Even if it is impossible to give an accurate numerical account of the losses due to pestilence in the course of the Thirty Years’ War, we have seen in a general way how epidemics of dysentery, typhus fever, and bubonic plague followed at the heels of armies, how they were borne from place to place, and how the devastation of the country caused by the war led to an absolute dearth of the necessaries of life, and thereby helped the pestilences to spread. We have mentioned only those places regarding which we have specific information, and they can be regarded only as examples of how these pestilences appeared; as a matter of fact, however, conditions were very much the same in all parts of the country. At the same time these examples show satisfactorily that the great depopulation of Germany during the Thirty Years’ War was chiefly caused by severe epidemics of typhus fever and bubonic plague.
It will be of interest to assemble the figures (such as have been recorded) relating to the number of deaths that occurred in a few of the larger cities during the Thirty Years’ War. We include Basel among those cities, since, being situated close to the border of that part of Germany where the war was carried on during two rather long periods, it was necessarily attacked by the prevalent pestilences. At the same time Basel affords an example of how quickly these pestilences disappeared from the cities, even in the seventeenth century, if external conditions permitted the authorities to take the necessary measures of prevention and precaution, and if the cities were not constantly being reinfected. We give the total number of deaths, and merely remark that the population in all German cities in the course of the Thirty Years’ War decreased considerably. In the case of Leipzig, Dresden, and Frankfurt-on-the-Main the still-births are included, but not in the case of Augsburg, Basel, and Strassburg. As a rule the country-people who fled to the cities are not included among the dead; only in the case of Strassburg, and perhaps also in that of Breslau for the year 1633, are they included.
The total loss of human life in the Thirty Years’ War can be estimated only approximately. The statement attributed to Lammert, that the population of Germany, which amounted to sixteen or seventeen millions before the war, had dwindled down to four millions after the war, is perhaps an exaggeration. Other estimates state that Germany lost one-half of its population. In the case of a few states we have more exact figures, which probably approach more closely to the actual loss. Thus the electorate of Saxony, which was much larger in area than the modern kingdom of Saxony, in the years 1631–2 is said to have lost some 934,000 persons. The population of Bohemia is said to have decreased during the Thirty Years’ War from three millions to 780,000. In Bavaria 80,000 families are said to have been wiped out. The population of Württemberg decreased from 444,800 in the year 1622 to 97,300. The population of Hesse decreased by about one-quarter. So much, however, is sure: that in the regions where the war was carried on for several years the population decreased by far more than one-half. The most positive proof of this is afforded by the hundreds of burned-down and unrebuilt houses found in so many German cities, and the numerous unpeopled, or almost unpeopled, places which Germany had to show at the end of the war.