Unfortunately, many times the measures proposed by authorities did not have the desired effects; hence, the plague spread rapidly. Once it penetrated the community, the disease affected whole families often, while neighbouring houses were unimpaired. Whereas most plague descriptions insist on the fact that this epidemic affected mainly the poor inhabitants, my purpose is to prove that this epidemic was actually not “selective”, starting from certain documents that attest deaths caused by plague among the boyars, clergy and merchants. However, the last category benefited from better hygiene standards than the first category and they had the chance to seek refuge from the scourge, while the poorer inhabitants were forced to remain in the plague-stricken towns or to run to the forests or fields around, where they were exposed to bad weather.

The great number of deaths, the high risk of contamination mostly in human agglomerations (hence the definition of the plague as an urban phenomenon – Daniel Curtis) lead to the absence of funerary rites during plague epidemics: those who died from it were deprived of a “good death” that involved a church and the presence of family and friends. Death caused by the plague was considered dishonouring: the absence of a priest meant that the soul was not ready for the great passage. Furthermore, the burial in a non-sacred land and the lack of an individual grave set an irremediable stigma for the afterlife, too. By studying the cases of people who died from the plague and who were buried on hills, in orchards, gardens or vineyards, corpses caught under the walls and roofs of fallen houses, cadavers left unburied on town roads, on fields or in forests, my goal is to outline the idea of “abolishment of personalized death” (Jean Delumeau). This also explains the inhabitants’ attempt to elude the institutional mechanisms in the attempt to gain a dignified death.  

Concerning the demographic consequences of the plague epidemics in the Romanian Principalities, estimates can prove hazardous, but I am persuaded that a systematic analysis of as many documents as possible regarding the victims of the plague can lead to edifying data. Ștefan Scarlat Dăscălescu – one of the boyars charged with combating the epidemics at Focșani in the year 1829 – stated that the plague “killed so many people within a year as it had not killed within 15 years, from 1813 to 1828”. However, how many people died in 1813? What about up to that year? Whereas the authorities did try to record the number of deaths accurately, mostly during the 1829 plague epidemics, the results obtained can only be relative taking into account the rather significant number of plague victims buried without the knowledge of the administration, or the number of people who died from other afflictions, but who were believed to have died from the plague.

Nonetheless, mortality was not the only demographic factor that perturbed the communities stricken by the plague. Regardless of the magnitude of the scourge, human collectives were affected by the sudden change in life standards, because they had to leave their houses and to separate themselves from the rest of the family. When epidemic episodes lasted longer than expected, for instance, marriages were postponed and births were fewer, implicitly. Some authors post that “epidemics alone […] could only disturb for a limited period the foundations of the existence of a certain population on a certain territory”. Taking this reasoning further, Gh. Brătescu stated that the great pandemics only highlighted and aggravated a “pre-existing critical situation”, determined by a complex of social and economic factors that speeded up the end. I believe that it is necessary to nuance these opinions.