Armies -- Medical and sanitary affairs; Epidemics -- History; Medicine, Military -- History; Military hygiene
In Chemnitz 1,234 interments for the year 1632 are recorded in the
church register, and in the following year the plague raged even more
furiously: almost every house was attacked, and the number of deaths
amounted to 2,500. In Glauchau and vicinity, as in all Saxony, 1633 was
the worst year; 964 people died there in that year. The plague raged
most furiously from August to November, and lasted until 1634; many
bodies were found in the open fields. In the neighbouring Waldenburg 392
people died in a few weeks in 1633, in Lichtenstein 370, in Thurm 400.
In Marienberg, a village lying at the foot of the mountains, 1,000
people succumbed in the year 1633 to typhus fever; the plague spread
into the Erzgebirge and caused 2,300 deaths in Schneeberg and 157 deaths
in the adjacent Neustädtle. A plague had already broken out in Zwickau
in 1632, and in the first part of 1633 it became so severe that 1,500
people died in two months in the summer of that year. The city was full
of sick people and dead bodies, and the number of reported deaths for
the year 1633 was 1,897; but the total number of deaths, excluding the
soldiers, is said to have been no less than 6,000. Entire streets were
devastated. Many of the inhabitants fled to near-by villages, and thus
spread the infection. Crimmitschau was visited by a plague in 1630 (601
deaths), and again in 1633 (409 deaths); 92 families in the last-named
year were completely wiped out. Many neighbouring places were also
attacked; there were 700 deaths in Werdau, 300 in Steinpleiss, 150 in
Königswalde, &c.
The invasion of Holk caused Vogtland to suffer terribly in August of the
year 1632, while his second invasion in the summer of 1633 resulted in
an even worse outbreak of disease. In Reichenbach and vicinity, typhus
fever, bubonic plague, and dysentery prevailed in the year 1633; at
first it was called ‘soldier’s disease’, and later ‘bright plague’
(_helle Pest_). Of 904 deaths that occurred that year, 785 were due to
the plague. In Plauen the number of deaths in 1633 was 1,748, in
Oelsnitz 325 (217 due to the plague). Holk himself succumbed to the
plague in Adorf on August 30, 1633, while 1,000 of his troops also died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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