The armies of Charles XII of Sweden had repelled and taken up pursuit of the armies of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, by 1702, defeating them in July at Klissow near Pińczów on the Nida in southern Poland.

In their military hospital in Pińczów, the Swedish army suffers its first plague infections of soldiers, recorded on the basis of reports from "trustworthy people from that very land" by Danzig (Gdańsk) physician Johann Christoph Gottwald.

In Poland, the plague will recur in various places until 1714.