During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Brugherio suffered anarchy due to the wars between the French and the Spanish, endured the economic crisis that characterized the Spanish Lombardy at that time and was afflicted by repeated episodes of plague: the worsts were the one called "the plague of Saint Charles" (1576-1577) and one called the "plague of Manzoni" (1630), because it was described by Alessandro Manzoni in "The Betrothed".