Epidemics Resulting from Wars. Friedrich Prinzing
are said to have been buried there; at first it was ‘head-disease’, and afterwards ‘a poisonous pestilence’.
The Lower Main region suffered terribly in the year 1635 from famine and pestilence; the Wetterau, the Palatinate, and Alsace-Lorraine were all attacked. Frankfurt-on-the-Main had been occupied by the Swedes in the latter part of 1631, and after that the mortality increased; whereas in the years 1630–2 the average number of deaths was 1,598, in 1633 it increased to 3,512, in 1634 to 3,421, and in 1635 to 6,943. This includes all the Protestant population, only a part of the Catholic population, and none of the Jews. The large number of country-people who had fled to the city rendered the general condition worse and helped to spread the pestilence. The worst month was September 1635, in which 1,112 persons died. According to a Frankfurt physician, Hörnigk, the crisis came on the fifth or sixth day, while many people contracted the disease not only once, but as many as seven times.[42] We see from this last observation that the various infectious diseases at that time were not distinguished, but were regarded as different stages of one and the same disease.
In near-by Hanau, after it was occupied by the Swedes and Hessians on October 2, 1634, famine and pestilence appeared; in June 1635, an epidemic of bubonic plague broke out there, reaching a climax in August, and gradually disappearing with the beginning of the cold weather. The mortality among the citizens and fugitives was very great, but the statement that 21,000 people died in Hanau is perhaps an exaggeration. Upper Hesse was devastated in 1635 by famine and pestilence; in Giessen, for example, 1,503 people died (according to the grave-diggers’ records), and in Lich, a small fortified town, there were 1,225 deaths, including 22 soldiers and 549 fugitives from the surrounding country.
In the Rhenish Palatinate, after it was occupied by the Imperialists, conditions were terrible; famine and pestilence lasted from 1635 to 1639. In the year 1635 General Gallas retreated from Dieuze to the Rhine, and in the same year serious diseases broke out there (dysentery, typhus fever, &c.), so that the streets and fields were covered with the bodies of his soldiers. Wherever he went these diseases were transmitted to the local inhabitants, so that many places lost more than half of their population. Pestilence was also transmitted to other cities and towns in the Palatinate; in Zweibrücken, which had 3,000 inhabitants, 250 married persons died between August 1, 1635, and April 1, 1636; many villages in the vicinity were entirely depopulated. In Kaiserslautern, which on August 17, 1635, was stormed by the Imperialists under General Hatzfeld, and was thereafter subjected to an inhuman sacking, a severe plague broke out in the year 1636 and carried away large numbers of people. In Worms numerous people succumbed that year to dysentery.
In Alsace an epidemic of bubonic plague broke out in August 1636; it had been brought there by the troops of the Count-Palatine von Birkenfeld and became very widespread among the fugitives in the overcrowded city of Strassburg. From thirty to forty bodies were buried in a single day, and in the entire year there were 5,546 deaths, including 1,000 fugitives and soldiers. The disease continued to reveal its presence until the next spring, and by that time 8,000 persons are said to have died in Strassburg. In the year 1635–6, owing to the perpetual condition of war, which made it impossible to cultivate the fields, there ensued a terrible famine, and this did a great deal to further the dissemination of pestilence. Zabern, where there was a strong garrison, and where many soldiers were quartered, suffered terribly in the year 1634, and again in the years 1635–6 widespread pestilences broke out; in 1636 the Imperialists died there ‘like cattle’.
Lorraine also suffered terribly. In the year 1635 Bernhard von Weimar and Cardinal La Valette were obliged to retreat before Gallas to the vicinity of Metz, where they arrived on October 1; the troops brought fever, dysentery, and ‘Swedish plague’ with them; the last-named disease, which has been held to be typhus fever, became more widespread in Metz in the year 1636 than it had ever been before—it was la plus meurtrière et la plus désastreuse des temps modernes dans notre pays.[43] The precautionary measures of the city administration—cleaning of the streets, isolation of the patients, closing of infected houses—were of no avail. Many bodies were cast into the Mosel, and before the gates of the city the streets and fields were covered with dead men and horses. Also in the neighbouring cities, especially in Verdun and Nancy, the losses in consequence of the pestilence were great.
Conditions were equally bad in the adjacent Luxemburg. ‘The French as enemies,’ says Lammert,[44] ‘the Croats, Hungarians, and Poles as defenders, committed the most terrible devastations in the country through which they passed. Famine, poverty, and a furious pestilence completed the misery. Entire villages were wiped out; in the city of Luxemburg the churchyards no longer had room for the bodies, and places for burial had to be prepared within the fortifications. Throughout the entire province 11,000 persons, one-third of the inhabitants, lost their lives.’
In the year 1637 Count Bernhard von Weimar transferred the scene of the war into southern Baden, where, during the siege of Breisach, from July 5 to December 18, 1638, an epidemic of scurvy caused increased misery. In the year 1639 large numbers of people in the Lörrach district were carried away by the pestilence, among them Count Bernhard himself.
3. North Germany (1636–40)
In North Germany the war against the Imperialists was continued by the Swedes under Banner. On October 4, 1636, the Imperialists were defeated at Wittstock (province of Brandenburg, district of East Priednitz), whereupon the Swedes in that very same year overran Saxony and Thuringia. In 1637, to be sure, they were thrown back into Pomerania by Gallas, but in 1638 they reappeared in Saxony, and in 1639 won a brilliant victory at Chemnitz. Thereupon Banner undertook a campaign into Bohemia, whence, in 1641, he was forced to retire. Shortly afterwards (May 10, 1641) he died in Halberstadt.
These campaigns spread severe pestilences throughout the above-mentioned regions of North Germany, particularly the southern part of Brandenburg and the modern province of Saxony. The largest part of the Altmark resembled a ‘large lazaret’; in Wittstock itself there were 305 deaths in the year 1636, in Bismark 163, and in Salzwedel 193; in Werben a plague broke out after the soldiers had been quartered there and lasted well into the next year. In Stendal it began in June 1636, and carried away 1,992 persons in that year, as compared with an average annual mortality of 120–30; nor does the number include the peasants that had fled to the city, 3,000 of whom died. The pestilence spread over the entire vicinity and wiped out whole villages. In Tangermünde a pestilence broke out even before the battle of Wittstock; it was borne thither by Imperialists and Saxon artillerymen. In Gardelegen, where Banner had his head-quarters, 500 people in the parish of St. Nicholas, and 1,205 in the parish of St. Mary, succumbed in the year 1636 to bubonic plague and other diseases, among the dead being 195 soldiers. In Neuhaldensleben, whither many country-people had fled, a plague broke out in May 1636, and spread throughout the entire vicinity; in many days in September, thirty and more bodies were counted, while the incomplete church register records 778 deaths. The total number of deaths is said to have been 2,560.
Typhus fever and other infectious diseases raged furiously in Magdeburg, and, as before, the country south-west of Magdeburg also suffered. In Gross-Salze, which had received many fugitives, 701 persons succumbed in the year 1636 to dysentery and bubonic plague, among them 329 outsiders; the climax of the pestilence occurred in July, when there were 162 deaths. In Egeln, as in Gross-Salze, a plague broke out in May 1636, carrying away 164 persons (134 of them outsiders) in June, 63 natives and 84 outsiders in July. In Wolmirsleben a pestilence raged from April to the middle of September 1636, and carried away 130 people. In Atzendorf typhus fever and bubonic plague broke out in the spring of the year 1636 and carried away 617 persons, inclusive of outsiders. In Wanzleben 600 persons succumbed in the year 1636 to bubonic plague, and 300 to other diseases and starvation. In Aschersleben a pestilence broke out on April 2, 1636, reached a climax in November with 217 deaths, and carried away, all told, 1,125 persons in that year (including 499 outsiders and soldiers). In Zerbst, where infected soldiers were quartered, the epidemic was particularly widespread; of the fugitives in the city 1,500 succumbed. In Wittenberg and vicinity dysentery and typhus fever broke out in the year 1636, and in the fall of that year bubonic plague also made its appearance and lasted well into the following year, carrying away thousands of people. In Merseburg, in the parish of St. Maximus