Man's Mortal Enemies 13 



populations by conquering soldiers — and these defy all de- 

 scription. It was pestilences of all types, and in particular, 

 plague and typhus, marching side by side with the armies, 

 that accounted for the majority of the deaths and decided the 

 outcome of many of the battles. The 60,000 deaths in Ly- 

 ons and the 25,000 in Limoges in 1628 are merely examples 

 of what took place all over Europe. 



Skipping the pages of history to another decisive war^ 

 the campaign of Napoleon against Russia in 1812, we again 

 find the louse of greater importance than the generals. Every- 

 one has read of the dreadful suffering of Napoleon's troops 

 when they retreated from Moscow — how men froze to death 

 by the thousands and died of starvation. Of an army of over 

 half a million men at the beginning of the campaign. Napo- 

 leon returned to Paris with only a handful. About 300,000 

 men perished from disease alone — about twice as many as 

 died from battle wounds — and of these typhus accounted for 

 a large proportion, although dysentery and pneumonia killed 

 no small number. 



When most of us think of the Crimean War, that took 

 place in 1854-1856, we think of either Florence Nightingale 

 or the "Charge of the Light Brigade." But instead of shed- 

 ding too many tears over the "noble 600," let's pay our re- 

 spects to the more than 100,000 who died from disease. It 

 is impossible to say how many of these deaths were due to 

 typhus and how many to cholera and dysentery, but reliable 

 accounts inform us that there were two violent typhus epi- 

 demics during the war, and that they struck the opposing 

 armies with about equal intensity. 



In World War I, there were also two severe typhus epi- 

 demics, and future historians may record the fact that both 

 played important parts in shaping the history of the world 



