The article states under the header “news from Spain” :
“In the last days a terrible [amount of] dying has transpired that the gravediggers state that they have no recollection [of such a thing] since the Cholera. Most people die of lung and chest complications that follow from the flu.”
27-01-1848
Old Dutch is actually a lot like Old English, they’re both sister languages. Supposedly speakers of those languages were able to (mostly) understand each other, similarly to a dialect.