ywhere to
combat powerful enemies to internal tranquillity and security. The
cities were fortresses for their own defence. Marauders encamped on the
roads. The husbandman was a feudal slave, without possessions of his
own. Rudeness was general, humanity as yet unknown to the people.
Witches and heretics were burned alive. Gentle rulers were contemned as
weak; wild passions, severity and cruelty, everywhere predominated. Human
life was little regarded. Governments concerned not themselves about the
numbers of their subjects, for whose welfare it was incumbent on them to
provide. Thus, the first requisite for estimating the loss of human
life, namely, a knowledge of the amount of the population, is altogether
wanting; and, moreover, the traditional statements of the amount of this
loss are so vague, that from this source likewise there is only room for
probable conjecture.

Cairo lost daily, when the plague was raging with its greatest violence,
from 10,000 to 15,000; being as many as, in modern times, great plagues
have carried off during their whole course. In China, more than thirteen
millions are said to have died; and this is in correspondence with the
certainly exaggerated accounts from the rest of Asia. India was
depopulated. Tartary, the Tartar kingdom of Kaptschak, Mesopotamia,
Syria, Armenia, were covered with dead bodies--the Kurds fled in vain to
the mountains. In Caramania and Caesarea none were left alive. On the
roads--in the camps--in the caravansaries--unburied bodies alone were
seen; and a few cities only (Arabian historians name Maarael-Nooman,
Schisur, and Harem) remained, in an unaccountable manner, free. In
Aleppo, 500 died daily; 22,000 people, and most of the animals, were
carried off in Gaza, within six weeks. Cyprus lost almost all its
inhabitants; and ships without crews were often seen in the
Mediterranean, as afterwards in the North Sea, driving about, and
spreading the plague wherever they went on shore. It was reported to
Pope Clement, at Avignon, that throughout the East, probably with the
exception of China, 23,840,000 people had fallen victims to the plague.
Considering the occurrences of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we
might, on first view, suspect the accuracy of this statement. How (it
might be asked) could such great wars have been carried on--such powerful
efforts have been made; how could the Greek Empire, only a hundred years
later, have been overthrown,