Chapter VI (2)

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.