Great Famine of 1315–1317: Rain, Hunger and Death in Europe

The Great Famine of 1315–1317 was the worst food crisis in medieval European history. After two years of almost constant rain ruined harvests across northern Europe, millions of people died of hunger and disease, and the disaster was followed by deadly epidemics among cattle and sheep. It marked the end of two centuries of growth and opened what historians call the crisis of the fourteenth century.

Background: a crowded continent

Between about 1050 and 1300 Europe’s population roughly doubled or more. Forests were cleared, marshes drained and poorer land on hillsides and heaths brought under the plough. By around 1300 many regions supported more people than at any time before the eighteenth century.

This growth left little margin for error. Many peasant families farmed holdings too small to store grain for a bad year, and yields per acre were low by modern standards. Towns depended on grain moved by cart and boat from the countryside. A single poor harvest could be absorbed, but two or three in a row were catastrophic.

The climate was also changing. The relatively warm period often called the Medieval Climate Anomaly was giving way to a cooler, more unstable pattern that would later be known as the Little Ice Age. Scientists have suggested a volcanic eruption, possibly at Mount Tarawera in New Zealand around 1314, may have played a role, but this remains a hypothesis.

What happened

The rains began in the spring of 1315 and continued through the summer and autumn. Chroniclers across England, France and the Low Countries described fields turned into lakes, seed rotting in the ground and hay that could not be dried. The harvest of 1315 failed across a huge area from Ireland to Poland.

Even armies were defeated by the weather. In the late summer of 1315 King Louis X of France led a campaign against Flanders, but his troops became bogged down in the mud near Courtrai and had to withdraw without fighting.

The winter of 1315–1316 brought hunger, and the summer of 1316 was again cold and wet. The second harvest failed, and this was when mortality peaked. People ate their seed grain, slaughtered draught animals and sold land and possessions to buy food. Thieves, beggars and abandoned children filled the roads.

The harvest of 1317 was better in many places, although recovery was slow because so much seed and so many plough animals had been lost. Grain prices only returned to normal levels around 1318 in most regions.

Livestock epidemics

Just as harvests recovered, a new blow fell. From about 1315 a sheep disease spread in England, and from about 1319 to 1321 a deadly cattle plague, probably rinderpest, swept through England and much of northern Europe. In some English estates more than half of all cattle died. The loss of oxen for ploughing and of milk and meat prolonged the crisis into the early 1320s.

Society and government responses

Prices of wheat and other grains rose to several times their normal level in 1315–1316. In England, Edward II’s parliament tried to fix maximum prices for food in 1315, but merchants simply stopped selling and the measures were abandoned the following year. Kings and towns also restricted the brewing of ale to save grain.

Towns suffered terribly because they relied on bought food. In Ypres, in Flanders, the town authorities paid to bury about 2,800 bodies between May and October 1316, out of a population usually estimated at 20,000–30,000. Bruges and other Flemish towns recorded similar losses.

Crime rose sharply, and church records show more charity but also more conflict over scarce resources. In Ireland the famine coincided with the invasion of Edward Bruce, brother of the Scottish king who had won at the Battle of Bannockburn, and warfare made the hunger worse. In northern England, Scottish raids added to the misery.

How historians know: the evidence

Much of what is known about the famine comes from chronicles written by monks and townsmen. The English chronicle attributed to Johannes de Trokelowe, a monk of St Albans, describes the rain, the soaring prices and the suffering of the poor in vivid terms. Similar accounts survive from Flanders, northern France, Germany and Poland, and their agreement across so many regions shows how widespread the disaster was.

Administrative records add hard numbers. English manorial accounts, kept by estate officials for landlords such as the Bishop of Winchester, record falling yields, rising prices, dead livestock and a sharp rise in deaths among tenants. Town accounts, such as those of Ypres and Bruges, record payments for burying the dead found in the streets.

Natural evidence also helps. Tree rings from oaks in northern Europe show unusually poor growth in these years, matching the written reports of cold, wet summers. Historians combine these sources to estimate mortality, but because no census existed, every overall figure remains an approximation.

The scale of the evidence has made the famine a key case study for historians of climate and society. Scholars such as Henry Lucas, who wrote the first major study in 1930, and William Chester Jordan, whose book of 1996 remains the standard account, have used it to show how weather, markets, war and government interacted in a pre-industrial economy.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: the famine affected the whole of Europe. Fact: it was concentrated north of the Alps and Pyrenees. Italy, Spain and other Mediterranean regions largely escaped the worst.

Myth: the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel was born in the Great Famine. Fact: this is a popular modern suggestion, but there is no evidence linking the story, first published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, to the events of 1315–1317.

Myth: widespread cannibalism occurred. Fact: a few chroniclers repeated such stories, but they were a standard way of expressing extreme horror, and historians do not accept them as reliable evidence.

Timeline

• 1315, spring–summer: Persistent rain begins across northern Europe.
• 1315, late summer: Louis X’s campaign against Flanders collapses in the mud.
• 1315, autumn: The harvest fails widely; grain prices rise sharply.
• 1316, May–October: Peak mortality; Ypres buries about 2,800 dead.
• 1316, autumn: A second harvest fails in much of the region.
• 1317: Harvests improve in many areas, though shortages continue.
• 1319–1321: A cattle plague, probably rinderpest, kills large numbers of oxen and cows.

Consequences and legacy

The famine ended the long medieval expansion. Population growth stopped or reversed in many regions, and some marginal farmland went out of cultivation. Landlords and peasants alike were left with debts and fewer animals.

Historians such as William Chester Jordan have argued that the famine shook confidence in the ability of rulers and the church to protect people. Some demographers suggest that children malnourished in 1315–1317 were more vulnerable when the Black Death arrived in 1347, though this connection is still debated.

The famine also overlapped with growing political and military strain, from conflicts in Flanders to the build-up that would lead to the Hundred Years’ War. Together these pressures made the fourteenth century one of the most difficult in European history.

Why it matters

The Great Famine showed how vulnerable a crowded farming society was to a change in the weather. It killed millions, ended two centuries of growth and weakened northern Europe just a generation before the far greater catastrophe of the Black Death.