SECRETARY'S REPORT. 73 



swept off 200,000 head of cattle in a few months. Holstein, 

 Finland and Denmark also suffered terribly. In 1718 it got 

 across the Channel into England, and was as destructive as in 

 other countries. 



It is estimated that about a million and a half of cattle fell 

 victims during this visitation, which lasted from 1709 to 1713. 

 Again, in 1740, Hungary was visited, and the pestilence crossed 

 its bounds and moved over the whole of Germany, into Switzer- 

 land, Piedmont, Franche-Contd, and northward into Denmark, 

 Sweden and Holland. After lingering five years on its passage 

 over the Continent, it again crossed into England, and for more 

 than twelve years laid waste the herds of Great Britain. In the 

 third year of its visit the government had vigorously taken the 

 disease in hand. No less than 80,000 head were slaughtered, 

 and the number that died was no doubt double that. In the 

 fourth year cattle were destroyed at the rate of 7,000 a month. 

 In 1747 more than 40,000 head died of the plague in Notting- 

 hamshire and Leicestershire alone, and at least 30,000 head in 

 Cheshire died in six months. From 1713 to 1796 no less than 

 ten million head of cattle perished in Europe, 



During the long period of war which followed the French 

 Revolution, the plague broke out again. It followed Napoleon 

 into Italy in 1793-4-5, and in those three years Piedmont alone 

 lost from three to four million head of cattle. It spread through 

 the Danubian Principalities into the south of Germany, where 

 it continued its awful devastation uninterruptedly from 1796 to 

 1801. But while the operations of war were confined to the 

 west, the pest withdrew again to the Russian steppes till 1806, 

 when the Cossacks of the Don mustered along the Vistula, when 

 it again spread from the interminable wastes to the cultivated 

 regions of Lithuania, Prussia, and Silesia. It followed Napoleon 

 on his retreat after the battle of Eylau, and cut off the stock of 

 those countries for two years in succession. And so in 1813 

 and 1814, when the forces under Schwartzenburg invaded 

 France, Switzerland and the Rhine Provinces, through which 

 they passed, suffered immensely from this curse, and they had 

 to resort to the most stringent sanitary measures, slaughtering 

 the diseased and isolating the healthy, till they at last put a 

 stop to it. 



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