When fortified cities are subjected to a long siege the death-rate in them increases considerably; if diseases break out during the siege, they spread beyond expectation and carry away large numbers of people. The greatest enemy of the people in a besieged city is hunger. Since the approaching hostile army causes the inhabitants of the surrounding country to take refuge in the cities, the latter suddenly become overcrowded, moreover with people who are generally quite penniless and have to be provided for by the rest. In former years, when warfare was much more cruel than it is to-day, this was especially the case. Furthermore, the size of the garrison must be rapidly increased, or perhaps the whole of a retreating army, as was the case in Metz, must be quartered in the stronghold. Accordingly, the first step taken by the commander of a fortress must be to ascertain the quantity of provisions on hand, and to work out an appropriate plan for the distribution of them. How the quality of the bread becomes more and more unsatisfactory, and finally reaches the point where the product is scarcely worthy of the name bread; how people are obliged to eat the flesh of horses, dogs, and other animals; how the prices of the necessaries of life soar ad infinitum—all this is so well known that it needs no further exposition. Besides the absence of these necessaries of life, the lack of milk, fats, salt, and vegetables is accompanied by various consequences; very frequently improper and badly prepared food gives rise to a large number of severe cases of intestinal catarrh.
Insufficient nourishment is seldom the direct cause of death; on the other hand, it frequently so weakens people that they are much more subject to sickness, or, if they have already contracted some disease, they are much more likely to die, or, if they recover, to convalesce slowly. Thus Vacher[324] states that typhoid fever, which usually results fatally in one out of four cases, during the siege of Paris carried away no less than forty per cent of those who contracted it; tuberculosis, he says, often acquired an acute form and caused death within a few weeks. Little children present slight resistance to famine. ‘In regard to new-born and one-year-old infants I have observed in certain cases that become more frequent every day, that the effects of insufficient alimentation show themselves in the form of a progressive emaciation, which includes all the tissues of the body and almost always has fatal consequences; oedema of the teguments, anaemia, uncontrollable diarrhoea, and continual plaintive crying on the part of the little patients are the characteristic symptoms of that hunger-fever which actually decimates our infant generation.’
Another result of insufficient nourishment, one which has frequently been observed in besieged strongholds, is the appearance of scurvy.
During sieges, the hygienic measures of precaution, which are absolutely essential to the maintenance of health in cities, can no longer be carried out. If spring-water is secured outside the city for the inhabitants, the besiegers cut off the source of supply; if the water of rivers is used, then filtration plants have to be erected. But even filtration does not prevent the appearance of those infectious diseases the germs of which are carried in water, since for washing purposes the river-water is used just as it is found. The removal of refuse constitutes an extremely difficult problem; the cleaning out of privies is often possible only to a very insufficient extent, especially when the besiegers have advanced very close to the city, and the failure to dispose of garbage necessarily causes large accumulations of dirt and filth in the streets; this was especially the case in former times.
The burying of so many dead bodies, of both men and animals, especially horses, has met in many sieges with serious obstacles;[325] if the ditches intended for a large number of bodies are not dug deep enough, the atmosphere becomes polluted; to burn them is impossible, owing to lack of fuel; and if they are cast into the river, this jeopardizes the health of those living further downstream. During certain sieges in the past, hard conditions have made it necessary to leave corpses and carcases lying in the open, with terrible consequences.
If the siege takes place in the winter, it is very difficult to procure fuel for heating purposes, unless sufficient provision has been made beforehand. In Paris, for example, the inhabitants suffered severely from cold, and to meet the emergency artificial fuel was prepared by mixing stable manure with tar and reducing the mass to solid form under the hydraulic press.
In the following pages we discuss a few sieges which were characterized by severe outbreaks of pestilence.
During the siege of Mantua, which the French carried on from May 30, 1796, to February 3, 1797, war-pestilences raged with fearful severity among both besiegers and besieged. The city lay in an extremely unhealthy region—malaria was ever prevalent and the drinking-water was bad. The intentional flooding of the region and the great heat of the summer of 1796 caused malaria to break out with great severity and to acquire virulent forms that rendered the disease more dangerous than usual. In the latter part of May 1796, the garrison consisted of 18,000 Austrian troops, whose power of resistance had been greatly reduced by hard service from November on, and by exposure to rain and cold with inadequate means of shelter. Besides intermittent fever, both intestinal catarrh and typhus fever made their appearance in July; the latter, at least, was probably the ‘nervous fever’ mentioned by Stegmeyer. Thus as early as the latter part of July there were some 2,000 sick men in the garrison. In August the investment was not yet complete, so that the soldiers did not suffer from lack of food. Notwithstanding this fact, however, the diseases increased in prevalence and caused many deaths; the number of sick men was no less than 6,000. On September 12 the Austrian general, WÜrmser, with about 12,000 men, succeeded in gaining entrance into the city; he brought with him a large number of disabled men who had been wounded in recent fighting, and many of whom succumbed to tetanus and hospital fever. The number of patients now increased to 8,500; as there was no bedding or straw available, the patients were compelled to lie on the bare ground, and the uncleanliness of the hospitals grew worse. When the investment was finally rendered complete in October, it caused a great scarcity of meat, fat, and wine; the number of patients that month was 9,000 and the number of deaths 2,560. These figures, however, are not complete, since they do not include the patients in the houses set aside for troops overcome by exhaustion. Up to this time the weather had been good, but in November rain set in; and while intermittent fever then decreased in prevalence, dysentery raged even more furiously, and typhus fever also broke out in a virulent, quickly fatal form. The supply of food now ran very low, and although there was sufficient bread on hand, horse-flesh was the only meat. To add to the general misery, scurvy made its appearance in November, and all those who contracted it died. The extreme cold compelled the patients to keep their clothes on, and they lay without blankets on the hard floors of the hospital corridors; their number had now increased to 9,500, and 2,400 died in November. In December the misery increased; the cold became more and more intense, the supply of food was almost exhausted, and the wine gave out altogether; scurvy raged in an even more severe and virulent form, being frequently accompanied by copious hemorrhages from various parts of the body. In the hospitals there were 7,354 patients, and 2,021 died in the month of December. In January the acme of misery was reached; the scarcity of food was terrible, and the ravages of scurvy were no less than frightful; 1,968 men in the garrison were carried away in the course of that month. On February 3, 1797, the stronghold was surrendered to the French. The number of patients taken in by the hospitals between September and January exceeded 40,000, and of the garrison, which numbered some 30,000 men, 10,249 (more than one-third of the total) died. FodÉrÉ estimates the total number of deaths in the city of Mantua during the siege at 20,000;[327] regarding the prevalence of diseases and the number of deaths among the civil inhabitants Steegmeyer unfortunately gives us no information.
Danzig, which in the spring of 1807 had passed through a siege of ten weeks, was once more, in the year 1813, from January 11 to November 29, subjected to the horrors of a siege, which for two reasons was even more horrible than the previous one; in the first place, the garrison was badly infected with disease, causing a severe epidemic to rage throughout the city; and in the second place, the defenders of the stronghold, which was most advantageously located to withstand a siege, were national enemies of the inhabitants. Consequently the latter were not only grossly disregarded in the distribution of supplies, but were actually obliged to turn over all they had to the French and then buy it back at exorbitant prices. And while the inhabitants, and toward the end of the siege the soldiers, too, suffered severely from a lack of the necessaries of life, the higher officers and the military officials lived in luxury until the day of the surrender.
Napoleon had assigned the defence of the city to General Rapp, who performed the task with great valour and ability. On the return march from Russia, some 40,000 men of Macdonald’s corps had congregated in Danzig, and 5,000 of them were sent away by Rapp; in the middle of January the total number of men in the garrison, including the military officials, was 35,934, consisting of Frenchmen, Poles, Bavarians, Westphalians, Spaniards, Italians, and Dutchmen. While Macdonald’s corps had fared pretty well, comparatively speaking, in the Russian campaign, the men were all very much exhausted, and furthermore, typhus fever was prevalent among them. As early as the latter part of January, accordingly, the number of sick soldiers was very large; in fact, only about 10,000 men were healthy and able to bear arms. ‘As there were no hospitals, beds, or remedies,’ says Friccius,[328] ‘many died from lack of care, and at the same time infectious diseases broke out and made great havoc. A heap of dead men and horses was a common sight in the streets, and in a short time many thousands of the troops, as well as of the inhabitants, were carried away.’
In January the death-rate remained comparatively low; of the garrison about 400 men died in the course of that month. But in February, which was a very cold month, typhus fever spread abroad with great rapidity, so that toward the end of the month some 130 soldiers died every day; no less than 15,000 men lay sick, and the total number of deaths for the entire month amounted to 2,000. When it began to thaw on February 24, the number of patients and deaths increased still more, so that 4,000 men died in March and 3,000 in April. From April on, the condition of health in the garrison improved, although the number of deaths in the month of May was still no less than 2,000.[329]
As early as February typhus fever had spread to the civil population, which before the siege had numbered some 40,000; a great many civilians, however, had fled from the city before the investment was yet complete. In the months of February and March, according to Blech,[330] some 200–300 persons died every week, ‘including representatives of all classes—physicians, preachers, jurists, merchants, down to the humblest people.’ The pestilence raged most furiously among the civil inhabitants in the latter part of March. ‘Almost every family was in mourning, and many families were wiped out entirely; the best and most estimable young men were carried away in the prime of their lives. Whole families perished, especially in certain streets which the pestilence seemed to have selected for its chief dwelling-place.’[331] These were especially the streets inhabited by the poorer classes.
It was not long before a lack of the necessaries of life began to make itself felt in the city. As early as February 27 the Russians had cut off the supply of water afforded by the Radaune, which fed the wells in the city, and this necessitated dependence upon rain-water. For the purpose of obtaining new supplies of food, a sortie along the Nehrung was undertaken on April 27; and while the enterprise was successful, the only persons who really derived any benefit from it were the higher officers and military officials, who sold butter, milk, and corned beef at exorbitant prices. Thus the well-to-do citizens, at least, were able to secure food by paying an excessive price for it. In May the conditions among the poor became a great deal worse; they were obliged to eat things that were positively disgusting; horse-meat and waste from the breweries were delicacies, while cats and dogs were also devoured. The rations of the soldiers grew smaller and smaller, although there was sufficient grain on hand to keep them supplied with bread. Says Friccius,[332] in regard to a sortie undertaken on June 9, ‘How hungry the troops in the garrison were is indicated by the fact that they cut up every horse that was killed in battle and took the edible parts with them.’
After the conclusion of the armistice, which became known in Danzig on June 10, there was a pause in the siege lasting until August 18; during this time the besiegers brought food to the garrison every five days, but absolutely no provision was made for the civil inhabitants. During the armistice many citizens left the city; indeed the French expelled from the city all persons who were not sufficiently provided with the necessaries of life. At first the Russians allowed the fugitives to pass through their lines, but later on they raised objections, so that a large number of the unfortunate inhabitants were obliged to live in the open fields between the besiegers and the besieged, where many of them died of starvation. In the latter part of September General Rapp allowed some 300 of them, who had managed to keep alive, to return into the city. Blech asserts that the emigration of beggars and others of the poor reduced the population of the city by some 16,000.[333]
In October, lack of the necessaries of life reached a climax, so that rats and mice were eaten. Since the scarcity of provender made it necessary to slaughter almost all the horses, the soldiers were supplied with large quantities of horse-meat. On November 1 the granaries, in which were kept the provisions of the garrison, were destroyed by fire, resulting in the loss of about two-thirds of the provisions. This made it necessary to reduce the soldiers’ bread-rations, and the bread with which they were supplied was made of half-burned flour and of rusks fished out of the stinking Mottlau; ‘it was so disgusting that only ravenous hunger could induce anybody to eat it.’[334]
In consequence of hunger and the unnatural food eaten, the mortality among the civil inhabitants, the number of whom had dwindled down to 16,000, became very high; the number of deaths per week in the month of October was no less than 50–80, to which, according to Blech, must be added the deaths among the poor which were no longer reported. In the first part of November there were some 80–90 deaths per week. On November 29 General Rapp surrendered the city to the Russians and Prussians; but since the conditions of capitulation could not be agreed upon until January 1, 1814, there was an interval of about a month during which the French garrison, but not the civil population, was supplied with food; consequently the death-rate among the citizens remained high. Furthermore, the besiegers, among whom a virulent typhus had been raging since October, communicated the infection to the inhabitants, 107 of whom succumbed to it in the last week of November, 133 in the first week of December, and 138 in the following week. On December 1, permission was obtained to establish a market, and from that time on, the citizens could once more provide themselves with food in a regular way.
The loss of human life inside the besieged stronghold was terrible; of the 35,900 troops in the garrison, 15,736 according to Friccius died in the lazarets; at the time of the capitulation only 16,532 men were left, and of these 1,482 were sick and had to be left in the city. According to Blech, a total of 5,592 civilians died, 1,142 of them in the last three months (October-December) of the year; the number of deaths in December alone was 473. Toward the end of the siege some ninety persons died of starvation.[335]
3. The Siege of Torgau (1813)[336]
On May 10, 1813, when Napoleon had appeared in Saxony, and the King, after considerable hesitation, had decided in his favour, the Saxon garrison of Torgau, at that time a place of 5,000 inhabitants, was replaced by a French army-corps. In the course of the summer large transports of sick soldiers from various lazarets arrived at Torgau, and on July 18 alone 3,000 sick men and 1,000 convalescents came from Dresden. Consequently the number of sick in the stronghold was very large even before the siege began; all public buildings had been converted into lazarets. But even these were not numerous or large enough to accommodate all the patients, who numbered some 6,000 in the month of September, so that the occupants of houses along entire streets were driven out of their homes, which were used for lazarets and barracks. ‘A virulent, putrid fever’ raged in all the lazarets, and at least one-third of the persons who contracted it died; the inhabitants and the Frenchmen quartered in the homes of citizens were at first spared by the disease.
After the battle of Dennewitz (September 6, 1813) the head-quarters of the third and fourth French army-corps was transferred to Torgau, where also numerous fugitives took refuge; at the same time the large French head-quarters from Dresden arrived, so that the size of the garrison was increased by 10,000 men and 5,000 horses. After the battle of Leipzig the stronghold was besieged by the Prussians, and presently the supply of food ran low and the uncleanliness in the streets and houses grew incredibly worse. ‘Then the pestilence began to spread at an alarming rate among the inhabitants and among the Frenchmen quartered in the homes of citizens, so that the entire city of Torgau came to resemble a large, overcrowded lazaret.’[337]
‘The regular lazarets now became veritable hot-beds of misery; they were scarcely able to accommodate the large number of patients, who numbered at least 12,000, and whom it was necessary to place so close together that they almost touched one another. There was a lack of straw and of other necessities, of sick-attendants and physicians, of effective remedies, and especially of order and proper superintendence.’ The patients suffered partly from severe, fetid diarrhoea, and partly from typhus. In the courtyards there were enormous accumulations of dirt and refuse, and the doors leading into many of the sick-rooms could scarcely be opened owing to the collections of foul matter which covered the floor ankle-deep; in order to reach the sick it was necessary to wade through this and to climb over dead bodies. Absolutely no thought was given to keeping the rooms warm. ‘Thus it is quite natural that among these horrible surroundings the slightest wound, the most insignificant indisposition, could easily have a fatal termination, and that it was like sentencing a man to death to bring him to the lazaret.’ The number of deaths exceeded 8,000 in the month of November alone.
Equally terrible were the conditions in the other parts of the city; all the private houses were overcrowded with patients and filled with dirt. A sickening odour permeated the atmosphere; in the ditches around the fortress and in every corner of the city lay dead horses, rotting straw sacks, ragged uniforms, and even human corpses. Refuse of the worst kind was piled up in the streets, often as high as the second story. ‘At this time’, says Lehmann, ‘Torgau looked more like a lazaret than a city inhabited by healthy persons; for who would have been able to find a house in which there were no persons suffering from nerve-fever? Parlours, bedrooms, halls, stables, kitchens, and cellars—all were filled with patients.’ The barracks and guard-rooms resembled hospitals. In a few weeks more than 600 inhabitants died; entire families were wiped out by the epidemic, and there was scarcely one which was not mourning the loss of one of its members.
Up to the beginning of December the number of patients steadily increased; in the lazarets alone, 300 soldiers died every day.
The terrors of the bombardment had a very disastrous effect upon the inhabitants of the city, since it compelled them to live in damp, unhealthy, infected cellars. Not until the latter part of December did the epidemic begin to abate and to lose, at the same time, its virulent character; the arrival of very cold weather, as well as the diminution of the number of people, and the fact that the infection had practically run its course among the inhabitants and the garrison, were at least partly responsible for this abatement; furthermore, there was now less crowding, and it became possible to establish better order.
The lack of system in the French lazarets is shown by the fact that the authorities were never once able to give an account of the number of persons that died in them. From grave-diggers’ records and church registers Richter managed to compile the following table of statistics indicating the number of deaths:[338]
| French soldiers. | Saxon soldiers. | Civil inhabitants. | Total. |
| January-August (1813) | | | 222 | |
| September | 1,107 | 64 | 43 | 1,214 |
| October | 4,803 | 36 | 66 | 4,905 |
| November | 8,209 | 3 | 228 | 8,440 |
| December | 4,886 | | 258 | 5,144 |
| January 1–10 (1814) | 649 | | 83 | 732 |
| January 11–31 | 314 | | 91 | 405 |
| February | 400 | | 79 | 479 |
| March | 100 | | 52 | 152 |
According to this table there died, between September and January 10, 19,654 French soldiers, 103 Saxon soldiers, and 678 civilians. But Richter says in regard to the above figures: ‘There is no doubt, however, that the figures pertaining to the French soldiers are much too small, since they include only those that were actually buried by the grave-diggers in public burial-grounds. All those who died in private houses, in the tÊte-de-pont, in the various forts, in the lunettes, or in any of the outworks of the fortress are not included; their number was by no means small, and many of them were buried unceremoniously by citizens or by their comrades, while large numbers of bodies were left lying in the open.’ In the month of May it was impossible to find a grave-digger to bury the heaps of corpses, which were consequently thrown in masses into the Elbe; this of course interfered with the operation of the floating mills along the river. Nor are the bodies disposed of in this way included in the above table. Accordingly, Richter estimates the total number of deaths among the French soldiers at between 29,000 and 30,000 men.
The pestilence continued to rage even after the surrender of the stronghold, and did not begin to abate until the latter part of January. Although the Prussian troops were not quartered in the city, and entered it only in the day-time, the pestilence nevertheless spread to them and carried away more than 300 men in the course of three months. Not until the end of February did the pestilence among the civil inhabitants begin to abate; the mortality was still high in March, but in April it sank to normal again.
According to Richter, two-thirds of the patients in the military lazaret were suffering from ‘colliquative, dysenteric diarrhoea’, and only one-third from ‘true typhus’, whereas among the civil inhabitants the latter was by far the more common. There were two forms of diarrhoea observed; it appeared either as an acute attack of dysentery, which rarely lasted longer than two weeks and then terminated in either death or recovery, or else as a chronic, dysenteric diarrhoea, which caused general weakness and finally death.
Typhus fever began always with a frequently recurring chill, and with a violent headache and general indisposition; this was followed by a stage of dry fever, accompanied by stupor, dizziness, and often wild delirium; as a rule the first few days were characterized by obstinate constipation, and bleeding at the nose was very common. Later on, somnolence manifested itself, and the original constipation changed to a copious, fetid diarrhoea. Petechiae appeared frequently, but not invariably; at first small, bright-red spots showed themselves, and later on they assumed a darker colour, grew larger, and finally turned black. Their size varied considerably; sometimes they were the size of a pin-head, while often they were from one to one-and-a-half centimetres in diameter. Most of the patients died between the tenth and fifteenth days; but if the disease progressed favourably, signs of improvement usually showed themselves suddenly on the fourteenth or fifteenth day; as a rule, convalescence was of short duration.
The two forms of ‘nerve-fever’ mentioned by Richter doubtless include various other diseases. That many cases of typhus fever were among the fever patients may be inferred from the fact that the disease was very prevalent among the French troops, and also from Richter’s description; he expressly mentions the sudden appearance of the disease, the initial chill, the remission of the fever in the third week, and the rapid convalescence—all of them characteristic signs of typhus fever. Moreover, typhoid fever doubtless prevailed more or less extensively. Richter describes ‘a pituitous modification of typhus’, with a lingering development;[339] the crisis always came late, frequently not until the sixth or seventh week, and was invariably uncertain, so that convalescence was very slow and often interrupted by relapses. Deuteropathic complications were of almost regular occurrence. There can be no doubt that we have to do here with a good description of typhoid fever, which revealed its presence chiefly among the newly-conscripted young French soldiers.
Regarding the enormous loss of life caused by the epidemic in Torgau, Richter, who was a Prussian military physician, says: ‘The devastation that it caused among the Frenchmen, and unfortunately among the inhabitants of the ill-fated city as well, was indeed terrible; in fact there is happily scarcely a parallel to it in the history of the world. One may safely say that the misery experienced by the French troops throughout the entire course of that disastrous war reached its climax inside the walls of Torgau. The French lazarets in the city represented scenes of horror such as repel human nature, and such as one must actually witness in order to appreciate fully their dreadfulness.’
The terrible devastation caused by typhus fever in the strongholds along the Vistula, Elbe, and Rhine, which were so valorously defended by French generals in the years 1813–14, excited general consternation. Wittmann[340] furnishes a very accurate description of the misery undergone in the besieged cities, especially the city of Mayence. First he comments on the scarcity of supplies, observing that the vicissitudes of war can never be foreseen; furthermore, he asserts that the commanders of fortresses, when they anticipated a siege, purposely kept the inhabitants in uncertainty about it. In the case of Mayence, Napoleon ordered the city to be provisioned after the battle of Leipzig. Some 2,000 oxen were collected, and most of them were kept in the villages surrounding Mayence; but when the Allies crossed the Rhine the oxen were all quickly driven into the city, where they grew lean owing to lack of provender, and died of rinderpest in such large numbers that it became necessary to slaughter them all and salt the meat. This was done in such a careless way that a large part of the meat was spoiled; even after the stronghold surrendered, some of this salted meat was still on hand, and it was so rotten that it had to be destroyed. The citizens had learned of the danger too late, and numerous unscrupulous citizens bought up all the important necessaries of life and then took advantage of the situation by raising the prices so high that only the wealthy could procure food. Lack of good bread, which had been so scarce during the previous siege of Mayence (1793), does not seem to have been so severely felt in the siege of 1813. Particularly noticeable was the want of fuel, so that many soldiers froze to death in the exposed guard-rooms of the outworks. Legumes, especially peas, could not be thoroughly cooked, so that it was frequently necessary to throw them away. The supply of good fat, as well as of fresh vegetables, soon ran out, while the great quantity of alcoholic beverages stored up in Mayence had a very detrimental effect. Very inadequate provision was made for the sheltering of the soldiers; inasmuch as the siege took place in the winter, they could not camp in the open, and the barracks were not large or numerous enough to accommodate them. Consequently the officers were quartered in the homes of the wealthier citizens, one officer in each house, while the troops were housed in large numbers in the often insanitary homes of the poorer people. This of course greatly favoured the dissemination of infectious diseases.
According to Wittmann, there was not a single trace of an infectious disease in Mayence in September 1813. In October the field-lazarets of the army were transferred from Leipzig to the West, and most of them passed through Mayence; in the first part of November, moreover, the field-army itself passed through the city on its return march; thus sick and healthy soldiers conveyed typhus fever into the stronghold. ‘In the vicinity of the hospitals and churches, where sick soldiers were congregated, in the streets through which these doomed victims passed, and in the houses in which they were quartered together with healthy men, or into which they had crept from sheer inability to go further, contagious typhus broke out first and with the greatest severity.’[341] Dr. Petit, the commissary sent out by the government in Paris, did not have the courage to oppose the will of Marshal Marmont, who was in chief command, and so he sought to pacify the inhabitants by means of notices in the papers to the effect that the prevailing disease was neither epidemic nor infectious, and was only contagious typhus.
After the investment was complete, typhus fever caused terrible devastation throughout the city. When the siege began, Mayence had a garrison of some 30,000 men, while the civil inhabitants numbered about 24,500; to the latter, however, must be added a considerable number of refugees from the surrounding country. The bad hospital arrangements, as always happened at that time, greatly helped to spread the disease in Mayence. According to a report made out by two French physicians and reproduced by Wittmann, the air in the hospitals was terrible; every bed was occupied by two patients, while the straw under them and the blankets over them were never changed or washed, so that they must necessarily have constituted a source of infection. A report by Kerckhoffs[342] regarding the Mayence hospitals describes even worse conditions:
I was appointed to serve in the hospital established in the Municipal Octroi Building, and the first time that I went there I found the living and the dead, the wounded and the sick, scattered in confusion all over the place. The sick were stretched out on the floor, without even straw under them, covered with ordure. I was obliged to pick my way on tip-toe in order not to sink up to the ankles in filth. I saw sick men lying beside the dead bodies of their comrades. In effect, there were so many of them that they were lying on top of one another. In some of the rooms the windows were closed, so that no air could enter; in other rooms there was neither glass nor boarding in the doors or windows, notwithstanding the extreme cold. The sick men told me that they had been in that same position for two, three, and even four days, without having had a drop of water.
The soldiers under arrest, who were compelled to clean out the hospitals, all died, no more sick-attendants were to be found, and a large number of physicians perished in the performance of their duties; all the persons employed in the hospital entirely neglected their duties, and most of them were drunk all the time, since large quantities of wine were on hand for the patients.
The result was that the epidemic gradually attained to enormous dimensions. ‘The infection’, says Wittmann,[343] ‘carried away all the grave-diggers one by one, and it was impossible to find anybody who was willing to do that dangerous work. Thousands of dead bodies of citizens and soldiers lay for weeks in front of the MÜnstertor, where they were piled up like logs pending burial.’ In December and January the epidemic reached its climax; after that it gradually abated, but did not come to an end until May 3, 1814, when the siege terminated and the Allies entered the city.
In the period between November 1, 1813, and May 3, 1814, 7,000 deaths among the soldiers are recorded in the civil register of the city; according to statements of the grave-diggers, some 10,000 or 11,000 more soldiers were buried, whose names were not entered in the register for the reason that they could not be ascertained; nor do the above figures include the number of deaths in the stronghold of Kastel on the other side of the Rhine. Of the civil inhabitants, 2,445 (about one-tenth of the population) died; a large number of physicians contracted the disease, and four physicians and five surgeons succumbed to it.
5. The Siege of Paris (1870–1)[344]
After the battle of Sedan the Germans immediately began to march toward Paris; on September 15, 1870, the first cavalrymen appeared before the capital, and on September 19 the investment was complete.
An exhaustive account by H. Sueur and a large number of other reports offer us very full information regarding the condition of health in Paris during the siege, since the administrative apparatus never stopped running. The approach of the German armies caused numerous well-to-do citizens to leave the city; some went south, some to Switzerland, and some to England. Sueur estimates their number from the reports of the railroad companies at 300,000. On the other hand, a large number of the inhabitants of the surrounding country sought refuge in the city; their number is estimated at 180,000. Furthermore, the size of the garrison was considerably increased; the number of men in the regular army on November 4, 1870, is estimated at 236,941, and this does not include 8,000 men in the First Division of the First Corps. To the above, moreover, must be added the number of soldiers who died between the beginning and the end of the siege. Thus the number of men in the regular army at the beginning of the siege was some 246,000; of these some 56,000 were already in the city in the middle of the summer, while the remaining 190,000 arrived later. Accordingly, the total number of people in the city shortly before the siege began was increased by 70,000. Legoyt estimated the population of the city on July 1, 1870, at 1,890,000, so that on the opening day of the investment there were 1,960,000 (in round numbers, 2,000,000) people in Paris. The arrival of the 190,000 soldiers altered the composition of the population, since the increase augmented only the number of males between the ages of 20 and 40.
A severe epidemic of small-pox raged in Paris, as stated above, even before the siege took place. In the first part of the siege, moreover, the disease raged with even greater fury in the city, since most of the young newly-enlisted mobile guards had never been vaccinated. The maximum of deaths caused by it were reported between November 6 and November 27. We have already described the course of the small-pox epidemic in Paris.[345] It was influenced neither by hunger nor by cold, but developed chiefly for the reason that it was impossible to congregate and isolate the large number of unvaccinated and susceptible persons.
Typhoid fever, dysentery, and diarrhoea, because of the unfavourable conditions brought about by the siege, became very widespread and virulent. Whereas in the year 1869 there were 630 deaths caused by typhoid fever, during the siege of 1870 no less than 3,475 persons succumbed to that disease. Dupinet[346] thinks that the above number is too small, because the disease was often not recognized, and pneumonia, a common complication, was entered as the cause of death. Inasmuch as typhoid fever was endemic in Paris, and as the native inhabitants had acquired immunity by recovery from an attack in the early part of their lives, those who were most severely afflicted by the disease were chiefly the soldiers in the army and the refugees from the surrounding country. The largest number of deaths was reported in the twentieth week of the siege, i.e. between January 14 and 20.[347] No less than 375 persons succumbed to typhoid fever in the course of that week, whereas in the corresponding week of the previous year only sixteen deaths had been reported. The largest number of deaths caused by dysentery and diarrhoea in a single week was reported somewhat later; the limited prevalence of these diseases during the siege is indicated by the fact that in the half-year 1869–70 the number of deaths caused by them was never more than twenty per week. From statistics compiled by Sueur we have arranged the following table (p. 323), which also includes the deaths caused by bronchitis and pneumonia, but not the victims buried on the battle-fields, of whom there were some 3,000.
The table indicates the gradual diminution of the food-supply. In December the quality of the bread grew worse and worse; white bread could no longer be baked, and in its place an almost inedible form of brown bread was made out of bran, wheat, rye, rice, barley, and oats. Particularly noticeable was the lack of good fats, making it necessary to prepare foods with a bad-tasting tallow that was sold under the name of ‘Beurre de Paris’. Since the cattle had to be slaughtered (those that were not killed died of various diseases), there was very soon a great scarcity of milk, making it very difficult to feed infants.[348]
Several persons have maintained that the extreme cold exerted considerable influence upon the death-rate; and a glance at the two columns in the table indicating the number of deaths caused by pneumonia and bronchitis would seem to justify this contention. How great the difference was, as compared with normal years, will be obvious when we call attention to the fact that, whereas in the twenty-second week of the siege (January 28–February 3) 627 persons succumbed to bronchitis, in the preceding year only seventy-six deaths were caused by that disease between January 30 and February 5, and that, whereas from 465 to 468 persons succumbed to pneumonia between January 21 and February 18, 1871, the number of deaths caused by that disease in the corresponding period of the previous year varied from 90 to 119 per week.
According to the unanimous verdict of the Paris physicians, typhus fever did not make its appearance during the siege.
Scurvy broke out, but did not become at all widespread; sporadic cases of the disease were observed among the civil inhabitants, while in the prisons and hospitals it was somewhat more prevalent. Delpech[349] attributes the appearance of the disease to the lack of fresh vegetables, which were very expensive and could not be given out in the public establishments. Among the soldiers the disease broke out only in Fort BicÊtre, the garrison in which consisted of 800 marines, of whom some seventy or seventy-five contracted it. None of them were given any salted meat, and Grenet[350] contends that the outbreak was caused by the lack of light and air in the small casemates, and by arduous service, especially in the night. But here, too, the real cause was probably to be found in the lack of fresh vegetables, which Grenet does not mention.
The death-rate in Paris during the siege was about three times as high as normal. Sueur has estimated that in the years 1867–9 the mortality in the twenty-eight weeks corresponding with those in the above table was 13·1 per 1,000 inhabitants, whereas in the twenty-eight weeks of the siege the mortality was 38·6 per 1,000.
Port Arthur was besieged by the Japanese from July 30, 1904, to January 2, 1905—a period of 156 days. Whereas, as stated in the last chapter, the condition of health in the Russian army was good, the sanitary conditions in Port Arthur during the siege were very bad, since the supply of provisions that had been laid in proved to be insufficient.[351] The offer made on August 16 by General Nogi and Admiral Togo, granting all the women, children (under 16 years), ecclesiastics, members of the diplomatic corps and military and naval attachÉs of foreign powers permission to leave the stronghold, was refused by General StÖssel. As early as August 5 horse-meat began to be distributed;[352] from September 17 on the troops were supplied four times a week with horse-meat, since there was no other fresh or canned meat available. At this time almost everything in the city was consumed, though the Chinese secretly brought rice, eggs, and other things, on boats from Chufoo. After September 28 the soldiers were given meat only twice a week (one-half of a pound of horse-meat or one-third of a can of preserved meat). Regarding conditions up to October 20 we are informed by the report of the Russian General Medical Staff:[353] ‘The supply of food ran lower and lower; beef gave out very early, only a small quantity of canned meat was left, and even the portions of horse-meat had to be dealt out very sparingly, as we had very important use for horses in transporting ammunition, water, food, &c., to the various positions. In the city it became more and more difficult every day to procure food; meat, if by any chance a small quantity was marketed, was sold in the stores for one and one-half roubles per pound. A chicken cost twelve roubles, a goose twenty roubles, an egg one rouble, a pound of onions one rouble, a pound of horse-meat one half-rouble.’
In November all the soldiers were given was horse-meat; only the sick received canned meat. The supply of food in the possession of private individuals was exhausted, while garlic and vegetables had given out altogether.
On September 19 the Japanese captured the redoubts controlling one of the aqueducts that supplied Port Arthur with water; there was however another aqueduct, and, furthermore, wells were bored and a plant for distilling seawater was put into operation. The statement of the Russian General Staff that there was at no time a serious scarcity of water is not confirmed in Olga von Baumgarten’s diary, which frequently refers in plaintive terms to the lack of drinking-water in the lazarets.[354]
During the summer the condition of health among the Russian troops was comparatively good;[355] on August 26 there were 132 officers and 5,661 men in the lazarets. In the first part of October typhoid fever broke out in Port Arthur, where it was endemic, and before long an epidemic of such severity was raging in the city that it was difficult to find places in which to shelter the patients. There were also a great many cases of dysentery. Owing to the lack of preserved meat and vegetables, scurvy also made its appearance; the first cases of the disease were observed early in October. In the latter part of that month there were in the lazarets 450 typhoid-fever patients, 855 dysentery patients, and 167 scurvy patients. In addition to these diseases, cases of night-blindness (inability to see after dusk) were observed; the latter disease is quite common among Russian country-people, being caused by bad nourishment.
In December the garrison was completely exhausted. Scurvy had become more and more widespread, and between the fourteenth and twenty-seventh of that month 71 officers and 1,790 men had been committed to the lazarets. On the day of the surrender (January 2, 1905) the number of men in the Russian garrison was 32,400, and of these 6,458 were lying sick or wounded in the lazarets.[356] Of the remaining 25,942 men, 13,207 were incapacitated; thus the number of healthy men (besides 2,193 marines) in the garrison at the time of the surrender was only 12,735. Regarding the loss of life during the siege we find no information in the report of the General Staff. The number of soldiers in the city (excluding the officers and officials) was 41,780 at the beginning and 32,400 at the end of the siege. No further information regarding the condition of health among the civil inhabitants of Port Arthur is obtainable.
