Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

376 MILITARY LIFE.
fact, who might have succored the people most efficaciously,
fled from the city and took refuge in their villas. In a few
days all the country-houses were crowded with the fugitive
citizens, and not only those of the rich, but of any one possessing
enough to live several days without work, and hire a
dwelling, hut, or any hole, even at a great sacrifice, provided
that it was distant from the city, and as far as possible from
any other habitation.
Abandoned and frightened by others' fear and the solitude in
which they were the left, poor people fled too, and wandered in
troops through the country, dragging their lives miserably out
amid the sufferings of hunger. The general terror was increased
by the recollection of the great sufferings of past years ;
worse misfortunes were predicted as is
always the case ; they
foresaw such an end from the beginning :
in each province they
exaggerated most marvellously the ravages of the disease in the
others ;
in the country they narrated horrible things of the mortality
in the cities ;
in the cities just as much again of that in
the country-places.
It is quite easy to imagine how the population
of the districts
became reduced. With the exception of a few cities,
the communal administrations having been abandoned, or
left in a state of disorder, they neglected the most necessary
hygienic precautions. Then the population, declaring firmly
that such precautions were unnecessary, refused to render
their assistance, without which they were quite useless, no
matter how much good-will the authorities, or how much zeal
the few citizens who thought and worked with a fixed purpose,
displayed.
Then let me add that there were many places without
any physicians or chemists, and then, even the largest were