Great Famine of 1315–1317

Chroniclers wrote of the poor dying in the streets.

Historians estimate that somewhere between 5 and 12% of the population of Northern Europe may have died in what is now called the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317, and some towns lost even more.

The winters during those years were bitter too.

Disease followed hunger, as it always did, and cattle plagues swept through the herds in the years that came after.

Hunger made it all much worse.

A poorly fed body has less resistance to disease and less ability to keep itself warm.

In years of bad harvest, such as during the Great Famine, the combination of hunger, cold and disease was devastating.

And then there was the Black Death.

It was a mass campaign to drive this out.

And as we saw, it started back in the early 1300s after the Great Famine.

Of 1315 to 1317, where there'd been this massive wet period.

Personally, I don't mind a wet period.

trademark that one too.

So we had the Great Wet Period in the 1200s that destroyed crops, created socioeconomic upheavals.

And then we had the Great Famine, 1315 to 1317.

Hadn't been any crops or harvest for a couple of years.

Yes.

The Great Famine is going on from 1315 to 1317.

Some gnarly shit.

Oh, no.

During the worst years, famine killed entire villages.

The Great Famine of thirteen fifteen to thirteen seventeen killed thousands of peasants across Europe.

In some areas, the mortality was catastrophic.

People didn't just starve quietly.

Hunger.

Between the years of 1315 and 1317, the Great Famine struck northern Europe, from Poland in the east down to the Alps in the south.

The weather was particularly bad over the spring of 1315.

The heavy rains went on into the summer, and the temperature remained cool.

The famine even affected the King of England.

In August of 1315, Edward II stopped at the town of St. Albans with his entourage, only to find that there was no bread to eat.

The Bristol Archives reported that in the city there was, quote, "...a great famine of dearth, with such mortality that the living could scarce suffice to bury the dead.

Horse flesh and dog's flesh was accounted good meat, and some eat their own children." On into the following spring, it continued to rain on Europe.