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A bane which devastated Europe and reduced its
population by a quarter.
It was the greatest calamity in human history, and just in Europe nearly 25
million people lost their life within four years (1347-1351).
Such a hecatomb was probably caused by the bacteria carried by the fleas
living in the fur of a sort of rat common everywhere, and people could get
infected through the bite of the fleas or through already infected people’s
excretions.
For the population that calamity was nothing but the divine punishment for
the sins of the mankind.
It seems that the disease broke out in central Asia, was then carried to
Crimea by merchant caravans and from there it reached the Mediterranean sea
by ship and implacably spread over the whole Europe. Life stopped, fields
were not cultivated anymore, cattle was abandoned to itself.
The corpses heaped one on another into mass graves were left rot on the
streets.
Life in town was paralyzed, the infection was spreading, air was tainted by
an unbearable smell. Only a few town were spared, in Milan the archbishop
ordered that in the first case of infection near the town, the three first
infected houses were immediately walled up with their tenants inside, were
they alive, ill or dead.
The order was followed and Milan was saved.
The bishop had discovered how to stop the diffusion of the pestilence:
isolation.
Large parts of the current Poland were spared thanks to a quarantine imposed
by the local authorities. Pope Clement VI, one of the popes of Avignon, had
his life saved by hiding himself in a private apartment of his, where he
remained completely alone.
Fire saved an English noblemen who ruthlessly ordered to burn a village near
his residence, when the inhabitants were infected by the plague. But apart
from these rare cases, the plague was a bane for the whole Europe. After the
Black Death, the relationships between servants and master radically changed.
With a quarter of population less, workers could ask for higher wages, while
landowners were forced to lower the prices.
Economical and social tensions often led to unrests among the poorer classes,
which sometimes became veritable riots. In the 16th century the fast
population increase meant, for them, the return to wages even lower.
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