A plague was borne into Silesia in July 1623, and in Bunzlau an average of thirty persons per week died; of 760 deaths in the year, 640 were due to the pestilence. Many adults fled to near-by villages and died there. In the following year a plague broke out again in Bunzlau, but as only 130 people died there in 1625, it seemed as though the pestilence was over. In September and October, 1626, however, it broke out again, and of 228 deaths that occurred that year, 149 were directly attributable to the plague. In July 1624 it appeared in Friedeberg and carried away 51 persons. In Löwenberg it began in September 1624; the citizens fled from the city and set up tents in the fields, but in spite of this, from forty to fifty people died every day, and the total number of deaths for the year was some 3,000. In the year 1625 the pestilence was very widespread in Silesia—Hirschberg, Löwenberg, Herzogswaldau, Liegnitz, Neumarkt, Waldenburg, Neisse, and other places were attacked. In Breslau ‘head-disease’ raged from June to the end of that year, carrying away 3,000 people; 1626 was also a year of pestilence for Breslau. In Neustadt (Governmental District of Oppeln) a pestilence raged with particular fury from May till September 1625; for the years 1624 to 1627 the deaths were respectively 198, 420, 175, and 472. On August 21, 1626, an army of 6,000 Imperialists under Count von Merode encamped at Goldberg; most of them were infected with disease; and after their departure a plague broke out with such severity that a large part of the population died.
During this time, from 1625 to 1630, when epidemics were raging almost everywhere in North Germany, South Germany also suffered, since diseases were often brought there by Imperialist troops and wandering rabble. In the year 1626 Württemberg alone lost 28,000 people in consequence of plagues.[31] A pestilence in Augsburg (1628) became very widespread and caused 9,000 deaths. In the year 1629 ‘head-disease’ broke out in Württemberg and Alsace. During the isolation of the city of Hanau (from December 6, 1629, to March 12, 1630) by the Imperialist commander Witzleben, a pestilential disease, which the soldiers had brought with them, broke out and caused many deaths throughout the entire vicinity.
III. The War Years 1630–40
1. North Germany until the Peace of Prague
In the year 1630 began in Saxony—in the wake of marching troops—that deadly pestilence which soon spread over all Germany and was chiefly responsible for the enormous loss of human life there in the course of the Thirty Years’ War. We may safely assume that bubonic plague was the most common disease, although both typhus fever and dysentery were of frequent occurrence. In the years 1630–1 the pestilence was confined for the most part to North Germany; the Electorate of Saxony suffered the worst, 934,000 people, according to the reports, having died there in consequence of the war and of diseases.[32]
The pestilence broke out in Leipzig in October 1630, and carried away 301 persons; it was borne there presumably by two foreign orange-pedlars. In October of the following year it broke out again, when the Imperialists, after besieging the city for several weeks, on September 13 had finally captured it. The number of deaths in the entire year was 1,754. In the year 1632 Leipzig was once more the scene of grave warlike events, and was compelled to live through a second siege by Wallenstein; the plague began in June, became very widespread in August, and from then till October caused a great many deaths, the total number for the year amounting to 1,390. In August 1633, Leipzig was again besieged, and this likewise caused the outbreak of a plague which lasted until December and carried away 761 persons; in 1634 it was apparently over, for of 306 deaths that are recorded for that year, only 24 were attributable to the plague. In the years 1636–7, however, it reappeared with great severity throughout the entire city. The country surrounding Leipzig suffered a great deal in the year 1633, which was the worst plague-year that Saxony passed through. In the year 1632 Altenburg was occupied by the Swedes, who were infected with some pestilential disease, the germ of which they left behind them when they withdrew on January 13, 1633. The disease spread rapidly, acquired a virulent character, and carried away 2,104 persons, among them many foreign refugees. Grimma and Borna were severely attacked in 1633, while Wurzen suffered less severely.
The country north-east of Leipzig suffered severely from plagues in 1631. After the battle of Breitenfeld (September 15, 1631) most of the wounded were brought to Eilenburg, where in a few weeks a plague broke out and spread so rapidly that 300 people died in the month of October alone. After an abatement during the winter, it recommenced in 1632; the number of deaths for that year was 670, although only 492 of them were due to the plague, while the disease did not entirely disappear until 1636. The city of Belgern, after it was plundered by Holk’s troops on October 1, 1632, was visited by a plague; also Dommitsch, Oschatz (where 563 deaths occurred in 1631, and many more in 1633–4), and Ortrand (where there were 800 deaths in the years 1631–3). Plagues raged very frequently in Leisnig, Colditz, and Mittweida, and in the villages and towns surrounding them. In February 1631, Palatinate, Imperialist, and League troops quartered in Leisnig, and the result was that ‘head-disease’ and bubonic plague became very widespread; in the following year they reappeared, causing 443 deaths, while many thousands are said to have died in the country districts. The same was true of the year 1633. A pestilence broke out in Colditz in the year 1631, and in the following year ‘soldier’s disease’ (typhus fever) was brought there by Swedish troops, while in 1633 bubonic plague caused 567 deaths. Mittweida suffered from plague in the years 1631–4, 243 persons dying there in the year 1634. In the year 1630 a very severe plague broke out in Freiberg; 1,147 people died in the course of the year, 1,000 of them in consequence of the disease. In the following year there were 124 more deaths. In the autumn of 1632 pestilence raged so furiously that several thousand people died in a short time—about one-third of the population. Most of the bodies were buried secretly, only about 3,000 regular funerals taking place. In the year 1633 there were 1,632 interments, not including those buried in secret. The plague affected the entire vicinity of Freiberg and spared scarcely a single village; many places were left empty and deserted.
In Chemnitz 1,234 interments for the year 1632 are recorded in the church register, and in the following year the plague raged even more furiously: almost every house was attacked, and the number of deaths amounted to 2,500. In Glauchau and vicinity, as in all Saxony, 1633 was the worst year; 964 people died there in that year. The plague raged most furiously from August to November, and lasted until 1634; many bodies were found in the open fields. In the neighbouring Waldenburg 392 people died in a few weeks in 1633, in Lichtenstein 370, in Thurm 400. In Marienberg, a village lying at the foot of the mountains, 1,000 people succumbed in the year 1633 to typhus fever; the plague spread into the Erzgebirge and caused 2,300 deaths in Schneeberg and 157 deaths in the adjacent Neustädtle. A plague had already broken out in Zwickau in 1632, and in the first part of 1633 it became so severe that 1,500 people died in two months in the summer of that year. The city was full of sick people and dead bodies, and the number of reported deaths for the year 1633 was 1,897; but the total number of deaths, excluding the soldiers, is said to have been no less than 6,000. Entire streets were devastated. Many of the inhabitants fled to near-by villages, and thus spread the infection. Crimmitschau was visited by a plague in 1630 (601 deaths), and again in 1633 (409 deaths); 92 families in the last-named year were completely wiped out. Many neighbouring places were also attacked; there were 700 deaths in Werdau, 300 in Steinpleiss, 150 in Königswalde, &c.
The invasion of Holk caused Vogtland to suffer terribly in August of the year 1632, while his second invasion in the summer of 1633 resulted in an even worse outbreak of disease. In Reichenbach and vicinity, typhus fever, bubonic plague, and dysentery prevailed in the year 1633; at