Up to the beginning of December the number of patients steadily increased; in the lazarets alone, 300 soldiers died every day. The terrors of the bombardment had a very disastrous effect upon the inhabitants of the city, since it compelled them to live in damp, unhealthy, infected cellars. Not until the latter part of December did the epidemic begin to abate and to lose, at the same time, its virulent character; the arrival of very cold weather, as well as the diminution of the number of people, and the fact that the infection had practically run its course among the inhabitants and the garrison, were at least partly responsible for this abatement; furthermore, there was now less crowding, and it became possible to establish better order. The lack of system in the French lazarets is shown by the fact that the authorities were never once able to give an account of the number of persons that died in them. From grave-diggers’ records and church registers Richter managed to compile the following table of statistics indicating the number of deaths:[338] _French _Saxon _Civil _Total._ soldiers._ soldiers._ inhabitants._ January-August (1813) 222 September 1,107 64 43 1,214 October 4,803 36 66 4,905 November 8,209 3 228 8,440 December 4,886 258 5,144 January 1–10 (1814) 649 83 732 January 11–31 314 91 405 February 400 79 479 March 100 52 152 According to this table there died, between September and January 10, 19,654 French soldiers, 103 Saxon soldiers, and 678 civilians. But Richter says in regard to the above figures: ‘There is no doubt, however, that the figures pertaining to the French soldiers are much too small, since they include only those that were actually buried by the grave-diggers in public burial-grounds. All those who died in private houses, in the _tête-de-pont_, in the various forts, in the lunettes, or in any of the outworks of the fortress are not included; their number was by no means small, and many of them were buried unceremoniously by citizens or by their comrades, while large numbers of bodies were left lying in the open.’ In the month of May it was impossible to find a grave-digger to bury the heaps of corpses, which were consequently thrown in masses into the Elbe; this of course interfered with the operation of the floating mills along the river. Nor are the bodies disposed of in this way included in the above table. Accordingly, Richter estimates the total number of deaths among the French soldiers at between 29,000 and 30,000 men.