About the same period, in October, 1505, a very fatal disease broke out in Lisbon, the further progress of which was marked by the terror, the flight, and the confusion of the inhabitants[422]. Of what kind it was, whether a petechial fever or a bubo plague, and what connexion it had with a pestilence in Spain which had just preceded it, it would perhaps be difficult now to ascertain. This latter pestilence had spread from Seville, following an earthquake, and violent storms of wind and rain in 1504, and may very likely have been a bubo plague. Similar notices are met with of pestilences occurring in that country in 1506, the year of the English Sweating Sickness, in 1507 and 1508, in which years mention is made of swarms of locusts in the neighbourhood of Seville, and finally in 1510, the year of a great influenza[423], and 1515. Exact descriptions, however, of these disorders are entirely wanting[424]. With all the above phenomena, the epidemics which took place in Germany and France at the commencement of the sixteenth century, evidently unite to form a connected whole. Varying in intensity and extent, they continued without intermission for full five years, and moreover were accompanied by unusual circumstances, such as occur only in the time of great pestilences. The century was ushered in by the appearance of a comet[425], which, on this occasion, seemed to confirm the long cherished belief that the appearance of these heavenly bodies was prognostic of evil. For mankind are in the habit of concluding that phenomena which are simultaneous must have some internal connexion, and many examples were called to mind in which great pestilences affecting the whole world had been either preceded or accompanied by comets[426]. Immediately afterwards a great murrain among cattle took place, which may have proceeded from some injurious quality in their food. A notion immediately arose that the pastures were poisoned, and of this there was so firm a conviction, that the most violent resentment, as of old, in the time of the Black Death, prevailed against the supposed poisoners, and in the neighbourhood of Meissen some “böse Buben” (wicked knaves) who had fallen under suspicion, were actually executed[427].