the city and in the prisons was estimated at 10,000. In Italy very severe pestilences spread in a very short time over the entire peninsula, and even to Sicily, in consequence of the war that had been going on there since 1796. These pestilences were unusually severe in both camps during the siege of Mantua (1796–7). (We shall learn more about this in the tenth chapter.) In the year 1799 the French troops under Scherer were forced to retreat in disorder before the victorious advance of Suvarov and the Austrians, and they took refuge in Nice. There, in the autumn of 1799, a severe epidemic of typhus fever broke out in the French army and soon spread to the non-belligerent population, one-third of which was carried away by it.[85] In consequence of the removal of the patients the disease was conveyed into southern France, infecting Aix, Fréjus, Marseilles, Toulon, and even Grenoble.[86] The disease spread much more widely in the direction of Italy, where it soon attacked the entire coast of Liguria. A terrible epidemic of typhus fever occurred in Genoa in 1799–1800, when 14,000 people succumbed within six months.[87] Rasori had noted the first cases as early as the summer of 1799; the patients were fugitives from Upper Italy, commercial travellers and military persons. Not until the end of the winter and in the spring did the disease become very widespread; it attacked principally the poorer people. Rasori held the disease to be ‘nosocomial fever’ (typhus fever), and his description of it makes this diagnosis seem undoubtedly correct. Regarding the increased prevalence of typhus fever during war-times, we are informed by the following table of deaths, compiled by Ozanam:[88] _Year._ _Deaths in Hospital._ _Deaths in City._ 1794 392 812 1795 477 911 1796 761 1,000 1797 1,038 900 1798 549 803 1799 489 809 1800 705 1,100 1801 929 1,200 1802 519 1,006 1803 404 1,036 1804 418 1,087 We note the increase in the year 1796, then the decrease when the war was interrupted in the year 1798, and the renewed increase when it began again. Likewise in southern Germany various epidemics of typhus fever broke out during the second Coalition War (1799–1802), and they too were caused by the war and the constant marching back and forth of soldiers. Many places in Bavaria and Swabia were also attacked in the year 1799.[89]