increased or exaggerated its impact to illustrate the dangers of a divided Germany. Suggestions of up to 12 million deaths from a population of 18 million are no longer accepted, while claims of material losses are either not supported by contemporary evidence or in some cases exceed prewar tax records. The conflict has been described as one of the greatest medical catastrophes in history but by modern standards the number of soldiers involved was relatively low. Battles generally featured armies of around 13,000 to 20,000 each, the largest being Alte Veste in 1632 with a combined 70,000 to 85,000. Estimates of the total deployed by both sides within Germany range from an average of 80,000 to 100,000 from 1618 to 1626, peaking at 250,000 in 1632 and falling to under 160,000 by 1648. Casualty rates could be extremely high; of 230 men conscripted from the Swedish village of Bygdeå between 1621 and 1639, 215 are recorded as dead or missing, while another five returned home crippled. Aggregating figures from known battles and sieges, historian Peter Wilson estimates those either killed or wounded in combat totalled around 450,000. Since research shows disease either killed or incapacitated two to three times that number, that would suggest military casualties ranged from 1.3 to 1.8 million dead or otherwise rendered unfit for service. Pitirim Sorokin calculates an upper limit of 2,071,000 military casualties, although his methodology has been disputed. In general, historians agree the war was an unprecedented mortality disaster and the vast majority of casualties, whether civilian or military, took place after Swedish intervention in 1630. Based on local records, military action accounted for less than 3% of civilian deaths, with the major causes being starvation (12%), bubonic plague (64%), typhus (4%), and dysentery (5%). Although regular outbreaks of disease were common for decades prior to 1618, the conflict greatly accelerated their spread, due to the influx of soldiers from foreign countries, the shifting locations of battle fronts and displacement of rural populations into already crowded cities. This was not restricted to Germany; disease carried by French and Imperial soldiers allegedly sparked the 1629–1631 Italian plague. Described as the "worst mortality crisis to affect Italy during the Early modern period", it resulted in some 280,000 deaths, with higher estimates of around 1 million. Poor harvests throughout the 1630s and repeated plundering of the same areas led to widespread famine; contemporaries record people eating