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.’