FEARFUL FAMINES OF THE PAST 



and the close of the eighteenth than 

 France. The failure of crops from nat- 

 ural causes entailed far fewer hardships, 

 however, than the gross injustice of the 

 country's kings and courtiers. From 

 750 to the French Revolution, the land 

 scarcely recovered from one period of 

 dearth before some untoward event 

 plunged it into new woes. 



From 987 to 1059, during the early 

 stages of feudalism, forty-eight famines 

 devastated the peasantry — an average of 

 a famine every eighteen months. The 

 year 1000 was a time of extraordinary 

 suffering, for the whole country was 

 seized with a panic, fearing that the 

 world would come to an end during this 

 the millennial year. Thousands went on 

 pilgrimages, deserting their homes and 

 their fields and obstructing the whole nor- 

 mal course of existence. This was the 

 first wave of the great national movement 

 which found expression a century later 

 in the Crusades. 



The fear of the end of the world hav- 

 ing passed with the end of the millennial 

 year, it was revived with even greater in- 

 tensity when the 1 oooth anniversary of 

 the Crucifixion approached. The mis- 

 eries of mankind in Gaul at that time 

 were incredible. The whole course of 

 nature seemed to be upset, and there was 

 intense cold in summer, oppressive heat 

 in winter. Rains and frosts came out of 

 season, and for three years (1030 to 

 1032) there was neither seed time nor 

 harvest. Thousands upon thousands died 

 of starvation, and the living were too 

 weak to bury the dead. There were 

 many horrible instances of cannibalism, 

 and human flesh is said to have been ex- 

 posed for sale in the market at Tournas. 

 In their maddened condition the peasants 

 exhumed human bodies and gnawed the 

 bones. 



One of the harrowing incidents of the 

 time, which will give some idea of the 

 insanity which suffering induced, oc- 

 curred in the wood of Chatenay, near the 

 town of Macon. A traveler and his wife 

 stopped at a hut supposedly occupied by 

 a holy hermit. Scarcely had they entered 

 the abode, however, when the woman dis- 

 covered a pile of skulls in the corner. 

 She and her husband fled to the town, 



and when an investigation followed it 

 was found that the hermit had murdered 

 and partly devoured 48 men, women, and 

 children. 



Grass, roots, and white clay were the 

 ordinary articles of food for the poorer 

 classes during these terrible years, and 

 as a result the sufferers almost ceased to 

 resemble human beings, their stomachs 

 becoming greatly distended, while almost 

 all the bones of their bodies were visible 

 beneath their leathery skin. Their verv 

 voices became thin and piping. 



Packs of raging wolves came out of 

 the forests and fell upon the defenseless 

 peasants. It seemed as if mankind in 

 France could never recover. But sud- 

 denly the fields brought forth grain in 

 abundance and the peasantry responded 

 with astonishing virility. 



Famine among the; French crusaders 



France suffered greatly from famine 

 and pestilence during the Crusades, but 

 like the other nations which participated 

 in the eight attempts to wrest the Holy 

 Land from the Mohammedans, the most 

 spectacular instances of privation oc- 

 curred among her armies in Palestine and 

 Egypt rather than among the people at 

 home. During the first crusade, plague, 

 supplemented by famine, destroyed 100,- 

 000 men, women, and children between 

 September and December of the year 

 1097. _ 



During the crusade against the heretics 

 in 12 18, one-sixth of the assailants per- 

 ished at the siege of the Egyptian city of 

 Damietta, while only 3,000 (some his- 

 torians say 10,000) of the 70,000 inhabit- 

 ants of the beleaguered place survived. 

 In the eighth and last crusade France 

 lost her king, Louis IX, and his son, Jean 

 Tristan, both of whom were stricken with 

 the pestilence which broke out at Car- 

 thage. 



That indefatigable Walloon chronicler, 

 Froissart, gives a simple but effective ac- 

 count of the four years' famine which 

 fell upon France in the middle of the 

 fourteenth century. "During that time," 

 he writes, "the merchants nor others 

 dared venture out of town to look after 

 their concerns or to take any journey, 

 for they were attacked and killed what- 



