In the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), the
Spartans flung sulfur and pitch at the Athenians and their allies. In
the Middle Ages, besiegers used the bloated and dripping bodies of
plague victims as readymade "dirty bombs".
In 1346, during its siege of Kaffa (present day Feodosia in Crimea),
the Tartar army suffered an outbreak of the Plague. They hurled the
corpses of their infected dead over the city walls and into the city's
water wells. The resulting epidemic led to the city's surrender. It is
widely believed that people afflicted with the horrendous disease fled
the place and started the Black Death pandemic which consumed at least
one third of Europe's population within a few years. Russian troops
adopted the same tactic against Sweden in 1710.
Smallpox was another favorite. Francisco Pizarro (1476-1541) gave
South American natives clothing items deliberately contaminated with
the variola virus. During the French and Indian wars in North America
(1689-1763), blankets used by smallpox victims were given to American
Indians. General Jeffery Amherst (1717-1797) gifted Indians loyal to
the French with smallpox-contaminated bedspreads during the French and
Indian War of 1754 to 1767.
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