Italian Plague of 1629-1631

The Italian Plague of 1629-1631 was a group times when many people in northern Italy caught bubonic plague from 1629 to 1631. This epidemic, often called the Great Plague of Milan, killed about 280,000 people. Very many people died in the cities in Lombardy. This was one of the last outbreaks of the pandemic of bubonic plague that began with the Black Death.

German and French soldiers carried the plague to the city of Mantua in 1629 because of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Venetian troops, infected with the disease, retreated into northern and central Italy, spreading the disease to more people.

In October 1629, the plague reached Milan, Lombardy's commercial center. In the city Milan, it killed about 64,000 people, which was 25% of Milan's people. It killed between 12% and 60% of all the people in Italy. The papal city of Bologna lost an estimated 15,000 citizens to the plague, with neighboring smaller cities of Modena and Parma also being heavily affected. This outbreak of plague also spread north into Tyrol, an alpine region of western Austria and northern Italy.

Later outbreaks of bubonic plague in Italy include the city of Florence in 1630-1633 and the areas surrounding Naples, Rome and Genoa in 1656-1657.

References

• Cipolla, Carlo M. Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth Century Italy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.
• Prinzing, Freidrich. Epidemics Resulting from Wars. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916.