Armies -- Medical and sanitary affairs; Epidemics -- History; Medicine, Military -- History; Military hygiene
During the Third Crusade, shortly after the death of Frederick
Barbarossa (June, 1190), a severe pestilence broke out in the army that
was besieging Antioch; according to Michaux only 5,000 infantrymen and
700 cavalrymen survived out of the entire German army.[7] At the siege
of Acre (Ptolemais), which lasted from August 1189, to July 1191, there
broke out in the winter of 1191 a terrible pestilence which played havoc
in the pilgrim army; it was caused by an inadequate supply of food, and
its symptoms (enlargement of the limbs and falling out of the teeth)
betoken scurvy. It also appeared in the army of Saladin, but was much
worse in the Christian army, in which from 100 to 200 crusaders died
every day. Duke Frederick of Swabia succumbed to this disease on January
20, 1191.[8]
At the time of the crusade against the heretics a serious pestilence
broke out in Egypt in the army of the crusaders, which had already, on
August 12, 1218, suffered from dysentery; it appeared in December during
the siege of Damietta, after a heavy and continuous downfall of rain.
‘The patients’, says Wilken, ‘were suddenly seized with violent pains in
the feet and ankles; their gums became swollen, their teeth loose and
useless, while their hips and shin bones first turned black and then
putrefied. Finally, an easy and peaceful death, like a gentle sleep, put
an end to their sufferings. A sixth of the pilgrim army was carried away
by this disease, which no medicine could cure.’[9] Only a few patients
who survived the winter were helped to recovery by the warmth of spring.
It was unquestionably a severe form of scurvy. The besieged, too,
suffered from the destructive pestilence, and also from Egyptian
ophthalmia. We read further in Wilken: ‘A horrible sight greeted the
pilgrims when they took possession of Damietta. Not only the houses, but
even the streets were filled with unburied corpses; in the beds dead
bodies lay beside helpless and dying invalids, and the infection of the
air was intolerable. Of 80,000 inhabitants which the city had had at the
beginning of the siege only 3,000 were left, while only 100 of these
were healthy.’[10] Other reports say that 10,000 inhabitants survived.
In 1270, during the Seventh and last Crusade, which strangely enough
passed by way of Tunis, a pestilential disease broke out in Carthage,
carrying away, in addition to many soldiers and men of rank, King Louis
IX of France himself and his son, Jean Tristan. This pestilence was
dysentery, and it spread even to Sicily, whither the king’s body was
conveyed. After the king’s death conditions were even worse, since so
many people died that it was impossible to bury all the bodies. The
disease also attacked the enemy’s army.[11]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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