In Fulda, which was forced to take in thousands of sick soldiers, typhus fever soon began to spread rapidly, as it also did in the country surrounding the city. In Giessen, where a Russian field-lazaret for 1,800–2,000 men was erected, the epidemic soon spread to the civil inhabitants. At Hanau the French retreat was opposed by General Wrede with an army of 50,000 Bavarians and Austrians, a much smaller number than the French had. The two days of fighting that ensued (October 30 and 31, 1813) caused the pestilence to develop murderously. Kopp has given us a good description of this epidemic in Hanau.[150] Since the beginning of the war the city had always had a military hospital, which lay outside the city. During the battles in Saxony the number of sick and wounded increased, so that it was necessary to erect a second lazaret within the city. Many sick-attendants and sub-surgeons contracted typhus fever, which was prevalent in the hospitals, and several cases also occurred in the city, especially among people who quartered soldiers for money in their homes; many soldiers were thus crowded together in small rooms, and among them were a great many convalescents from Saxon hospitals. The infectious nature of the disease and its consequent dangerousness was shown by the fact that as a rule entire families gradually contracted it, although the epidemic was confined to individual houses. The engagement at Hanau, from which the French emerged victorious, resulted in the unfortunate city being stormed and plundered. ‘Even while the battle was going on,’ says Kopp, ‘a corps of the French army scattered throughout Hanau. This corps had brought with it from Saxony the germ of infection; for the region around Dresden could be looked upon as the great breeding-place where, in view of the enormous assemblage of people representing so many nations, and owing to the concurrence of so many unusual factors, the soil was uncommonly fertile for pestilential diseases.’ After the engagement a multitude of French prisoners, greatly weakened by hardships and hunger, came to the city. The dissemination of typhus fever was especially helped along by the fact that many poor inhabitants engaged in looting on the battlefield, and took home with them the knapsacks and other effects of the dead. The clothing of the dead came into the possession of those who were charged with burying them, and later got into the hands of the poorest families in the city and in the neighbouring villages. ‘I often entered the houses of poor people,’ Kopp goes on to say, ‘and found the entire family suffering from typhus fever, and on the walls of the low sick-room the uniforms, shirts, and other effects of the dead soldiers would still be hanging.’ The result was that the number of patients greatly increased after the battle, and in less than two weeks an epidemic began to develop; at first it was rather mild, but later on it carried away large numbers of