The soldiers under arrest, who were compelled to clean out the hospitals, all died, no more sick-attendants were to be found, and a large number of physicians perished in the performance of their duties; all the persons employed in the hospital entirely neglected their duties, and most of them were drunk all the time, since large quantities of wine were on hand for the patients.
The result was that the epidemic gradually attained to enormous dimensions. ‘The infection’, says Wittmann,[343] ‘carried away all the grave-diggers one by one, and it was impossible to find anybody who was willing to do that dangerous work. Thousands of dead bodies of citizens and soldiers lay for weeks in front of the Münstertor, where they were piled up like logs pending burial.’ In December and January the epidemic reached its climax; after that it gradually abated, but did not come to an end until May 3, 1814, when the siege terminated and the Allies entered the city.
In the period between November 1, 1813, and May 3, 1814, 7,000 deaths among the soldiers are recorded in the civil register of the city; according to statements of the grave-diggers, some 10,000 or 11,000 more soldiers were buried, whose names were not entered in the register for the reason that they could not be ascertained; nor do the above figures include the number of deaths in the stronghold of Kastel on the other side of the Rhine. Of the civil inhabitants, 2,445 (about one-tenth of the population) died; a large number of physicians contracted the disease, and four physicians and five surgeons succumbed to it.
After the battle of Sedan the Germans immediately began to march toward Paris; on September 15, 1870, the first cavalrymen appeared before the capital, and on September 19 the investment was complete.
An exhaustive account by H. Sueur and a large number of other reports offer us very full information regarding the condition of health in Paris during the siege, since the administrative apparatus never stopped running. The approach of the German armies caused numerous well-to-do citizens to leave the city; some went south, some to Switzerland, and some to England. Sueur estimates their number from the reports of the railroad companies at 300,000. On the other hand, a large number of the inhabitants of the surrounding country sought refuge in the city; their number is estimated at 180,000. Furthermore, the size of the garrison was considerably increased; the number of men in the regular army on November 4, 1870, is estimated at 236,941, and this does not include 8,000 men in the First Division of the First Corps. To the above, moreover, must be added the number of soldiers who died between the beginning and the end of the siege. Thus the number of men in the regular army at the beginning of the siege was some 246,000; of these some 56,000 were already in the city in the middle of the summer, while the remaining 190,000 arrived later. Accordingly, the total number of people in the city shortly before the siege began was increased by 70,000. Legoyt estimated the population of the city on July 1, 1870, at 1,890,000, so that on the opening day of the investment there were 1,960,000 (in round numbers, 2,000,000) people in Paris. The arrival of the 190,000 soldiers altered the composition of the population, since the increase augmented only the number of males between the ages of 20 and 40.