Black Age

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History is a glamorous river with intriguing stories, it is told by the survivors of the past. Some say the history is written by the victors, but they may have gotten lucky; but the survivors, always have the final word. For example, in the fourteenth century, the world was tortured by disasters that the war could never resolve, and those who survived the purgatory wrote the story about a hundred years of living hell.

The Europe in 1300 was in the midst of the age of Medieval Industrial Revolution. However, nothing had prepared them for the inevitable disasters that would bring the entire world to its knees. In the year of 1303, Baltic Sea froze, no previous evidence of such incident was found and recorded, and thus began the little ice age. The Alpine glaciers advanced, the settlements in Greenland were completely cut off, and cultivation in Iceland was ceased in the early 1400s, no food, no supplies to aid. Starvation, disease, riots, and raids were spread across Europe, the pirates were rampaging the cities. After a heavy rain in 1315, the crops in France died, nothing but famine and epidemics shrouded the sky, and those who desired to live another day were stooped into cannibalism.

The ice age weakened humanity, but it was just the beginning. In October 1347, some sailors showed strange symptoms with black swellings, the swellings oozed blood and were followed by black blotches on the skin. The sick ones suffered immense pain, they coughed blood and died within the first week of initial symptoms. It was terrifying that one could be so easily infected by such disease with basic human contact and respiratory infection, the plague would rapidly spread across the Europe, and then it was spreading into the rest of the world, there was no cure, no prevention, no remedy. A French physician named Simon de Covino suggested that if one sick person carried such disease, then he "could infect the entire world". The devastation was beyond comprehension and imagination, many regions were depopulated, territories and lands were covered and piled by corpses. The total death reached approximately 20 million across the entire Europe. There was a constant death report with 400 would die daily, a graveyard received ten thousand corpses in six weeks, the streets were empty, the farm stands were replaced by death carts. Seven waves of plague swept through Europe throughout the 14th century, nature left nothing but a purgatory.

Disasters such as the Black Death, little ice age, and Saint Marcellus’ flood brought great destruction to the world, there were also the Hundred Years War between the French and English kings, the war severely damaged the economy and the population of both nations, areas became depleted, farm lands were laid waste, the black death spread even more viciously, taxes were raised, France had begun a journey to absolutist monarchy, the rich got richer and poor struggled more to survive. These conflicts and disasters brought the humanity to its knees, but people always find a way to start from the dust, and thus began the age of Renaissance.

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