Introduction

European civilisation is a civilisation of cities, and every city has been affected by various disasters during its history. The disasters have taken place on an individual and collective level. For the subject of our book, the authors have chosen, with few exceptions, disasters that have affected the entire urban population. Disasters could take the form of high mortality rates due to various natural disasters such as epidemics, fires, or floods. Demographic disasters were usually accompanied by economic consequences whose impact was long term. Geographically, it covers the area of today's Ukraine, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakia, an environment that is somewhat marginal to urban studies. The authors have approached the topics under study primarily from a historical perspective. Wars and military campaigns had a truly devastating impact on the city. These were in many ways a real catastrophe that scarred the city for decades.