12. The Great Plague of Vienna in 1679
Vienna was a key link in the trade routes between Western Europe and the Middle East and China, then referred to collectively as the Orient. Vienna was a crowded city, huddled along the Danube River, with commercial buildings and residential structures abutting each other on narrow streets. The city offered no public sewers; gutters in the streets served as drains for rainwater and offal. The detritus of a crowded city piled in the streets and alleyways, eventually finding its way to the river. Rats abounded. The city’s many warehouses, piled with goods from the east and west, also teemed with rats and mice, as did the wharves along the waterfront.
In 1679 an outbreak of plague, believed to have been bubonic plague, ravaged the crowded city. It spread to other cities in towns in Europe, where it became known as the Viennese Death. In Vienna, the bodies of the dead were disposed of in mass graves dug outside of the town. Once the death pits were filled the bodies were burned; during the interim rats roamed the pits, which allows the disease to continue to spread. The plague crippled the city and European trade, as merchants and traders from East and West shunned Vienna as the disease ran its course. By the time it subsided at least 76,000 Viennese had succumbed. The city’s famous Trinity Column, also known as the Plague Column, was erected to honor them.