The Plagues of London by Stephen Porter

Author:Stephen Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752496535
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-04-19T16:00:00+00:00

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The Plague on the Wane?

The epidemic of 1625 came in the early stages of a period of widespread outbreaks of plague across much of Europe. Some of these were related to military activity, especially the Thirty Years War, which had begun in Bohemia in 1618 and gradually spread to engulf much of central Europe, and the war between the United Provinces and Spain, which was suspended by a truce in 1609 but renewed in 1621. The early 1620s certainly saw a sharp increase in the number of places affected by plague and the figure remained high until the late 1640s. This coincided with a concentrated period of fighting, with the main theatres of the war, in Germany and the Low Countries, extended from time to time by the shorter conflicts which erupted during this period of diplomatic instability. In 1648, a general peace was concluded which ended both the Thirty Years War and Spain’s struggle with the United Provinces, and the danger then diminished somewhat, but did not disappear.

Between 1622 and 1646, France suffered the worst outbreaks of plague in its history, including an epidemic in 1628–32 which claimed 750,000 victims. The disease spread into Italy in 1629, during the early stages of the War of the Mantuan Succession between France and Spain. A French army crossed the Alps and, to support the Spanish effort, troops arrived in Lombardy from Germany, where there had been an epidemic in the previous few years, which had killed over half of the citizens of Augsburg in 1627 and 1628. The arrival of the armies and those who moved with them, the ‘camp followers’, were blamed for sparking the outbreak in Italy, known as the peste di Milano. They certainly did not deign to observe the regulations designed to limit the spread of disease and from Lombardy the plague was dispersed across northern and central Italy, with devastating effect. When it reached Venice, 46,490 died in the city, perhaps a third of its inhabitants, while in Milan itself 60,000 of the city’s population of 130,000 fell victim to the disease.

England’s direct military involvement was limited to a futile expedition under the Protestant commander Count Ernst von Mansfeld to recover the Palatinate for the king’s son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, in 1625, a raid on Cadiz later that year and the occupation of the Île de Ré in 1627, to support the Huguenots in La Rochelle. Charles followed a pacific foreign policy after the murder of the Duke of Buckingham in 1628, but London was at risk nonetheless, from its overseas trade and the movement of soldiers and suppliers, especially to and from the campaigns in the Low Countries and Germany. Professional soldiers and gentlemen volunteers served with the Dutch, Danish, Swedish, French, Spanish and Imperial armies, especially during the 1630s, when the king’s policies were successful in avoiding conflict. War provided an honourable career and the opportunity to acquire wealth. At least 20,000 Britons served abroad between his accession and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 and there was an average of 4,000 with the Spanish army of Flanders during the 1630s.

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