Meanwhile another wave of pestilence passed into Switzerland from the side of France. Avignon had been attacked, as it has been shown, in the early part of 1348, and thence the infection was carried up the Rhone Valley to the Lake of Geneva. Thence one stream passed in a north-easterly direction over Switzerland, and a second followed the course of the river Rhone. By the 17th of March, 1349, the plague was at Ruswyl, in the neighbourhood of Lucerne, having passed through Berne on its way.[100] At Lucerne alone 3,000 people are said to have died of the [p064] disease. It must have remained about the neighbourhood of this lake for some months, for it was not until September, 1349, that it is known to have manifested its presence in the high and healthy valley of Engelberg. "This year (1349)," says the chronicler of the Abbey of Engelberg, "the pestilence or mortality was great, and, indeed, most great, in this valley, so that more than twenty houses were left empty without an inhabitant. In the same year from the feast of Our Lady's nativity, September 8th, to the feast of the Epiphany 116 of our nuns died in the cloister. One of the first to die was the Superior Catherine; about the middle (of the epidemic) the venerable Mother Beatrix, Countess of Arberg, formerly Superior; and on the morrow of Holy Innocents, Mechtilde of Wolfenschiessen, the new Superior likewise passed away. And of our own numbers (there died) two priests and five scholars."[101] Basle was attacked, and is said to have lost some 14,000 people about the middle of the year; Zurich about September 11th; and Constance some time during the winter. It is unnecessary to follow the wanderings of the great mortality in detail further through Europe. The annals of almost every country prove incontestably that most places were in turn visited, and more or less depopulated, by the epidemic. By April 4th, 1349, it was reported in Venice that the pestilence was raging in Hungary, and by June 7th the King could declare "that by Divine mercy it had now ceased in our kingdom." It must consequently have commenced in the country in the early part of the year, although there is evidence that it was still to be found in some parts in October of the same year. Poland was attacked about the same time as Hungary. Here it is said many of the nobility died. There seemed no help for the daily misfortunes. The sickness rendered desolate not alone numberless houses, but even towns and villages.[102] [p065] It has been already pointed out that the pestilence had reached Neuberg, in Styria, by the autumn of the year 1348. It was only the following year, about the feast of St. John the Baptist, June 24th, 1349, that such a plague as never before was either heard or seen was raging in Vienna.