The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 by Brian Fagan

French.

    The catastrophic rains affected an enormous area of northern Europe,
from Ireland to Germany and north into Scandinavia. Incessant rain
drenched farmlands long cleared of woods or reclaimed from marsh by
countless small villages. The farmers had plowed heavy soils with long
furrows, creating fields that absorbed many millimeters of rain without
serious drainage problems. Now they became muddy wildernesses, the
crops flattened where they grew. Clayey subsoils became so waterlogged
in many areas that the fertility of the topsoil was reduced drastically for
years afterward.
    As rural populations grew during the thirteenth century, many communities had moved onto lighter, often sandy soils, more marginal farming land that was incapable of absorbing sustained rainfall. Deep erosion
gullies channeled running water through ravaged fields, leaving little
more than patches of cultivable land. In parts of southern Yorkshire in
northern England, thousands of acres of arable land lost their thin topsoil
to deep gullies, leaving the underlying rock exposed. As much as half the
arable land vanished in some places. Inevitably, crop yields plummeted.
Such grain as could be harvested was soft and had to be dried before it
could be ground into flour. The cold weather and torrential rains of late
summer 1315 prevented thousands of hectares of cereals from ripening
fully. Fall plantings of wheat and rye failed completely. Hay could not be
cured properly.
    Hunger began within months. "There began a dearness of wheat.
... From day to day the price increased," lamented a chronicler in Flanders.4 By Christmas 1315, many communities throughout northwestern
Europe were already desperate.
    Few people understood how extensive the famine was until pilgrims,
traders, and government messengers brought tales of similar misfortune
from all parts. "The whole world was troubled," wrote a chronicler at
Salzburg, which lay at the southern margins of the affected region.5 King
Edward II of England attempted to impose price controls on livestock,
but without success. After the hunger grew worse, he tried again, placing
restrictions on the manufacture of ale and other products made from grain. The king urged his bishops to exhort hoarders to offer their surplus
grain for sale "with efficacious words" and also offered incentives for the
importation of grain. At a time when no one had enough to eat, none of
these measures worked.

    The hunger was made worse by the previous century's population
growth. Late eleventh-century England's population of about 1.4 million
had risen to 5 million by 1300. France's inhabitants (that is, that part of
Europe now lying within the country's modern boundaries) increased
from about 6.2 million in the late eleventh century to about 17.6 million
or even higher. By 1300, with the help of cereal cultivation at unprecedented altitudes and latitudes, Norway supported half a million people.
Yet economic growth had not kept pace with population. There was
already some sluggishness in local economies by 1250, and very slow
growth everywhere after 1285. With growing rural and urban populations, high transportation costs, and very limited communication networks, the gap between production and demand was gradually widening
throughout northern Europe. Many towns and cities, especially those
away from the coast or major waterways, were very vulnerable to food
shortages.
    In the countryside, many rural communities survived at near-subsistence levels, with only enough grain to get through one bad harvest and
plant for the next year. Even in good years, small farmers endured the
constant specter of winter famine. All it took was a breakdown in supply
lines caused by iced-in shipping, bridges damaged by floods, an epidemic
of cattle disease that decimated breeding stock and draught animals, or
too much or too little rainfall, and people went hungry.
    Even in the best of times, rural life was