10. Lasting only a couple of years, the Great Plague of Milan was responsible for the deaths of millions and the downfall of Venice as a leading power of Europe
One of the later major appearances of the disease, the Italian Plague of 1629-1631, also known as the Great Plague of Milan, was a series of outbreaks of bubonic plague that spread across northern and central Italy. Believed to have been initially transported to the city of Mantua in 1629 by German and French soldiers fighting in the Thirty Years’ War, the opposing Venetian forces contracted the disease and carried it with them into central Italy during their retreat. By 1630, the plague had reached Venice, Bologna, and Florence, and even reached as far south as Rome and Naples in the 1650s.
Decimating the populations of Italy, public health measures including quarantines proved only so effective. Between 1630 and 1631, Milan suffered an estimated 60,000 deaths out of a population of 130,000, Verona 33,000 from a total of just 54,000, whilst Florence lost twelve percent of its population. Venice, suffering losses of 46,000 from an approximate total of 140,000, demonstrates the knock-on effect of disease epidemics. The city, a major commercial and political center of Europe prior to the outbreak, proved unable to sustain its might and gradually drifted into obscurity as other powers surpassed it.