Before September 1629, fourteen thousand had succumbed; between May and August 1630, forty-five thousand victims had been added to the tale.[235] [Footnote 233: Mutinelli, _Annali Urbani di Venezia_, pp.
470-483,549-550.] [Footnote 234: Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol.i.p.

310-340, and vol.
xiv.pp.

30-65.] [Footnote 235: It is worth mentioning that Ripamonte calculates the mortality from plague in Milan in 1524 at 140,000.] At Naples in the year 1656, more than fifty thousand perished between May and July; the dead were cast naked into the sea, and the Venetian envoy describes the city as _'non piu citta ma spelonca di morti_.'[236] In July his diary is suddenly interrupted, whether by departure from the stricken town, or more probably by death, we know not.

Savoy was scourged by a fearful pestilence in the years 1598-1600.
Of this plague we possess a frightfully graphic picture in the same accurate series of the State documents.[237] Simeone Contarini, then resident at Savigliano, relates that more than two-thirds of the population in that province had been swept away before the autumn of 1598, and that the evil was spreading far and wide through Piedmont.

In Alpignano, a village of some four hundred inhabitants, only two remained.