Epidemics Resulting from Wars. Friedrich Prinzing
‘bright plague’ (helle Pest). Of 904 deaths that occurred that year, 785 were due to the plague. In Plauen the number of deaths in 1633 was 1,748, in Oelsnitz 325 (217 due to the plague). Holk himself succumbed to the plague in Adorf on August 30, 1633, while 1,000 of his troops also died.
The eastern part of Saxony was also attacked. In Dresden a plague broke out in 1632 and carried away numerous people; it continued to rage in the following year, since the war prevented the adoption of the usual measures of precaution. In the year 1632 the number of Protestants buried by the church was 3,129, and in the following year it was 4,585. Numerous families were wiped out, and many houses were rendered tenantless. In the year 1634 one half of the inhabitants fell victims to the pestilence, while a large part of the city was devastated in 1635. Since the reports of E. J. J. Meyer and of the town council continually speak of ‘swellings’, the disease was no doubt bubonic plague.[33] In Dippoldiswalde (south-west of Dresden) it raged so furiously in the years 1631–3 that entire families were wiped out; in those years there were 189, 510, and 250 deaths respectively. Pirna is said to have lost 4,000 inhabitants in consequence of the plague in the years 1632–4, while Dittersdorf (south of Pirna) lost 405 inhabitants in the year 1632. The pestilence was borne by Saxon troops to Sebnitz (south-east of Dresden). In Stolpen it raged from 1632 to 1634. In October 1631 the Croats brought pestilence to Bischofswerda, and more than 200 persons died in consequence of it. In March 1632 another pestilence broke out there, carrying away 660 persons, so that more than one-third of the houses stood empty. In the year 1631 there were 1,000 deaths in Camenz. In Bautzen there was a garrison of 500 men, almost all of whom died in the year 1631; including the residents that were carried away by the pestilence, the number of deaths there for that year was about 1,000. Nor did the pestilence disappear from Bautzen the following year.
Lusatia was also the scene of pestilence; only a few places were spared, and in Upper Lusatia 40,000 persons are said to have been carried away by pestilences in the years 1631–3. In the last part of September 1631, dysentery and bubonic plague broke out in Görlitz, which had a Saxon garrison, and carried away some 400 persons (excluding the soldiers) between then and the end of the year. In June 1632 there was a second outbreak of plague; it reached its climax in October, and carried away 6,105 people (including 106 soldiers) in the course of the entire year. In the following year 726 inhabitants and 435 soldiers succumbed to the disease. Zittau suffered severely; as early as 1633 several hundred soldiers and inhabitants succumbed to typhus fever, while in the year 1632 ‘burning fever’, dysentery, and bubonic plague appeared and carried away 1,246 persons (according to other reports, 1,642 persons). Petechial fever and bubonic plague, after a period of inactivity in the winter, recommenced in the first part of 1633; the latter disease reached its climax in September, carrying away 1,860 inhabitants in that year, in addition to many Imperialist soldiers. From October to December, 1634, Saxon and Brandenburg soldiers, after their return from Bohemia, encamped near Zittau, where various diseases soon broke out; the result was that hundreds died, and the entire region became infected.
The Province of Brandenburg was severely attacked by a plague in the year 1631, but in the next year suffered considerably less owing to the fact that the scene of the war was transferred to other parts of Germany. In Berlin 777 people succumbed to a plague in the year 1630, while in the following year it reappeared in a much severer form and carried away 2,066 persons. In Spandau, after the capture of the city by the Swedes on May 6, 1631, famine and pestilence broke out and caused 1,500 deaths. A plague in Potsdam caused 457 deaths between June and December, 1631. Neuruppin, in February of that year, after the occupation of the District of Ruppin by Tilly, suffered from a severe pestilence. Dysentery and ‘head-disease’ broke out in Rathenow in 1631, reached a climax in July, and carried away 662 people (not including those buried in secret). In Prenzlau 1,500 persons, about one-fourth of the population, died in the year 1631, while Havelberg had 227 deaths, Lindow 400, and Kyritz (after the soldiers had quartered there) 231. Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, which had been occupied by the Imperialists, on April 13, 1631, was captured by Gustavus Adolphus, whereupon a severe epidemic broke out and carried away entire families in the course of a few days; the alleged number of deaths was 6,000. Müncheberg (north-west of Frankfurt), Quilitz, Drossen, and Guben were also attacked; there were 365 deaths in Quilitz and 2,000 in Drossen. In the year 1634, when the Imperialists once more devastated the Electorate of Saxony, a severe plague broke out in Luckau, whither many country people had fled; the spread of the disease is said to have been favoured by the fact that the soldiers broke into and robbed the closed houses of the dead. In Seftenberg (near Kalau) a plague broke out in 1630 and carried away 305 persons that year; it remained there until 1633, and spread to many near-by villages.
Silesia, after the devastation caused by the pestilences of the years 1624–7, had a few years of rest. In the year 1632, however, infection was brought there from Saxony, though only to a limited extent. On August 1, 1632, Lauban was obliged to surrender to the Saxon garrison, so that for ten days the city and the surrounding country were crowded with troops; the result was that after their departure a severe epidemic broke out and between July and December carried away 1,400 persons. In the very next year severe plagues broke out all over Silesia, when Wallenstein appeared there for the purpose of driving out the Saxons and Swedes. The plague raged so furiously in Silesia that the armies were almost entirely exterminated, and whole communities were wiped out. Golgau, Bunzlau (and vicinity), Greiffenberg, and Friedeberg were attacked. An epidemic of typhus fever carried away 500 people in Hirschberg in the year 1632, and in the following year it became much more widespread and carried away 2,600 persons. ‘The infected persons are said to have looked very red, like drunkards, and to have died suddenly.’ Almost the entire population of Landshut died in the year 1633. Goldberg (south-west of Liegnitz) had been plundered by Wallenstein’s soldiers on October 4 and 5, 1633, and on October 10 Colonel Sparre quartered 200 ‘badly infected’ soldiers there; the result was that a severe pestilence broke out in the city. In August of the year 1633 such a severe pestilence broke out in Liegnitz that it was impossible to bury the victims in the regular way; deep, broad ditches were dug, and from 100 to 200 bodies laid in them. From August 14 to December 22 the number of deaths is said to have been 5,794. Breslau, which at that time had upwards of 40,000 inhabitants, was visited by a plague in September 1633; in the Protestant parishes 13,231 people died in that year, in the Catholic 4,800. Neumarkt (north-west of Breslau) had 1,400 deaths in the same year, while in Brieg, which had a Swedish garrison, there were 3,439 deaths. The city of Schweidnitz suffered terribly; 30,000 soldiers under Wallenstein and 25,000 Swedish soldiers were encamped there, and the plague was so severe that 8,000 of the former and 12,000 of the latter are said to have died. In the city itself, which was harbouring innumerable fugitives from the surrounding country, sick people and dead bodies soon filled all the streets; on August 25 alone, 300 people died. The number of the dead, including from 2,000 to 3,000 that were buried secretly, and also the outsiders, was 16,000 to 17,000; more than two-thirds of the population are said to have succumbed. The pestilence was borne from Schweidnitz to Peterswaldau and Nimptsch, where from 2,000 to 2,400 persons died. On May 31, 1633, Wallenstein came with his army to Glatz, bringing pestilence with him; in Glatz itself 4,284 people were carried away, while many hundreds died in the surrounding country. Petschkau was almost completely wiped out. In Neisse the number of victims is estimated at 6,000; 5,272 are recorded in the church registers.
Generally speaking, Thuringia was but slightly affected by plagues in the years 1631–3, but suffered terribly in the years 1634–5; for in those years there, as in all Germany, a great famine prevailed. In Koburg a plague broke out in the year 1630; in 1632 there was an epidemic of ‘head-disease’, which carried away 300 persons in October alone, and in 1634 an epidemic of bubonic plague, rendered even more destructive by famine, carried away 1,143 victims. Several pestilences (dysentery and ‘burning fever’) also broke out in the Koburg region, caused by the quartering and ravaging of Swedish troops; the inhabitants died by hundreds. Hildburghausen suffered from a plague from June on; whereas only 106 people had died there from January to May, the number of deaths in June alone was 215. In the following year 534 people died there from starvation and pestilence, while 169 died in near-by Streufdorf. Eisfeld (west of Hildburghausen) in 1632 had been plundered by Swedish troops, and from that time on suffered from pestilence. In Meiningen, in the latter part of 1635 and the first part of 1636, 500 people succumbed to a plague (106 in November alone). Suhl, which on October