The Great Famine

The Great Famine (1315-1317)
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The Great Famine (1315-1317)
Nearly the entire Europe experienced constant rains that persisted throughout the summer and autumn of 1314 and most of 1315 and 1316, resulting in enormous crop failure throughout the country (Baek et al., 2020). Before this event, the country’s population was rapidly growing as a result of the expansion of agriculture. As such, an unexpected shortage in food for the enormous population triggered serious famine. The famine led to the death of approximately 5-12% of the northern European population due to starvation or related illnesses (Smerdon et al., 2019). It prompted class warfare and political discord that destabilized the whole region. As such, daily items including wheat, grain, barley, bread, oats, and salt unimaginably soared such that a lot of people, even if they could access these items, could not afford them. The situation grew worse to the extent of parents abandoning their children to fend for themselves while others resort to stealing and even killing others trying to feed themselves.
Furthermore, other people were given no choice but to eat horses and dogs, and the possibility of cannibalism is also reported. The famine is believed to have worsened the effects of the Black Death, an epidemic of the bubonic plague that affected Europe, Central Asia, and North Africa at the start to mid-1300s. The Black Death outbreak is considered the first of many crises that struck Europe during the Late Middle Ages (DeWitte