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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



everything- imaginable was eaten — dogs, 

 horses, cats, even babies. The jails were 

 crowded with felons, and when a new 

 criminal was thrown into a cell he was 

 seized upon by. the starving inmates and 

 literally torn to pieces for food. 



With the exception of the present 

 world war, perhaps no other calamity 

 that ever befell the human race can be 

 compared with that of the Black Death 

 and the accompanying famine, which 

 afflicted all western civilization during 

 the middle decade of the fourteenth cen- 

 tury. Its toll has been variously esti- 

 mated at from one-fourth to three- 

 fourths of the entire population of Eu- 

 rope. Certainly it was not less than 

 20,000,000 people. 



There always has been a certain degree 

 of doubt as to the exact origin of this 

 plague ; but one of the most circumstan- 

 tial hypotheses is that the seeds of de- 

 struction were sown in northern China, 

 when a great inundation destroyed the 

 crops and hundreds of thousands became 

 the victims of starvation. Rats spread 

 pestilence abroad. 



One of the first places in Europe where 

 the Black Death appeared was at a small 

 Genoese fort in the Crimea, the western 

 terminus of the overland Chinese trade 

 route. The Tatars were besieging the 

 fort at the time, and Chinese merchants 

 took refuge there. The siege was lifted 

 by the investing army, which fled from 

 the plague, thus spreading the infection 

 southward into Asia Minor, Syria, and 

 Egypt. Ships from the Euxine carried 

 the contagion to Constantinople and to 

 Genoa, and thence it radiated, fanshape, 

 throughout the Mediterranean littoral. 



THE BLACK DEATH IN ENGLAND 



In August, 1348, England's first Black 

 Death victim succumbed in Dorsetshire. 

 By November it had reached London. 

 By the summer of 1349 it had dragged 

 its pall of putrefaction over the entire is- 

 land, including Scotland. Norwich, which 

 had been the second city of the kingdom, 

 dropped to sixth in size, more than two- 

 thirds of its population falling victims of 

 the scourge. 



Cultivation of the fields was utterly 

 impossible, and there were not even 



enough able-bodied laborers to gather the 

 crops which had matured. Cattle roamed 

 through the corn unmolested and the har- 

 vest rotted where it stood. 



Out of the situation which resulted 

 from the impoverishment of the labor re- 

 sources of the kingdom grew the first 

 great clash in England between capital 

 and labor. The peasants became masters 

 of the situation. In some instances they 

 demanded double wages, and whereas 

 formerly land - owners had paid one- 

 twelfth of every quarter of wheat as the 

 harvesting wage, they were now forced 

 to pay one-eighth. 



Parliament hurriedly passed drastic 

 laws in an effort to meet the new condi- 

 tion. Statutes provided that "every man 

 or woman, bond or free, able in body and 

 within the age of threescore years, not 

 having his own whereof he may live, nor 

 land of his own about which he may oc- 

 cupy himself, and not serving any other, 

 shall be bound to serve the employer who 

 shall require him to do so, provided that 

 the lords of any bondsman or land-ser- 

 vant shall be preferred before others for 

 his service ; that such servants shall take 

 only the wages which were customarily 

 given in 1347" (the year prior to the first 

 appearance of the plague). 



Violation of the statute meant imprison- 

 ment ; and it was further provided that 

 any reaper, mower, or workman leaving 

 service should be imprisoned. If work- 

 men demanded more than the regulation 

 wage, they were to be fined double, and 

 the land-owner who paid more than the 

 prescribed sum was to be fined treble that 

 amount. Runaway laborers were to be 

 branded with an "F" as a perpetual sign 

 of their falsity. No bail was to be ac- 

 cepted for any of these labor offenses. 



It is not within the province of this 

 article to review the political turmoil 

 which this legislation brought about. 

 Suffice it to say that it resulted in pre- 

 cipitating one of the most distressing 

 times in the history of constitutional gov- 

 ernment since the Magna Charta was 

 wrested from King John. 



FAMINES OF FRANCE 



No countrv of Europe suffered more 

 from famine between the eighth century 



