In general one may say that before 1630 the specific disease was usually typhus fever, and that after 1630 bubonic plague spread along with this disease throughout Germany; the death statistics of the larger cities, adduced at the end of this chapter, lead us to this conclusion. In addition to these two diseases, we find frequent mention of dysentery, scurvy, and, toward the end of the war, small-pox. Innumerable articles, chronicles, &c., have described in detail the miserable condition of the German countries during the Thirty Years’ War. The following account is largely based upon a notable work by a physician named Lammert, who offers us a chronological enumeration of the pestilences of that time, and also an exhaustive bibliography.[27] Since it is impossible to discuss here thoroughly all the countless epidemics that occurred, we can merely point out their main features and indicate their connexion with warlike events. The figures quoted may be relied upon, if, as is usually the case, they are taken from church-registers; as regards statements taken from chronicles, on the other hand, there is more occasion for distrust. For a correct understanding of the facts, to be sure, we should have to know the exact population of the cities and towns, and this information is only in rare instances available. We must bear in mind, furthermore, that the country-people fled to the cities when armies were approaching, and also that nearly all cities were surrounded by walls and embankments. The war began in Bohemia. After the battle on White Hill, near Prague (November 8, 1620), the soldiers of Count Mansfeld, who were already infected with typhus fever, marched down the Main to the Palatinate and to Alsace, devastating the country as they passed and leaving severe pestilences behind them. In the year 1625 the main scene of the war was transferred to the north, where numerous epidemics had already broken out in the course of that year. The disorder caused by the war, and especially the wild warfare of Wallenstein, who in the fall of 1625, after mustering his army, had joined forces with Tilly, were particularly favourable to the spreading of disease. Hence in the years 1625–6 we see precisely in North Germany the ‘plague’ doing the greatest damage.