from an infectious

disease, arrived, and sixty of them died every day. All the physicians

in Metz contracted the disease, and several of them died. It was

impossible to procure sick-attendants, since those who had performed

this service had all contracted the disease, conveyed it home, and

infected their families. Sick soldiers who were quartered privately, and

particularly convalescents, also helped to spread the disease throughout

the city; more than 150 houses were infected. In the latter part of

December the number of patients greatly increased. On January 1, 1814,

after Blücher had crossed the Rhine, the Germans marched against Metz,

and then an enormous crowd of people from the surrounding country fled

to that city for protection. This caused typhus fever to spread far and

wide throughout the city. Furthermore, sick and exhausted soldiers were

constantly being sent to Metz, and it is estimated that some 30,000 of

them arrived there. The worst month was February, and 7,752 soldiers,

all told, died in six months:

November 463

December 1,602

January 1,360

February 2,365

March 1,622

April 340

1,294 civilians also died, the largest number (371) likewise in

February. In the entire Department of Moselle, which at that time had

some 400,000 inhabitants, no less than 10,329 people succumbed to this

epidemic, and this number does not include the soldiers.

Regarding the wide dissemination of typhus fever in the Departments east

and south of Paris, which formed the scene of the war in the first part

of the year 1814 (the Departments of Haute-Marne, Côte-d’Or, Aube,

Yonne, Marne, Seine-et-Marne), no further information is available.

Troyes, Besançon, Dijon, Avallon, and Auxerre are mentioned as places

that were attacked by the pestilence.

In Paris, cases of typhus fever occurred in February, when the war moved

closer to that city. The sick and wounded soldiers were consequently

obliged to go to the hospitals in Paris; but since these were neither

large nor numerous enough to accommodate so many patients, it became

necessary to open several provisional hospitals in appropriate

buildings. At first all the typhus-fever patients were taken to the

Hôpital de la Pitié, but it soon became necessary to change this policy,

since the disease had spread throughout all the wards of that building.

In the latter part of February the first cases of typhus fever appeared

in the city, in consequence of the return of many soldiers to their own

families. In March more and more people contracted the disease, which

toward the end of the month was raging furiously, though more in the

hospitals than in the city. In the Hospice de la Salpêtrière, which had

been converted into a military hospital and began to be used on February

9, 1814, a small number of persons contracted typhus fever in the latter

part of March, and in the months of April and May the disease spread;

after that, however, it began to abate. A great many nurses and

attendants were taken sick.[174] In April a large number of people in

the city were lying sick with typhus fever. In one boarding-school, from

which several persons visited the hospitals and brought typhus fever

home with them, thirty people contracted the disease and four succumbed

to it. In May cases of typhus fever became more rare, and in August no

more people contracted the disease. The mortality in Paris in the year

1814 was very high; whereas in the years 1812 and 1813 the number of

deaths had been 20,133 and 18,676 respectively, in the year 1814 no less

than 27,778 people died, which number includes 2,559 soldiers that died

in the hospitals. In the year 1815 the number of deaths decreased again

to 19,992. How large the number of deaths due to typhus fever was, it is

impossible to state with certainty, since in the case of only a small

number of the persons who actually died of typhus fever was that disease

recorded as the cause of death. The rubric ‘fièvres putrides et

adynamiques’ increased in the year 1813 from 1,337 deaths to 2,860

deaths, and the rubric ‘fièvres malignes ou ataxiques’ from 804 to

1,376.[175]

Owing to the overcrowded condition of the hospitals in Paris, soldiers

were conveyed upon a number of boats on the Seine to Rouen. Since sick

and wounded men were thus transported together, typhus fever was

conveyed to Rouen, where it carried away large numbers of persons

employed in the hospitals. In the same way, sick and wounded were

transported to points on the Loire, causing typhus fever to spread to

Tours, where 860 soldiers succumbed to it.[176]

The proximity of the scene of the war in January and February 1813

caused typhus fever to break out in the Swiss Cantons lying close to the

French border; for example, in the cantons of Basel-Stadt, Basel-Land,

Neuenburg, Solothurn, and Waadt. The number of deaths in these cantons

was:[177]

_Year._ _Basel-Stadt._ _Basel-Land._ _Neuenburg._ _Solothurn._ _Waadt._

1812 442 867 1,041 1,349 3,705

1813 425 748 1,014 1,072 3,186

1814 721 1,679 1,335 1,844 3,475

1815 479 812 1,220 1,240 3,267

1816 355 710 1,234 3,720

According to A. Burckhardt,[178] lazaret-fever broke out in Basel with

extraordinary fury when the Allies passed through that city; it raged

particularly among the foreign soldiers, but also attacked the

attendants in the hospitals and the civil inhabitants. The number of

deaths caused by it is unknown.

6. TYPHUS FEVER IN AUSTRIA IN THE YEARS 1813–14.[179]

The country in Austria which was most exposed to the ravages of the

epidemic of typhus fever was Bohemia, along whose borders the war was

for a long time carried on. As early as February 1813, ‘nerve-fever’,

accompanied by petechiae, was borne by Bavarian and Prussian troops into

the district of Königgrätz, but thanks to energetic and strict measures

of precaution, it did not become very widespread. The principal outbreak

of the epidemic in Bohemia took place in the autumn of the year 1813.

The number of typhus-fever patients taken into the Prague hospital in

September 1813 was 39, in October 77, in November 196, and in December

287.[180] The region along the Saxon border suffered the most: e.g. the

districts of Leitmeritz, Saaz, Rakonitz, and Elbogen. In the Leitmeritz

district typhus appeared in August, and became more severe in September

and October; the places along the military road leading from Dresden to

Prague were particularly hard hit. The epidemic lasted until April. In

the near-by Kaurzim district sick and wounded soldiers of all nations

arrived, after the battles of Pirna, Dresden, and Kulm, causing a

virulent epidemic to break out everywhere; in many places all the

inhabitants contracted it. In the latter part of the year, when the

pestilence seemed to have abated a little, it broke out anew when the

French garrison was being taken from Dresden to its place of detention;

in fourteen days 2,422 persons in sixty places contracted the disease,

which disappeared in May. Typhus fever had spread over 103 localities,

all told, in that region, and of 8,066 people who contracted it, 751

succumbed. In the Saaz district typhus broke out in the last part of

October 1813, and carried away large numbers of people; it raged all

along the military road in the vicinity of the scene of the war. The

highest mortality was in the month of December, and in May the

pestilence disappeared. In the Rakonitz district entire communities lay

sick in the first part of the year, but in April no new cases of the

disease occurred. In the Elbogen district typhus fever broke out in

September 1813 in the city of Eger, in consequence of the arrival of

French prisoners and fugitives; the epidemic soon spread over the entire

district, and lasted until March 1814.

The rest of Bohemia suffered less severely from typhus fever in the

winter of 1813–14. In the Beraun district, lying to the south-west of

Prague, it began in October 1813, when the homes of the citizens became

crowded with convalescing soldiers; the epidemic came to an end in March

1814. The number of people who contracted the disease was 3,807, while

the number who succumbed was 296. The adjacent districts of Pilsen and

Kattau were likewise attacked; in the Pilsen district typhus fever broke

out in October 1813, in consequence of the arrival of French prisoners;

a number of places were infected by them, so that in November and

December it developed into an epidemic, which lasted until April. Of

1,185 people who contracted the disease, 237 died. In the Kattau

district 645 contracted the disease and 132 succumbed.

In the eastern part of the country the districts of Tabor and Czaslau

were severely attacked. ‘In the Tabor district’, we read in the

above-mentioned report,[181] ‘there appeared in the month of August at

Neuhaus, where a field-hospital had been erected, several biliary-mucous

nerve-fevers, which broke out in numerous places along the road to

Prague, soon spread to the Tabor district, and became epidemic. They

quickly revealed their presence in all places where sick soldiers passed

the night, or where the natives took part in the transportation of sick

soldiers.’ The climax of the epidemic was in January, and in the middle

of May it disappeared; of 4,267 people who contracted the disease, 448

succumbed. In the Czaslau district, adjacent to the Tabor district on

the north, the disease was disseminated in November 1813 by transports

of prisoners and troops, by the quartering of convalescents in the homes

of peasants, and by peasants who helped to transport sick soldiers. On

December 16, 1813, no less than 4,313 civilians in thirteen places were

suffering from typhus fever. The highest mortality prevailed in the

vicinity of the hospitals; the epidemic disappeared with the arrival of

spring.

Typhus fever was also conveyed into various parts of Moravia,[182]

partly by Austrian troops, and partly by French prisoners; in the

districts of Brünn, Iglau, Olmütz, and Teschen it broke out in numerous

places. In twelve communities in these districts, having a combined

population of 28,267, some 2,126 people contracted the disease between

December 1813 and the summer of 1814, and 207 persons succumbed. In

March the epidemic disappeared almost everywhere. According to the

figures compiled by J. Hain,[183] the number of deaths in Moravia and

Austrian-Silesia together was:

July (1813) 3,818

August 3,893

September 3,888

October 4,059

November 4,457

December 5,202

January (1814) 8,280

February 7,249

March 7,756

April 5,464

May 5,541

June 4,147

In Lower Austria typhus fever also broke out, particularly in Vienna;

the number of deaths there was:

_Due to typhus fever._ _All deaths._

1813 784 12,971

1814 1,529 15,309

In the rest of the country few diseases appeared, despite the fact that

troops kept marching back and forth.

Typhus fever was conveyed by marching troops to Styria also; the source

of the pestilence was the seven military hospitals in Graz. We read in

the report:[184] ‘The pestilence, proceeding principally from the seven

military hospitals lying within the city limits as from a focus, was

spread abroad by convalescents, attendants, physicians, &c. The

mortality in these hospitals was extremely high; the buildings set aside

for the purpose could scarcely accommodate the number of sick.

Everything was topsy-turvy; the corps of field-doctors on hand was not

nearly large enough to take even the most necessary care of the large

number of patients.’ The region around Graz, Marburg, and Bruck was most

severely attacked by the disease, which also spread to Carinthia and

broke out in Klagenfurt and vicinity.

7. SURVEY OF THE EPIDEMIC OF TYPHUS FEVER IN THE YEARS 1813–14

It is impossible to draw an accurate picture of the loss of human life

which typhus fever caused in the years 1813–14. This is due, on the one

hand, to the lack of reliable statistics, and, on the other hand, to the

fact that the several regions suffered to a varying degree, depending

upon the number of troops, prisoners, and refugees that they received.

The number of persons that succumbed to typhus fever in Germany during

the years 1813–14 must be estimated at least as high as 200,000 or

300,000. Assuming that 200,000 people succumbed to the disease, the

number that contracted it would amount to some 2,000,000. Since Germany

at that time had hardly more than 20,000,000 inhabitants, some ten per

cent of them, on the basis of this assumption, contracted the disease.

The size of this number is significant, when we consider that the

stronger and older people manifested particular susceptibility to the

disease.

One of the chief causes of the wide dissemination of typhus fever in the

years 1813–14 was the imperfect development of the lazaret system. If at

first a lazaret for infectious diseases was available, the number of

patients it was called upon to accommodate in a few days became so large

that new buildings always had to be opened for them, and it was

impossible to keep them isolated. The efforts of the various municipal

administrations to have the lazarets erected outside the city limits

were powerless against the brutal obstinacy of the French, and, later,

of the Russian generals. The severity of the penalty which they had to

pay for unceremoniously housing infected French troops in strongholds

together with healthy men, is evident from the fearful devastation

caused by typhus fever in Danzig, Torgau, Mayence, &c. The little

communities were absolutely helpless against the dominating power of the

soldiers. One might reproach the municipal administrations of that time

with failing to adopt measures of prevention against the menacing danger

of pestilence, particularly in places which did not suffer in

consequence of the marching back and forth of soldiers. But one must

take into account the excitement which permeated the entire people at

that time—the hopeful longing to be freed from the national enemy’s long

oppression, toward which all thinking and planning was directed, the

employment of all resources for this purpose, and in particular the fact

that sheer ignorance rendered appropriate measures impossible. If this

ignorance prevailed in the highest places, nothing better was to be

expected of the administrations of the smaller cities and towns. The

population was therefore everywhere defenceless against the intrusion of

the pestilence, which was given an opportunity to become more and more

widespread. This, however, had not been the case in Central Europe since

the Thirty Years’ War.