From the eleventh to the thirteenth century Europe prospered. In many areas the proportion of land being cultivated in 1300 would not be reached again for another 500 years. The population had grown, too. At the end of the eleventh century England had about 1.4 million people; by 1300, it had 5 million. During the same period, France's population increased from 6.2 million to more than 17 million. But by the beginning of the fourteenth century, food production in some places was beginning to fall as a result of erosion or exhaustion of the overworked soil, and the problem was exacerbated by global cooling. The Arctic glaciers were advancing, and the Baltic froze in 1303 and 1306-7. This 'Little Ice Age' virtually ended wine-making in England, while it became impossible to grow wheat in parts of Denmark and the uplands of Provence. Everywhere the agricultural growing season was cut by up to two months, and more fungi attacked crops in the cooler, wetter summers.
In the spring of 1315 it rained unusually heavily over much of Europe - 'most marvellously and for so long', as one contemporary put it - and summer brought no respite, with the wet weather continuing. Crops were beaten to the ground, and there was no fodder for livestock. The rains were soon being compared to Noah's flood, and in England the Chronicle of Malmesbury noted: 'the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them'. In parts of Central Europe floods swept away whole villages at the cost of hundreds of lives, while Normandy was devastated by vicious wind storms. Wheat prices more than quadrupled in some regions, and many people faced starvation. In desperation, they started to eat roots, grass and the bark of trees. Even the apparently well-to-do were beginning to suffer. A German chronicler recorded that knights sitting on 'magnificently outfitted' horses would swap their mounts and their weapons for 'cheap wine ... because they were so terribly hungry'. On 10 August, when King Edward II of England rolled up at St Albans with his entourage, they could not find bread for love nor money. The king tried to bring in price controls, but that just made dealers withdraw their produce, and the ordinance had to be repealed. As people grew desperate, the number of robberies in Kent rose by a third, and in the countryside it was said that men were murdered for food.
Through the spring of 1316 the rain still fell. Peasants were now having to eat their seed corn, and had started to slaughter their working animals. Some abandoned their children, while many of the old refused food to try to help the young survive. The streets and alleys of Bruges were full of the bodies of peasants who had fled there to try to escape the famine in the countryside. One chronicler reported that the poor ate dogs, cats, the dung of doves, and even their children. In Baltic towns it was said that 'mothers fed upon their sons'. From Poland, there were reports of people harvesting hanged bodies from gibbets, while being put in jail became particularly hazardous, as the existing inmates would overpower and devour newcomers.
It seemed beyond belief when the wet weather continued into 1317. Diseases like pneumonia, bronchitis and tuberculosis had appeared in the wake of famine, so, although the summer finally brought better weather, it was too late for many. Fodder for animals remained very short, and the 'great dying of beasts' continued into the early 1320S. Because so much seed corn had been consumed, food production did not return to anything like normal until 1325. Historians believe that by the end of the famine, up to a quarter of the population of Europe had died.
By John Withington in "The Disastrous History of the World" - Chronicles of War, Earthquake, Plague and Flood - Piatkus Books, UK, 2008, excerpts pp.147-148. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.