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. 1. THE SIEGE OF MANTUA (1796–7)[326] 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