After the Russians crossed the Balkan Peninsula in the summer of 1829, Adrianople, which was reached on August 12, 1829, was free from plague, and it remained free until the end of the war. In the first part of November, however, the plague broke out there in the large old barrack which had been converted into a hospital and had become greatly overcrowded. Patients, especially persons suffering from dysentery, had been sent there from all sides, so that their number had increased on August 17 to 1,616, on August 27 to 3,666, and on September 1 to 4,641. On November 1, when the head-quarters were removed from there, 6,000 sick and healthy persons were left behind, the great majority of whom fell victims to the plague. According to Rinck, in the latter part of November ten or twenty soldiers suffering from plague were taken there every day, and in the middle of December not one of the 300 sick-rooms was spared; from fifty to sixty plague-patients were taken in every day at this time.[193] In the middle of January 1830 the fury of the disease abated a little among the Russians, but it raged more and more destructively among the civil inhabitants, who numbered some 80,000. In almost all the army-divisions stationed south of the Balkans, plague broke out in the winter of 1829–30; the entire army, therefore, before returning to Russia, had to be quarantined twice for a period of twenty-one days. Plague also revealed its presence in Transcaucasia, where fighting was likewise going on. In Armenia it had broken out shortly before the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War, as also in Erzerum. The reinforcements coming from there had brought plague to Kars, where it spread rapidly in the Turkish army.[194] In June 1828, when the stronghold of Kars was stormed, the disease was borne by Turkish prisoners back to the Russian army; but the strict measures of Field-Marshal Count Paskewitsch prevented it from spreading further in the army.[195] But the inhabitants of Kars resisted these orders, and the result was that plague continued to rage there, partly in the garrison, which in twenty days had 530 plague-patients, and partly among the inhabitants, until September. The plague was conveyed by Turkish prisoners to Eriwan, to the region of Tiflis, and to other places. In the stronghold of Achalzich, situated midway between Batum and Tiflis, plague broke out in the year 1829; in the latter part of February the stronghold was besieged by the Turks, who were infected with plague. In consequence of a sortie of the small garrison on March 6, which resulted in the withdrawal of the Turks, since at the same time Russian reinforcements were approaching, the plague was conveyed to Achalzich, where the first cases occurred on March 10 in the garrison, and shortly afterwards among the inhabitants. On May 23 that part of the garrison which had been spared by the plague was marched out into the open country, and the stronghold was thoroughly cleansed, after which no more