Chapter III · THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR (continued 2)
Reading edition
4. Italy was the scene of severe pestilences in the years 1629–31; according to Ozanam they were borne there by German troops, and according to Häser by French troops. At all events the outbreak occurred in connexion with the war which France was waging in Mantua against Austria and Spain over the succession. According to a Venetian physician, Grossi, the specific disease was not bubonic plague; Häser,[49] however, assumes that both typhus fever and bubonic plague occurred. Lammert seems to think that camp-fever in Upper Italy had little to do with the high mortality. Ozanam mentions buboes, plague-sores, inflammation of the salivary glands, and black and violet 75petechiae. Death is said to have occurred in from one to seven days. Brescia was first attacked; after the battle of Villabona (May 26, 1629), the pestilence, conveyed by retreating Venetian troops, spread throughout Upper and Central Italy. In Verona the number of deaths was 32,895, in Milan 86,000, in Venice (1630) 45,489, (1631) 94,164, in Mantua 25,000. In the territory of the Venetian Republic 500,000 persons are said to have succumbed to various pestilential diseases. Genoa, Turin, Padua, Bologna, Lucca, Florence, Parma, and other cities were also attacked. Regarding the outbreak of pestilence in Milan, Ozanam gives us no further information.[50] In October and November isolated instances of disease occurred among people who had acquired articles from German soldiers. Strict measures of precaution (burning of all effects, and quarantining of all persons who had come in contact with infected people) prevented the pestilence from spreading. But during the Carnival these measures were carried out less vigorously, and the result was that in the latter part of March 1630 a pestilence broke out in various quarters of the city. Accordingly, two more lazarets and 800 straw huts were erected outside the city, and shelter for relatives of the sick was provided. Notwithstanding this, the pestilence spread to such an extent that some 3,500 persons died every day. In Florence, Grand Duke Ferdinand II adopted energetic measures against the dissemination of the disease; infected people, with or against their will, were taken to the Hospital of San Bonifacio, where the physicians themselves were obliged to remain. Recovered patients were held in quarantine, and their clothes and other effects were burned. Some 9,000 persons are said to have succumbed to the pestilence in Florence.
5. In England typhus fever repeatedly broke out after the year 1622. In the spring of the year 1643 it appeared in the parliamentary army and in the royal garrison during 76the siege of Reading. The disease, which is described by Thomas Willis, spread from there to Oxford and the surrounding country.[51]
VI. A General Review of the Loss of Human Life in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War
Even if it is impossible to give an accurate numerical account of the losses due to pestilence in the course of the Thirty Years’ War, we have seen in a general way how epidemics of dysentery, typhus fever, and bubonic plague followed at the heels of armies, how they were borne from place to place, and how the devastation of the country caused by the war led to an absolute dearth of the necessaries of life, and thereby helped the pestilences to spread. We have mentioned only those places regarding which we have specific information, and they can be regarded only as examples of how these pestilences appeared; as a matter of fact, however, conditions were very much the same in all parts of the country. At the same time these examples show satisfactorily that the great depopulation of Germany during the Thirty Years’ War was chiefly caused by severe epidemics of typhus fever and bubonic plague.
It will be of interest to assemble the figures (such as have been recorded) relating to the number of deaths that occurred in a few of the larger cities during the Thirty Years’ War. We include Basel among those cities, since, being situated close to the border of that part of Germany where the war was carried on during two rather long periods, it was necessarily attacked by the prevalent pestilences. At the same time Basel affords an example of how quickly these pestilences disappeared from the cities, even in the seventeenth century, if external conditions permitted the authorities to take the necessary measures of prevention and precaution, and if the cities were not constantly being reinfected. We 77give the total number of deaths, and merely remark that the population in all German cities in the course of the Thirty Years’ War decreased considerably. In the case of Leipzig, Dresden, and Frankfurt-on-the-Main the still-births are included, but not in the case of Augsburg, Basel, and Strassburg. As a rule the country-people who fled to the cities are not included among the dead; only in the case of Strassburg, and perhaps also in that of Breslau for the year 1633, are they included.
The total loss of human life in the Thirty Years’ War can be estimated only approximately. The statement attributed to Lammert, that the population of Germany, which amounted to sixteen or seventeen millions before the war, had dwindled down to four millions after the war, is perhaps an exaggeration. Other estimates state that Germany lost one-half of its population. In the case of a few states we have more exact figures, which probably approach more closely to the actual loss. Thus the electorate of Saxony, which was much larger in area than the modern kingdom of Saxony, in the years 1631–2 is said to have lost some 934,000 persons. The population of Bohemia is said to have decreased during the Thirty Years’ War from three millions to 780,000. In Bavaria 80,000 families are said to have been wiped out. The population of Württemberg decreased from 444,800 in the year 1622 to 97,300. The population of Hesse decreased by about one-quarter. So much, however, is sure: that in the regions where the war was carried on for several years the population decreased by far more than one-half. The most positive proof of this is afforded by the hundreds of burned-down and unrebuilt houses found in so many German cities, and the numerous unpeopled, or almost unpeopled, places which Germany had to show at the end of the war.
78
Deaths (1618–48).
Year. Leipzig.[52] Dresden.[53] Breslau.[54] Augsburg.[55] Frankfurt.[56] Strassburg.[57] Basel.[58]
1618 422 400 1,205 1,354 625 1,343 535
1619 569 332 1,313 1,485 544 1,258 257
1620 477 472 1,456 1,667 670 996 259
1621 613 491 1,652 1,517 674 1,019 352
1622 580 381 1,045 1,959 1,785 4,388 450
1623 500 421 1,050 1,875 725 1,738 336
1624 812 411 1,260 1,370 955 1,491 297
1625 718 481 3,000 1,392 1,871 1,350 297
1626 1,268 740 1,874 2,440 963 2,590 330
1627 537 412 1,227 2,494 773 1,669 266
1628 388 469 1,020 3,611 680 1,513 527
1629 506 398 1,116 1,265 832 1,786 2,656
1630 881 480 1,156 909 927 1,425 220
1631 1,754 844 1,795 859 1,132 1,383 221
1632 2,789 3,129 1,395 3,485 2,900 2,675 284
1633 1,445 4,585 13,231 3,364 762 5,546 456
1634 306 721 1,010 4,664 3,512 2,115
1635 603 597 949 6,243 6,943 560
1636 1,218 594 873 790 2,301 600
1637 4,229 1,897 1,060 823 3,152 424
1638 552 531 863 638 1,079 527
1639 955 1,845 928 674 948 1,923 515
1640 469 935 1,273 586 1,034 239
1641 482 525 1,088 887 735 713 195
1642 1,080 601 1,343 593 883 680 242
1643 1,034 1,041 1,332 638 523 532
1644 604 489 1,570 659 491 707 337
1645 458 532 1,133 758 678 220
1646 331 481 1,042 1,488 774 651 205
1647 403 471 1,273 1,338 662 573 238
1648 469 606 1,111 1,208 575 643 235
79