The role of epidemics in the shaping of historical events is often overlooked. There are a number of reasons for this. 20th Century historians have trouble with dealing with concept of epidemics essentially because they have not experienced them and thus have difficulty understanding them.
The plague strikes Paris, which lost 800 per day and whose grave diggers could not keep pace with the number of dead. Scenes like this were common throughout Europe, as The Pest struck relentlessly.
The modern historian is uncomfortable in dealing with epidemics, which defy easy analysis in any event. Epidemics are natural events impinging on the "real" world of man. Their occurrence is unpredictable, they strike without warning and disappear as quickly as they came. Often contemporaries of these events do not help the historian in assessing their role. Until the middle of this century, epidemic disease was common, and consequently was overlooked as something too familiar to possibly be of importance in the shaping of events. Often when they did rate a mention it was because the event, such as the Black Death, was so universal and devastating as to be out of the ordinary. Then their descriptions were, as likely as not, to be an awed impression not an accurate accounting of events.
The Hundred Years War (1337-1453), really a series of wars with continuous common objectives, was the longest sustained conflict in recorded history. The Black Death (1347-54, etc.) was nothing less than the single greatest catastrophe to befall Europe. Both events changed Europe dramatically and irrevocably from what it was to what it was become. For a military historian the question of what effect the Black Death had on the Hundred Years War, if any, is an important one.
A physical chill settled on the 14th Century at its very start; the Baltic Sea froze over twice in 1303 and 1306-7. Then followed by years of unseasonable cold and rain. It is unlikely that the people of that era recognized this change as the end of the Climactic Optimum (several centuries of particularly mild weather) and the onset of the Little Ice Age (just the opposite), but they could mark with fear the impact of the change: a shorter grower season. This meant disaster as the balance between population and agriculture was delicate. In 1315 famine struck across Europe after interminable rains destroyed the crops. Famine continued off and on until the middle of the century when other events would right the balance again, for neither man nor nature was finished with the century.
Famine only increased the generally poor level ofd health of the population. The 14th Century was not a healthy period to live. Epidemics of diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), smallpox, measles (still the fifth largest killer of children in the world) and varicella (chickenpox) struck at regular intervals. Diarrheal diseases salmonellosis, shigellosis, campylobacteriosis, rotaviruses, hepatitis and a whole range of parasitic infections arising from impure or contaminated water and food supplies.
Sanitation, especially in the cities, was abhorrent. Fecal material and the water supply mixed freely in many areas. Crowding within the walls of cities meant for half the population `meant crowded housing conditions and assured the rapid spread of respiratory infections such as influenza, measles and bacterial pneumonias. The streets stank of offal and swine roamed about at will. Flies, roaches and other disease bearing insects were tolerated as part of the natural order and their was little attempt to eliminate them. Roof (black) rats were commonly found nesting in the thatched roofs, ceiling spaces and attics of houses.
The average medieval human stank, literally. Believing that bathing was bad, most persons only washed once a week, if then. The same clothing was worn day after day, week after week, with few if any intervening washings or changes of clothing. Lousiness was common. The medieval knight in armor was certainly infested with head lice, body lice and pubic lice. Scabies was prevalent. Fleas, from the dogs, cats, livestock, and the rats in the ceiling were common to the point were various "household hint" pamphlets were published on how to rid your home of fleas (non of them suggested bathing). Impetigo, scrofula, boils and other skin conditions were endemic.
Medical practice was a combination of superstition, folklore and empirical practice. Among learned men with educations, disease was believed to be the result of an imbalance in the four humors in the body. The spread of disease was attributed to vapors that contaminated the air and caused this imbalance. Malaria, a common disease in marshy areas such as Rome and parts of southern France, literally means "bad air". The disease was thought to be caused by the foul air rising from swamps (not from the mosquitoes living there).
The average man tended to be fatalistic towards disease. It was a part of life that had to be accepted. He saw his ability to do anything towards preventing disease as nonexistent. The lower classes tended to equate disease with sin, or more precisely as divine retribution for sin. This attitude was shared by many in the upper classes and led to the belief that disease was beyond the capability of human intervention.
The impact of all these factors was predictable. The average life expectancy was about 35, but this figure is misleading. The real loss was among children. The infant mortality was about one third, though some reports indicate that possibly one half of all children died before the end of their sixth month of life. Additional disease, aided by malnutrition and poor sanitation, claimed between one half and two thirds of all children before their sixth birthday. As a by product of this very little emotional investment seems to have been made in young children they were left to survive or die, without great concern, for their first five or six years. If a child died, another took its place, and little if any importance was attached to the event. 1
Given the general level of health, sanitation, living conditions and medical care, medieval Europe could only be described as a public health disaster waiting to happen.
The Hundred Years War
When Philip IV of France died childless in 1314 the crown passed in turn to his three brothers: Louis X, Philip V and Charles IV, each of whom reigned for less than six years. As Charles lay dying in 1328 he said that if the child of his pregnant wife was a boy, then the unborn son should be king, but if a daughter, then the crown should go to Philip of Valois, it having been earlier decreed by the Barons of France that "no woman nor her son could succeed to the monarchy."
When the posthumous daughter was born, the Barons ignored Edward III's claim through his mother Isabel. Isabel was an important link between the kings of England and France, for she was Philip IV's first cousin and French king Charles IV's sister. Claims had been put forth, by English ministers, for her or her son to accede to the throne of France on the death of Philip. These had been rejected under the "Salic Law" and Philip, the nearest heir through the male line, installed as king.
Two years later, Edward III secured the throne for himself in an unusual fashion. Parliament met at Nottingham in October 1330. Isabel, the Queen Mother, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March and the real ruler of England had taken up residence in the castle. In a calculated move 18 year old Edward III and a band of young lords entered the fortress through a secret passage. After cutting down the guards they burst into the pregnant Isabel's bedchamber and seized Mortimer. Edward had his mother's lover hung, drawn and quartered in the Common Gallows in Tyburn.
The England that Edward III came into possession of was an underpopulated land with more forest and moor than arable land. London, with 30,000 souls, ranked among the smallest of European capitals. The king ruled as the leader of dissatisfied and quarrelsome barons, not as an absolute monarch.
To complicate matters further, one of England's principal sources of wealth, the Duchy of Aquitaine (Guyenne), was not under full English sovereignty but a fiefdom it held in liege from the King of France. But to the Plantangents the Duchy was more an integral part of England than either Wales or Ireland. Royal toll bridges and wine were the chief sources of income from there and the money in turn was to buy wool and other English goods. The English had an excellent system by which they collected both import and export duties and on several occasions the income from Aquitaine was greater that from all of England.
Philip VI, by contrast, presided over the greatest power in Europe. France was generally conceded to be superior in chivalry, learning, Christian virtue and military arts. Paris was one of the largest cities in Europe with 100,000 souls or three times the population of London. The University of Paris was the great learning center and all who aspired to scholarship studied there. French culture and language extended from France throughout Europe into England and northern Spain.
With a population of 21 million France had at least four times (possibly six times) the population of England. Unlike Edward, Philip VI had fewer unruly nobles to contend with. The standard of living in the country was high, the land rich and the people reasonably contented for the era. The Papacy, the great supranational force binding medieval Europe and impacting on every facet of medieval life from cradle to grave, was located in Avingnon (due to unrest in Rome) under powerful French influence.
Armies
Philip commanded the largest, best equipped, most enthusiastic army in Europe. The French knighthood was Philip's most daunting asset. The man-at-arms and his giant warhorse constituted a unit of heavy armor that was the medieval equivalent of a heavy tank. A massed formation of such units concentrated on a narrow front had a shattering impact. For three centuries heavy cavalry of this type had won nearly every important battle in Christendom and had even wrested Palestine from the infidel for a short time.
By contrast England had a dismal military record. The English army had spent two centuries being repeatedly thrashed by the Scots. Her men at arms came when they wanted and stayed only as long as it suited them. From the point of view of total resources then there was no comparison between France and England. But in the Fourteenth Century total potential resources had little bearing on the military power of countries. The real question was who controlled the resources and whether they could be used effectively.
Though France was rich it was hard for her rulers to tap her wealth. There was no single tax system nor any single consultative body to either authorize the taxes or assist in their collection. For this Philip relied on a system by which the individual lords were assessed various amounts and they in turn assigned individuals to collect the money from within their respective fiefdoms. Some times the taxes were collected, sometimes not. France was rich and content, but had never been in position where had to fully test its ability to call on its resources.
Edward demonstrated a talent for making the most of his scanty resources. While Edward had problems with nobles he did have the advantage of centralized control through Parliament as a consultative body in the raising and collection of taxes. Edward had also anticipated the end of the feudal system, and had stopped abandoned the concept of depending on the feudal levies for armies. Instead he established a paid military, hiring leaders who by the terms of carefully drawn upon contacts raised a given number of troops of a specified type for a fixed period at a predetermined rate of pay.
Experience in the interminable wars with the Scots had shown Edward both the benefits of a yeoman infantry and how to deploy them tactically.
In an age when transportation was costly and difficult, an efficient system of supply was almost out of the question. Armies had to be maintained by living off the land. Consequently they could not be very large no matter how many men were theoretically available. As already seen the ratio of men under arms to the total population varied greatly between the two countries. It seems likely that the total number of men available for effective military service was not utterly different in the two countries.
War
Both countries lumbered towards war for a number of reasons the key one being the desire of both for control of the English holdings in France. English commercial dominance in Flanders precipitated the first crisis. The local communes made the Count of Flanders, Louis of Nevers prisoner in 1325. Philip marched to his relief, massacred the burghers at the battle of Cassel and established French administration in Flanders. Edward retorted with an embargo on wool export from England, threatening the Flemish with economic ruination and political extinction. Edward, spurred by the weavers of Ghent, next declared himself king of France.
It is uncertain how seriously he actually took his claim to be the rightful King of France, but it was of incomparable value in giving him the appearance of a righteous cause. While desirable in any epoch, "a just war" in the 14th Century was virtually a legal necessity for requesting feudal aid in men and money. Edward's claim to the French crown also gave a legal excuse to any of Philip's vassals wishing to ally themselves with Edward, since they could always claim to be supporting the rightful claimant to the crown.
Philip responded to Edward's claims by declaring the feudal duchy of Aquitaine forfeit, and investing it. Neither nation was ready for war. The real drama of the war's early stages was in the Herculean efforts of both protagonists to harness the resources of their bewilderingly ramshackle and unwieldy states. Edward was reduced to pawning both the crown he had prepared for his coronation as the French king and eventually the Great Crown of England itself. Later he was forced to leave his wife and children behind in Flanders as collateral for his debts. Parliament finally gave him the necessary money when he threatened to return there and enter debtor's prison in order to retrieve them.
Edward encircled France with a series of diplomatic alliances and negotiation, scoring his greatest coup when he bribed the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig IV to make him Vicar General (Deputy) of the Empire. Ludwig then recognized Edward as King of France. Unfortunately for Edward, Ludwig supplied neither troops nor money and the French fleet roamed the Channel at will.
In 1338, Portsmouth and Southampton were burned and Guernsey was occupied. In 1339 the French continued to harass the English, raiding from Cornwall to Kent, attacking Dover and Folkkestone, putting the entire of Isle of Wight to the flames and even making forays into the Thames estuary. Though the English fleet avenged the raids, sacking Le Treport in the spring of 1339, England faced the prospect full scale invasion.
On March 23, 1339 Philip issued an ordnance for the conquest of England. Within a year a fleet of over 200 vessels were assembling off Sluys on the Zeeland seacoasts at the mouth of the river Zwyn. Mille de Noyes, the Marshal of France, planned to take 60,000 troops across the Channel with him. The English response was the organization of a home guard the garde de la mer for every southern county. Edward sought to divert Philip's attention by raiding France, laying waste to everything. While Edward's policy of total war horrified Philip, as well as Europe, the King of France pursued a strategy of enticing Edward to invade and then refusing battle until the English king's money ran out.
At Flamergire Edward's army of 15,000 waited in vain for Philip's army of 35,000 to give battle, and Edward was forced to quit in frustration after a month, his money exhausted. Edward was able to obtain more money from a grudging Parliament and assembled a fleet of 147 ships at Suffolk, then set sail for the French fleet anchorage at Sluys. There the French gave Edward his first real victory by making a major tactical blunder. Instead of going to sea where their galleys would be able to outmaneuver and destroy Edward's single square sailed and rudimentary ruddered cogs, the French Admirals Hue Quieret and Nicoa Behuchet insisted on staying in the estuary where they could fight a land battle, which was exactly what Edward wanted. Trapped in the estuary, and deprived of their advantages, they were destroyed by Edward's unwieldy ships which smashed into the French fleet. After a one sided battle, the French invasion fleet was eradicated.
Edward sought to take advantage of the victory and with 30,000 men besieged the town of Tournai. Philip met him with 20,000 cavalry and an unspecified number of other troops but refused to do battle, contenting himself with raiding Edward's outposts and cutting his supply lines whenever possible. Again Edward was not able to bring Philip to battle and watched helplessly as the siege dragged on and his resources ran out. After two months Edward found it necessary to accept a truce arranged by the Papacy.
Edward's situation was still wretched despite his victories. Money was the problem. He could expect no more from England the ninth tax had not been well received by the citizenry many of them refused to pay and a few met the tax collectors with armed resistance. His debts were mounting and payment was being demanded. Despite a vast expenditure Edward had little to show for his military adventures other than ruined French countryside. Edward was so discouraged that he offered to give up all his claims to the French throne as long as he could have Aquitaine in full sovereignty. Philip, feeling he had the upper hand, refused. Edward was forced to slip out the Low Countries to avoid his clamorous creditors and the mountain of debt he had assembled. Again Edward was able to get some moneys from Parliament in 1341 but they were not even enough to pay his loans, including 180,000 pounds borrowed from three Florentine banking houses all of whom would go bankrupt that year. Finally some native English in control of the wool industry saw an opportunity to make some money by loaning money to Edward. He never repaid them and they too were ruined.
Re-Invasion
Edward reinvaded France in 1345. Edward's march through the countryside was typical, his troops raped, pillaged and burned. His army besieged Caen, a city larger than any other English city except London, and finally took it by storm. Edward, enraged at its resistance (he was running out of money again) ordered the city and its inhabitants treated with no mercy. Of the 20,000 townspeople at least 3,000 were killed by his forces. Numerous hostages, including the Abbess, were taken.
Edward next feinted towards Paris, forcing Philip to gather an army and give chase. Edward, badly outnumbered, retreated towards Flanders seeking safety in the Low Countries.
At Crecy Philip finally gave Edward what he wanted a pitched land battle. As the French assembled it appeared to be the beginnings of an English rout. Philip's force, some 30,000 men, 20,000 of which were men at arms, outnumbered Edward's army three to one. Philip however displayed his tactical ineptitude by foolishly attacking without either a plan or consideration of disposition of his troops. The result was predictable. The battle, one of the great decisive military battles in history, was a French disaster. Edward's yeoman archery destroyed Philip's army and bankrupted the legend of armored knights as invincible forces.
Again, Edward could not exploit the victory and was forced to find a way out of France. He set siege to Calais and took the city (which England would retain until 1558) in 1347.
Clement VI arranged another truce in September 1347. Philip was in desperate straits, the land in the north was ravaged, his armies routed, and he was out of money to replace them. Edward's situation was hardly less grim. While he had effectively destroyed French military strength, he had been unable to exploit his victories and his financial situation, while better, was still desperate. Still he had broken the French army and could plan with confidence campaigns to be conducted the following year when the truce ran out. As their representatives signed the hastily arranged truce in front of the Papal legates, neither side was aware that a much more somber fate was in store for their two kingdoms.
The Plague Arrives
In October 1347, two months after the fall of Calais, Genoese trading ships put into the harbor of Messina in Sicily with dead and dying men at the oars. The diseased sailors showed black swellings about the size of an apple in their armpits and their groins. The swellings oozed blood and pus as they grew in size and burst. The sick suffered severe pain and died within five days. Several days would pass before the citizens of Messina realized the dying and ill sailors and their ships had brought an epidemic into their midst. Their actions came too late to save them and served only involve others.
The Messinans drove the ships out of port to find 'safe harbor' elsewhere. One ship bearing its lethal cargo made it to Marseilles in November, the remainder put in at Corsica and Sardinia. Ships from Marseilles carried the pestilence to Barcelona and Valencia from where the disease spread to Spain and Portugal. England, safe for awhile, was reached in August by a ship from Calais that had put into the Dorsetshire port of Melcombe. By the end of 1349, the epidemic had spread its tendrils of death throughout Europe.
It was not to be called the Black Death until a century later. At its height it was merely called the Pestilence or the Great Mortality. The best estimates of modern demographers are that one third to a half of Europeans living in the warm air of the summer of 1347 would die by the winter of 1349 from the plague. One third of Europe would have meant twenty four million dead, but in truth no one knows how many died.
The urban centers of Europe were ripe for epidemic and they were hardest hit. The death list mounted so fast in some places that the victims died unattended and the living could barely keep up with the grim task of burying the dead. The pattern of disease was similar for each city. When a city was stricken the disease usually resided in it for four to six months, killed off a large section of the population and disorganized the entire life of the town, to subside in the winter and return the following spring where it raged again for six months.
In Paris, 800 died a day, and the city would lose 50% of its population of 100,0000. Florence, already weakened by a famine in 1347, lost 80% of is citizens; Venice, Hamburg, and Bremen two thirds; London one half. In Marseilles 16,000 death were recorded in a single month. Previously flourishing cities, like Curcassone, Montpellier, Rouen, Arras, Laon and Reims, were dealt an irreversible blow and sank to shadows of their former prosperity.
In crowded Avingnon, a city of 50,000 and the seat of the Papacy, 400 died daily, 7000 houses were emptied and a single graveyard received 11,000 corpses in six weeks. Half the city's inhabitants reportedly died in the space of a few months, including 9 cardinals and 70 lesser prelates. When the graveyards could hold no more, corpses were tossed into the Rhone River, and Pope Clement VI was forced to consecrate the river as a burial ground. Everywhere the Church was forced to resort to extraordinary ends to assure at least the semblance of the sacraments for the dying no small matter in a population as tied to religion as Europe was at that time. Bishops in England, faced with a loss of priests to minister the sacraments gave permission to laymen to make confession to each other as was done by the Apostles, "or if no man is present than even a woman". Clement finally granted remission of sins to all who died of the plague.
Among the major European cities only Milan seems to have escaped the horrendous march of death. There Archbishop Visconti, dictator of the city, ordered that whenever the plague appeared the house and those to either side of it were to be walled up with all the inhabitants therein the living, the sick and the healthy and the dead.
The situation was as bad in the countryside. Peasants dropped dead on the roads, in the fields, and in their houses. Survivors, in growing helplessness, fell into apathy leaving ripe wheat uncut and livestock untended. English sheep, bearers of the precious wool, died throughout the countryside, with reports of 5000 dead in one field alone and the stench of their rotting carcasses filled the air for miles around.
The mortality in the countryside was erratic, in one place only 20% would die, in another entire villages would be wiped out. By the time the plague was over, 200,000 villages and holding would be abandoned across the face of Europe. Givry in Burgundy was typical of the experience of the smaller villages. A thriving little town of 1300 in the summer of 1345, she recorded 615 deaths in the summer of 1348 in a 14 week period.
Monasteries, convents, prisons and other closed communities were doomed when the plague was introduced to them. The Convents of Curcassone and Marseilles lost everyone. At Montpelier 133 of 140 Dominican Friars died. Petrarch's brother, Gherardo, member of a Carthusian monastery of 36, buried the prior and 34 fellow monks one by one, sometimes three a day, until he was left alone with his dog.
Ships were death traps. Along the shores of England it was not uncommon to see ships under full sail being driven by the waters of the Channel, tossing about aimlessly, making it clear that all aboard had died.
Back to Cry Havoc #8 Table of Contents
Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1994 by David W. Tschanz.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com