Ominous Omen

While Franz was still in Tyrol preparing for the coming year of storms, the storm had already arrived in silence.

The northern part of London was once a place of dense housing and crowded streets, where shops, taverns, and brothels lined the roads. The streets were filled with a motley crowd—from wandering minstrels, thieves, and streetwalkers to gentlemen, soldiers, and merchants—all of them bustling with activity.

But now, carts piled high with corpses and streets overflowing with foul-smelling excrement had robbed the city of its vitality.

People died every day, and before departing this world, the victims suffered from severe dehydration. Even the most respectable gentleman or the most reserved lady would be reduced to a shell of their former selves under the torture of this affliction.

Cholera often triggered violent reactions within the first few hours: diarrhea, vomiting, fever, and eventually death.

The symptoms of this disease were particularly horrifying: intense dehydration would leave the patient unrecognizable within hours, and ruptured capillaries caused their skin to turn a bruised, blackish-blue.

The patients' deaths were so agonizing and helpless that the spectacle served as a grim warning to onlookers, leaving a profound psychological impact on everyone nearby.

This was the terror of cholera, and even more terrifying was its intense contagiousness. In particular, the doctors of this era, who never washed their hands, became the angels of death spreading the plague.

At first, the disease appeared only in the slums, so the government actively promoted the idea that it was a "poor man's disease," a punishment for the lazy.

At the time, religion was fond of saying that cholera was a punishment from God, claiming that "filthy bodies and dirty souls are one and the same" among the poor, and that their "ignorance and corruption of the soul" had provoked