How did Alessandro Manzoni portray the Milan plague in The Betrothed?

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People walk and shop inside the ornate Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Italy, with its glass-domed roof, decorative mosaics, and luxury store entrances. — Milan Shoppers in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan.

In his novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), Alessandro Manzoni depicts the plague as a harrowing backdrop to the struggles of his protagonists in 17th-century Lombardy.

While the novel is primarily a sympathetic account of two peasant lovers whose marriage is obstructed by a local tyrant, the epidemic serves as a critical historical setting. Manzoni portrays the chaos and suffering caused by the outbreak during the era of the Thirty Years’ War, illustrating the social and personal devastation that defined that period in Milanese history.1