History of the Black Death - Full Documentary

[Music] [Music] humanity has suffered pandemics of various sizes and degrees of severity throughout history they were recounted in the Bible occurred during the reigns of Roman emperors like Justinian's and even followed the first world war but the time of the black death was something else entirely the story of the Black Death is the story of a perfect storm it was the focal point were the conditions of city's expansion of the human population the explosion a trade and just the right political situations met a powerfully lethal bacterium with an equally powerful vector a transmission it went by many names the Black Death the plague the great mortality and many others but we know it's so well because of its infamy it was after all estimated that 30 to 40 percent of Europe died but Europe was not alone Africa the Middle East India and East Asia were all in its path of destruction in the end it was suspected that worldwide 200 million people died a number so high that every outbreak before or since has not even come close and this is especially impressive when you figure in that the world population at the time was approximately 500 million our story begins not in Europe but far to the east no one is exactly certain where the plague hides its lair but many agree apply somewhere with a great Eurasian steppe meets the Gobi Desert some claim it came from the Mongolian plateau from a region of the Great Desert itself a place that Marco Polo on his journey would say that when a traveler became isolated he would hear the voices of devils leading him astray and the arid wind could make a thousand fantasies drawn to the mind whereas others felt it was on the banks of lake issyk-kul one of the deepest lakes in the world where the contagion lay in wait now left to its own devices the plague would infect small rodents and due to its lethal nature it would not have easily been able to escape its isolated domain but by the mid 14th century the steppe was unified by the PAX Mongolia and trade had rebounded on a massive scale what was once a desolate and isolated land was now criss crossed by the Silk Roads it was traversed by throngs of merchants hoping to make their fortune a multitude of trade stations and away stopping points were also established what's more to expedite messages that kept a bureaucracy of the great Mongol Empire and it's later fractured States working the writers of the yam essentially a Mongolian Pony Express were created suddenly the plague had a mechanism to expand its domain and it eagerly awaited its chance to do so in the Crimean Peninsula quite a distance to the west was the city of cava in the mid 13th century she was a backwater rural rustic some would say primitive fishing village but the world was changing and trade which had languished since the fault of the Roman Empire had emerged as a powerful force in a really good example where the Italian city-states which provide fiercely with one another for monetary hegemony nothing would stop them from expanding their bottom line the quote-unquote Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade jumping over the walls of Constantinople in 1204 gave testament to that now to quote a Ferengi rule of acquisition number 95 in case anybody's interested expand or die thus in 1266 the Genoese arrived at cava and set to work making it a city to be reckoned with by 1340 she boosted a population of 80,000 people buildings dotted the horizon her market was a flurry of activity and the docks of kapha were renowned to house over 200 ships the location was perfect for the business savvy the Silk Roads ran just to the north and divided into several paths before going into Europe the volga and the don rivers were relatively nearby adding to a commercial sphere of influence and from her warm water port ships would come and go from Constantinople the Levant Italy in his faraway Siberia in a short period of time cava had blossomed into a major focal point for bringing in luxury goods from both East and West but as is the case so many times in history one civilization success usually comes at the expense of her neighbors the Mongol Empire was one of the largest land empires in history by the time of Kublai Khan's death in 1294 it had fractured into four separate khanates each had their own agenda and modus operandi but don't let the division fool you each Connie was still very powerful of which the Golden Horde exercised authority over the Crimea to them it was a small portion of their vast realm now the armies of the Golden Horde were comprised to a certain extent with the Tartars this was a nomadic tribe from eastern mongolia that were conquered in the days of jenga's khan they had been integrated into the Mongolian armies and helped with the western expansion of the empire by the mid 14th century the Golden Horde relied on the Tartars to help govern their land now to put this all into context kapha and for that matter the Genoese presence existed only because the Golden Horde allowed it the land on which the trading city flourished was essentially a grant for the purposes of enriching the khanates bank account but for the two decades leading up to the early 1340s political economic and religious friction between the Mongols and the Genoese were mounting thus by the Year 1343 very little was needed to ignite a precarious situation into open hostility not too far from kava was the trading city of Tana it was nestled at the south of the Don River and renowned as being the jump point one takes to get to China it was in this city that a small angry exchange on a Market Street blossomed into a full-blown riot resulting in spilled blood and to be specific a Muslim died at the hands of an Italian or at least as a tale goes well either way the story got out and the local Mongol Khan a man by the name of Yanni Begg decided to arrive at the city gates and brought with him an impressive tartar army under the auspices of being a defender of Islam he demanded that the city capitulate now in standard Mongol fashion a besieged city he had the option of either adhering to the terms of surrender completely or taking their chances with fighting back which usually resulted in the city and its people being wiped from the surface of the earth the Genoese opted for the latter option and responded to Yanni begs terms with a particularly insulin response in retrospect perhaps this wasn't the best idea the attacker is not expecting this kind of response laid into Tana with a vengeance and the city was quickly overrun however some of the defenders managed to escape and then ran for their lives back to cava the tartar army pursued very closely they were fully engaged to punish the Italians for their insult of resistance to them in their mongol khan these arrogant decadent Genoese no longer had a right to exist in the Khanate any longer but as I've mentioned before cava was an impressive city in her city walls were equally impressive and thus the tartar army and her Khan had to settle in for a siege this was going to be a really long siege and as it dragged out something else was coming in on the heels of the tartar horsemen by 1346 tales of a strange disease had begun to filter their way west most of the stories were ignored but they told of entire areas being destroyed in population centers being wiped out vast tracts of China and India lay dying of a mysterious pestilence and the disease like the stories about it were making their way west by early 1346 Russian chroniclers had recounted that the shores of the Caspian Sea were affected in less than a year it had spread across the dawn in the Volga rivers descended into the Crimean Peninsula and onto an unsuspecting tartar army it didn't take long before the encampment was infected in even less time before the besiegers began to die on mass for the Genoese protected by their city walls this affliction was heaven-sent to them it was nothing less than their God's retribution against the heathen race and if they had any faith in this belief they were soon to find out just how wrong they were the situation in the tartar camp was degrading by the day to the point where more people were dying than could be easily attended to the scene if one could imagine was that of putrid swollen corpses stacked like cordwood as far as the eye could see but perhaps what motivated the survivors to action was not so much the site but rather the disgusting gut-wrenching stench the Khan at this point disgusted and revolted by the smell gave the command to load the corpses on the catapults and then had him launched into the city his hope was that the smell would accomplish what his army couldn't that is to drive the inhabitants to surrender now keep in mind that the bodies were well into the phases of decomposition by the time they were weaponized what's more as the body rots gases formed within the various layers fashio and internal organs it essentially putrefies thus when it's launched with sufficient velocity and upon hitting a stone structure at the end of their trajectory they wouldn't just impact and fall down rather some would explode into chunks and aerosolize fragments spraying an entire area and showering those unfortunate enough to be below this went on for weeks the city was essentially inundated with remains the rats that were infesting the camp would follow the scent in short order and with them the plague entered the city the Genoese who were once confident behind their defenses and were scoffing at the enemy now saw the dying commenced once again but this time it was in their own streets their own buildings and in their own homes what made the plague especially lethal was that it had an almost perfect vector for transmission that is the rats and fleas that carried it were well-suited to allow it to spread the black rat or Rattus Rattus thought to be one of the major species involved in transmission evolved in Asia approximately ten to fifteen thousand years ago now while it's half this size of its cousin the brown rat it compensates with its ability to reproduce and what do I mean by this - rats mating continuously for three years can lead to a population of over 3 million is also an extremely resilient creature they can climb nearly vertical surfaces enter through openings a quarter inch thick and survive a fall of five stories and by the way rodent comes from the Latin word na meaning - na and as such it's powerful jaw can cut its way through lead Adobe and unhardened concrete medieval city walls simply didn't stand a chance now once inside a city or on board a ship they can exhibit problem-solving intelligence after establishing an ester a den it purposely creates an escape route before cautiously forging for food indeed it essentially conducts reconnaissance changing the areas that it explores and adapting quickly to any change in its environment but perhaps its most unsettling aspect is that it serves as an almost perfect reservoir for fleas the Oriental flea known as xenops Allah ki OPS's is also called for obvious reasons the rat flea it has a preference to get its blood meal from a rat or other rodent but if that source is limited or exterminated its happy to try something else and while it's waiting for something else to come on the menu it has a certain degree of patience this flea can endure for more than a month without a host and during this time it can live on clothing baggage fur hair or for that matter corpses that are catapulted through the air once a target is sensed its powerful hind legs allowed to jump over half a meter and once it lands its exceptional bite can penetrate directly into the bloodstream of its host where it can suck up a meal now in a normal flea this blood would flow without interruption into the fleas stomach plague-infested fleas on the other hand were a completely different story once infected the plague bacterium would multiply within the flea itself blocking its fore gut and more importantly its ability to ingest a meal this would make the flea even more voracious resulting in multiple bites and with each bite the plague bacteria would be regurgitated into the host now this brings us to our main culprit the bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and to emphasize this is not a virus viruses are smaller work on a different mechanism and their infectivity is distinctive once your Sarnia pestis is inside the human host it reproduces aggressively using its own unique enzymes they can invade organs and a lymphatic system this system by the way is crucial to the body it is one of the key members of our immune defense and is responsible for eliminating foreign contagion but for the purposes of the plague it becomes its new home which can seem a little counterintuitive the reason for this is that the plague is extremely adaptive which allows it to evade the otherwise very competent human immune system and while the immune system is busy chasing its own tail yes Sarnia pest is spreads from lymph node to lymph node to lymph node and multiplies at a ferocious rate but of course for the defenders of kapha with no knowledge of germ theory epidemiology and no insight and how this was spreading not to mention that antibiotics would not come around for Oh 600 years this was nothing less than a glimpse into the apocalypse by April of 1347 there was very little left of the Tartar army around kapha by the time of the spring rains the straggling survivors had retreated many who left were infected and took the plague with them to other destinations however by then the contagion had made its way well into the city and there the scenario had become equally appalling John Kelly in his book the great mortality does a great job at describing what the situation in the city was like before the Tartars left quote as the death toll mounted the streets would have been filled with feral animals feeding on human remains drunken soldiers eluding and raping old women dragging corpses through rubble and burning buildings spewing Jets of flame and smoke into the Crimean sky there would have been swarms of rodents and piles of bodies stacked like cordwood in every public square and in every eye a look of wild panic or dull resignation the scenes in the harbor the only means of escape and besieged kapha would have been equally horrific surging crowds and sword wielding guards children wailing for lost or dead parents shouting and cursing everybody pushing towards teeming ships and beyond the me lay on the departing galleys prayerful passengers hugging one another under great white sheets of unfurling sail ignorant that below deck in dark sultry holds hundreds if not thousands of plague bearing rats were scratching themselves and sniffing at the cool sea air end quote as I've said before kava was an impressive city equally impressive was her port which could shelter nearly 200 ships at this point in history panic had engulfed the populace and getting out was the only thing the inhabitants could think of thus it wasn't just one Genoese galley that managed to depart but several their journey would take them south through the Black Sea then through the narrow Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara their destinations were the great ports of the entire Mediterranean world [Music] the world that the plague was sailing into seemed almost perfectly set up for a pandemic from the thirteenth century onward trade had expanded like never before and not just on land but also on the water the sea lanes and the trade routes of the Mediterranean had prominently emerged not just as a simple means to expand a country's income but vital to the success of any emerging power thus ports and harbors would grow to facilitate this need and became strategically crucial as the world made its first steps into becoming a global community in time it became a relatively common sight to see luxury goods from China being sold in Italy France or even England now the time leading up to the 14th century was also a period a dramatic gain in the human population this was a phase of prolonged favourable weather which meant impressive crop yields and the extra food would mean more mouths could be fed Europe was estimated to of peat someplace in the 75 to 80 million range but all good things come to an end and by the 1330s the weather had changed for the worse and this was accompanied by various ecological disasters like droughts earthquake and flooding and just as a side note these ecological disasters would have a dramatic effect on instigating rat migrations this was a time when crops began to fail malnutrition became more rampant and the rural populations began to flock to the city's urban planning was not able to keep up with this massive influx and so cities became disorganized overcrowded and even more filthy city dwellers could not effectively keep up with all the garbage that they produced refuse would fill every corner and sewage was literally thrown out the window on the streets below which now functioned as open sewers what's more the early 14th century was also one of the most gruesome periods when it comes to military history John Kelly in his book the great mortality brings us to life quote from kapha to Vietnam in Afghanistan no human activity has been more closely associated with plague than war and few centuries have been as violent as a 14th in the decades before the plague the Scots were killing the English the English the French the French the Fleming's the Italians in the Spanish each other more to the point in those savage decades the nature of battle changed in fundamental ways armies grew larger battles bloodier civilians were attacked with more frequency and property was destroyed more routinely and each help to make the medieval battlefield in the medieval soldier more effective agents of disease end quote the ships that sailed from kapha had multiple destinations in the summer at 1347 some of these ships arrived at Constantinople here the plague disembarked and killed an estimated 50 to 70 percent of the population the court scholar Demetrios Kai Downes who was an eyewitness remarked quote every day we bring out our own friends for burial and every day the city becomes emptier and the number of graves increases men inhumanely shun each other's company for fear of contagion fathers do not bury their own sons and sons do not perform last duties for their fathers end quote from the great city on the Bosphorus it began to spread over land in two directions to the west it spread through Bulgaria Greece Romania and then upwards towards Poland and to the east it dispersed across Asia Minor before heading into Persia but the Genoese plague ships of kapha weren't done yet they continued to sail south through the Dardanelles and onwards to ports in Cyprus the Levant Egypt and then all the way across to in October at 1347 12 Genoese galleys arrived in Messina it was here that the great mortality first seemed to appear in the historical narrative the local authorities who were first to witness these incoming ships saw scores of men and women encrusted with lesions many in the various stages of dying stacks of dead bodies were later discovered below deck after a period of deliberation the decision was made to turn these ships out but by then it was much too late the Black Death invaded the city with unfettered enthusiasm and then spread through the entire island killing on average a third of the population as before with Constantinople and began to spread over land in very short order it had jumped the strait of messina and then began to make its way up the Italian boot arriving in Rome a few months later in retrospect it was estimated that the plague on average moved approximately two and a half miles a day crossing rivers reversing over mountain passes and entering nearly every city it came across but that was on land the aforementioned plague ships that were forced to depart Messina went on to new destinations as well the sailors on board who had somehow managed to survive carried on business as best they could trading their goods as they went they still had a bottom line after all thus these very same ships would move on to Marseilles Genoa Malta Tunis and ports in Spain Sardinia and Corsica to name a few their home city of Genoa with an estimated population at ninety thousand was infected in late November where thirty to forty percent would die Marseille would fare no better and would serve as the major entry point for all of France it's from here that the plague would move north towards Avignon where it would arrive in January or the next year it was also in January at 1348 that Venice with her estimated population of a hundred and twenty thousand people also got hit the Venetian response was vigorous and highly structured some would even consider it almost brutal the Great Council in the do--she Andre Don Davao declared that all entering ships were to be seized and searched the ships that were found to have even the slightest indication of plague were immediately set to the torch on a nearby island isolated from the rest of the population a strict quarantine was established in fact the very word quarantine comes from the Italian Cuarenta journey meaning forty days which was the amount of time that ships and their crew were held in isolation a municipal fleet of gondolas were created which traversed the canals chanting court bay mort de Korff de mort de essentially bring out your dead this rather macabre aunt summoned the population to throw their dead bodies into the waiting ships below the corpses were then systematically interred and specialized burial locations now despite these measures the death rates soared to over 60% it was later estimated that over 72,000 people died this death rate was so high and so rapid that in many instances the complex network of society you would either fail or vanish entirely but once again the Venetian government stepped up to the challenge as society began to disintegrate all around her near draconian measures and martial law were invoked civilisation would endure but it held on by a very tiny thread however as Venice desperately grappled to maintain order and to save the rest of her population the bubonic plague had already moved on the decade that led up to 1348 was a very difficult time for florence flood disease drought and famine had all visited the city warfare engulfed the land as Genoa was up in arms against Venice and the papacy likewise with the Holy Roman Empire what's more Edward the 3rd of England who had used Florentine banks to fund his portion of the Hundred Years War had defaulted on his loans the magnitude of these loans was so immense that it caused financial ruin in the Italian city and thus it was in the spring at 1348 that the plague also arrived the hundred thousand citizens of the city had no idea what was about to hit them arising from what seemed like thin air the stigmata of purple-black swellings in the armpit and the groin known as buboes began to suddenly appear and this seemingly on everyone this was followed by bloody vomit high fevers delirium and in most situations an agonizing death as seen before society began to break down his entire families and neighborhoods would be wiped out and keep in mind some of this would only happen in a few days panic on an almost unimaginable level would grip the city riots and looting would spread like wildfire those that could attempted to barricade themselves away while afflicted and dying people were simply abandoned to their fate and many who would try desperately just to escape the carnage altogether by most estimates 50% that's 5-0 of the population perished Giovanni Boccaccio a writer who some say lived in plague Florence gave a testament of what he saw quote a great many people died who would have perhaps survived had they received some assistance indeed the number of deaths reported in the city whether by day or night was so enormous that it astonished all who heard tell of it to say nothing the people who actually witnessed the carnage thus a great number departed this life without any one at all to witness they're going view indeed were those to whom the lamentations and bitter tears of their relatives were accorded Boccaccio continues quote such was the magnitude of corpses that huge trenches were excavated in the church yards into which new arrivals were placed in their hundreds stored to your upon tier like ships cargo each layer a corpses being covered with a thin layer of soil till the trench was filled to the top end quote the term plague pit would later be coined but even more gruesome would follow as the heavy spring rains would come they would unearth the remains and then wash them about the city later their accounts where these very same remains would then serve as the food source for rats pigs and even dogs the site of which could have been nothing less than apocalyptic the plague had an absolutely astounding death rate with an incubation time that is the time of exposure to the onset of symptoms anywhere between one day to one week an infected individual who didn't have any symptoms was able to pass on the disease without even knowing it there were three major known variants the bubonic form was the least lethal once infected a person would exhibit flu-like symptoms most notably high fevers followed by fatigue and cough of which the latter could become very bloody this would occur as your sania pestis again the bacteria made its way through the body's organs causing some of them to shut down there even reports that those who were infected and in the latter stages of the disease would have an odor that was consistent with internal gangrene eventually the contagion would make its way into the lymphatic system accumulating in the lymph nodes these nodes would swell resulting in the characteristic plague boils usually in the groin the armpit or the neck now some of these nodes would grow mence and could cause major disfigurement there are those who survived the plague whose necks were bent to the side permanently now if these massively swollen lymph nodes were able to rupture through the skin they would open up spilling the fluid contents within which of course would be teeming with bacteria and ready to infect another in fact for that matter most fluid that was carrying the bacteria that was excreted from the body that is by coughing bleeding vomiting etc was infectious if it was touched or even worse if it was ingested the mortality rate of the bubonic variant was approximately 60% which gave you the best chance for survival if you had the plague and yes this does mean that there were those who had the plague who did manage to lift through it but again that implies that you had this variant of the plague now the pneumonic form occurred when the bacteria got into the lungs people would start vomiting and coughing up blood almost immediately this variant was extremely infectious and could be passed through the air transmission as one can imagine was more common in the winter time when people were simply cloistered together on average one would have approximately three days they'll live once the onset of symptoms occurred the mortality rate of this variant would run in the ninety five to a hundred percent range depending on the region that you were in now if you think that having a less than five percent chance of survival was bad the last variant was the worst if the bacterial count in the body reached maximum density and then spilled into the bloodstream you would end up with the septicemia variant of the plague the body would simply go into massive shock and shut down and no one recovered from this and to put this all into perspective the timeframe between beginning to feel ill and dying was approximately fourteen and a half hours family members would literally kiss their seemingly healthy loved ones goodnight only to find them dead in the morning think for a second how this could possibly change one's worldview and then take it a step further think which your mindset would be if you had absolutely no scientific knowledge of what was actually going on the death that surrounded the individual would have been near impossible to grasp the magnitude was just too much but why was it so the Black Death is I've mentioned before was a perfect storm the plague was nothing new on the world stage it had affected humanity before and would do so afterwards the plague of Justinian for example in 541 to 540 - which caused massive destruction was also thought to be caused by Yersinia pestis and yet the death rate the duration and the extent of carnage in this and other epidemics was never as high as it was during the Black Death the plague the mid 14th century also had some unusual characteristics it appeared to advance Albion a bit slower even during the winter months which if it was carried on fleas doesn't make logistical sense as most fleas would have died of the cold what's more this particular plague infected people at a rate that modern yesenia pestis just doesn't seem to possess some forensic scientists today feel that this bacteria had some help aside from the warfare at the time the condition of cities the extent to trade routes and an ideal vector a transmission the Black Death may not have been alone indeed it might have been the perfect storm of multiple pandemics at once in retrospect it has been hypothesized that the bacteria associated with anthrax and the virus tied to Ebola were also involved both of which are a lethal in their own right now part of the reason why the death rate was so high was also associated with the immense physical geography that would be affected that is the entire continent of Europe amongst other continents plague would wash over one area only to return in another wave coming from another direction in this way some areas of Europe would be hit several times and in many cases the second or even third wave could be even more devastating than the first by mid 1348 the black death had been going strong in Europe for nearly a year Avignon and southern France had run out of space to bury her dead a wave of plague that originated in Constantinople had blazed the path into the Balkans and Italy had been overrun prompting the historian Giovanni Boccaccio to comment quote one citizen avoided another hardly any neighbor troubled about others such terror was struck into the hearts of men and women by this calamity that brother abandoned brother and very often the wife our own husband what is even worse and nearly incredible is that fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their own children as if they had not been theirs end quote through the rest at 1348 at an average rate of two and a half miles a day the black death made its way north rural communities that were along the way were sometimes wiped out entirely in some places the destruction was so complete that nature would retake the land and traces of civilization would only be rediscovered by aerial photography prior to the first world war by June 13:48 the great mortality arrived in one of its most prominent hunting grounds the great city of Paris her population was approximately two hundred and ten thousand people easily one of the larger cities of Europe once the plague it made its way in it began to fester there gaining in virulence by the time it left a year later over half the city was left silent and lifeless but the plague was only getting warmed up as it continued its path north it seemed that in the hot summer days it acquired even more momentum and make no mistake its most destructive time was still ahead by the late summer 1348 a fisherman in the English Channel could see the plague flag flying from nearly every French town and village along the coast it would not be long before the Black Death would engage in its most sinister work a cross-channel invasion was imminent as the battle for Britain would soon begin the plague after all had killed in France and on the Seas and the oceans in England it would do its work with a brutal efficiency never seen before there it would kill on the beaches and on the landing grounds it would kill in the fields and the streets in the hills and it would seem as if it would never surrender [Music] as Avignon Paris Florence and many other cities were running out of space to bury their dead England was enjoying a relatively good summer in the year 1348 her popular King Edward the third had replaced the rather unpopular Edward ii who let's just say came to a rather unpleasant and literally Edward the third had gone on to achieve glory against the French at the Battle of Crecy in 1346 his victorious troops would steadily bring back the spoils of war to the ports of Calais where they'd be shipped across the English Channel to an absolutely triumphant Britain but this train of goods increasingly made its way through a French countryside with a number of cities displaying the plague flag would be increasing by the day plus keep in mind that English wool at this point in history was an extremely high demand and plague or not trade continued relatively unabated despite the looming threat English sheep after all in mid 1348 estimated at approximately 8 million outnumbered English people by a decent margin that commodity simply had to get out as other goods needed to get in and social distancing he was just not a high priority the Black Death came with a vengeance never seen before historians in retrospect feel that the plague came from Calais and landed on several fronts along the channel coast the great mortality arrived at Southampton Portsmouth and the small port of Malcomb which is now a part of Weymouth another front began at Bristol where it was suspected a ship from Gascony docked with a cargo of French wine The effect of its landing was striking and immediate the local monk Henri nitin described it as quote a cruel death took just two days to break out all over town for many it was nothing less than sudden death in quote now from these two separate Beach heads one along the channel Coast and the other from Bristol the plague began to move inland along the roads and the river systems now whereas the average death rate in a city in continental Europe was approximately 33% in England it would soar to an incredible 55% and again this is on average some cities would see as high as eighty to ninety percent of their population perish many towns and cities who could simply not bury their dead fast enough would resort to incinerating the remains a traveler along an English Road would see a nightmarish landscape of giant black smoke plumes emanating from every direction with the ash of the Dead raining down upon them so many people died that industries were left abandoned fields were untended livestock would be dying by the thousands in the pastures and the streets of small villages and towns would be overgrown and retaken by Nature by the late autumn at 1348 the two fronts combined together and then cut a swathe to London which is John Kelly the author of the great mortality would say quote the sanitary conditions of the city were appalling even by medieval standards in quote London at this time was estimated to have had eighty to a hundred thousand people of which over half of them would be taken by a particularly sinister one-two punch first by the mnemonic variant as the cooler weather the Fallen winter would drive people indoors and thus closer together and then second by the bubonic forum in this spring is the warming months brought fleas and rats back into action but despite this alarming death rate things were just getting started for the rest at 1349 the plague advanced to the north and just like in France it over ran one city after the next but again in England it seemed to inflict death at an unusually high rate as it continued its relentless drive and by the latter part of that year it had arrived at the borders of Scotland John Kelly using primary source material gives us the Scottish assessment of what happened next quote the Scots who were still laboring under the impression that the plague was an English phenomenon were enjoying themselves immensely in the summer at 1349 they were laughing at their enemies and swearing by the foul death of England in March of 1350 the very next year they amassed the large army in the forest the Selkirk near the English border and of course they did this with the intention of invading the whole realm but before the attack could be launched the quote revenge' hand of God reached across the border and shattered the gathering Scots with sudden and savage death end quote now this would not be the only time an army would be annihilated far to the south play get arrived in the Iberian Peninsula as far back as 1348 it had come to the Emirates of Granada in 1349 and by 1350 the same year that the Scots were dying at Selkirk the warrior King Alfonso the 11th of Castille was on the verge of taking gibraltar and then had the plan to bring down the emirate once and for all but instead at the siege of Gibraltar his army would be destroyed by Yersinia pestis in alfonso xi would go down in history he is the only reigning European monarch to die at the Black Death now keep this in mind as the Castilian arm he got wiped out here by the plague the emirate of Granada would ironically be saved and thus it would take another 150 years before that conquista would be finally completed with such massive mortality descending on seemingly everyone a shattered and desperate Europe began to look for answers many felt that this was divine retribution for the sins of humanity and turn to religion others look to astrology and in Paris considered to be the pinnacle of medical knowledge they learn at 46 masters the Paris medical faculty congregated and determined that the black death was caused by an unusual conjunction of Saturn Mars and Jupiter which they determined happened at 1:00 in the afternoon on March 20th 13:45 and I'm assuming that's local time now the learned masters got together and assembled a compendium to explain this further quote the first cause of this pestilence was and is the configuration of the heavens which occurred in 1345 at one hour after noon on the 20th of march when there was a major conjunction of the three planets in Aquarius what happened according to the Masters in Chapter two was that many of the vapors corrupted at the time of conjunction mixed with the air and were spread abroad by frequent gusts of wind this corrupted air when breathed in corrupted this substance of spirit and thus the heat generated destroyed the life force end quote now keeping all this in perspective it's good to point out that the scientific method germ theory and even the medical need for hand-washing was still a ways in the future not to mention things like IV fluid vaccinations in the antibiotics the medicine of the time was based on ideas that ranged back to the time of Aristotle and Galen who was a doctor who lived during the reign of Marcus Aurelius as such it was based on the four humors of the body blood phlegm yellow bile and black bile which could cause illness if they were unbalanced and the preferred treatment was usually bloodletting however this method would usually result in the introduction of more infection and/or that lost too much blood which would usually hasten death but when this didn't seem to work new methods were developed doctors would Lance the swollen boils draining the extremely infectious contents out now in some situations this would actually work but in others more infection would simply set in through the new openings in some cases that would take this a step further the buboes were lanced open and then a concoction of herbs and human excrement was rubbed in and as can be imagined this didn't really work out very well either now one theory that came about was the idea that the plague was an airborne vapor a miasma and the thought process was that this was something that could be countered by inhaling extremely pure air hence the reason some people sought solace in the countryside or it could be opposed by inhaling extremely foul air to offset some of the noxious odors this led entire communities rushing to stick their heads in to the local latrine now along those same lines drinking urine became very popular and specifically non plague victim urine developed into a treatment and of course the procurement of this became its own cottage industry for those rich enough and who decided not to drink urine a crushed up sapphire that was ingested was also thought to work well against the plague there were those who also employed fire initially it was applied directly to the body in some scenarios hot pokers were even jabbed into the boils of those with the disease I guess one way to look at it is one person's treatment is another person's torture but in other scenarios fire was actually used as a means to ward off what was considered evil vapors and of course fire was also very effective at warding off fleas thus the Pope at the time Clement the sixth would sit between two log fires when he was giving mass and for the record he was noted to have survived the plague throughout Europe quarantine would also more effectively be used the extreme examples would include the city of Milan and a good majority of Poland in those areas anyone who showed the first signs of the great mortality would be literally walled up in many cases they'd be walled up alongside their own families within their own homes which now became their own tombs now as vicious and brutal as this may sound Milan's death rate was only 15 percent and Poland's rate was much lower than the rest of Europe during the years of the great mortality there were a lot of different treatment modalities that were developed but perhaps the greatest legacy of medical intervention were the plague doctors to look upon a plague doctor was a foreboding experience there was a good chance that you were dying when you saw them but their appearance alone was startling as they wore the equivalent of a medieval hazmat suit donning a thick leather covering with solid boots and thick gloves their bodies were nearly sealed off from direct contact the bird-like masks were designed to shield their breathing the beats being full of herbs and flowers to neutralize some of the putrid odors the eyepieces were of glass but would later be filled with crystal and then dyed red in color giving one an almost sinister gaze and some of these would also be offset so that the doctor could not look directly at his patient as the idea that eye contact could lead to contracting the disease became a thing in many cases these nightmarish bird human hybrids would be the last thing a person would see and unfortunately most plague doctors are remembered by history as being nothing more icons of death but that said the people who took up this job put their lives on the line and began to study what they saw the old ideas that treating patients and medicine in general came under increasing scrutiny and new methods at treating wounds pain and fever along with investigating the disease itself were developed now even if they couldn't cure the Black Death in many cases these plague doctors still managed to ease the suffering of those that they treated now not all would put their faith in medicine or science many also turned to religion for solace but some would take this to an extreme a movement known as the flagellants emerged in late 1348 in early 1349 as the Black Death ravaged Europe these men and women in groups as high as 500 would engage in pilgrimages across the continent as penance for what they perceived as the sins of humanity in a displeased God they would whip themselves as they went the whips by the way were composed to three or four ropes each with a piece of metal or hooks embedded at the ends many would march naked others were dressed in white robes and hoods sometimes with a red cross printed on them a contemporary witness the dominican friar Henry C deriv Odia would comment that the movement was like a race without a head and would describe one of the members as quote he stripped himself naked and beat his body and arms and legs till blood poured off of them then in an ecstasy of pain and joy he fell to his knees and in his cold monks cell naked and covered in blood and shivering in the frosty air he prayed to God to wipe out his sins end quote officially from a religious perspective they were rejected by Pope Clement the sixth as being heretical for the purposes of the plague however they served as a vector moving the disease along their pilgrimage route people along the way would know that the flagellants had come the road that they took after all would be splattered with blood in trails not to mention the bodies of those who had died in the attempt to find remission for their sins now increasingly as the great mortality took more lives at an unprecedented rate the various peoples of Europe began to look for someone to blame the Jewish community of Europe would be one of the major scapegoats the plague was put into the light of being an elaborate scheme where a vast underground Jewish network had poisoned all the wells many Jews were thus rounded up and faced torture to extract forced confessions after which the pogroms began in earnest of which the first major one occurred into lune on April 13th 13:48 many would follow almost throughout the entire breadth of Europe Heinrich truus the canon of Constance would say quote within the revolution of one year that is from All Saints Day November 1st 13:48 until Michaelmas September 29th 13:49 all of the Jews between Cologne and Austria were burnt and killed end quote in Strasbourg it was reported that half the Jewish population was stripped naked marched into a local cemetery and incinerated in a stone house and in Brandenburg they were placed on a giant grill and burnt alive but even in these dark tumultuous times there were those who provided sanctuary the city of Marseille in southern France for example offered a great deal of protection the king of poland Kasmir the great would take in jewish refugees and even forbade persecution even the Pope Clement the sixth in a papal bull on July 6 1348 would say quote it cannot be true that the Jews are the cause of the plague for it affects the Jews themselves end quote but even with the Pope's blessings not all would listen in some communities where the Jewish population was slightly less affected they would be blamed for the plague and killed and in other communities where it was mostly the Jews dying from the Black Death the locals would justify killing the miss completing God's work and this would go on for years [Music] by late 1349 upwards of 50 to 60% of the British Isles had succumbed to the plague but this was not the only front at two and a half miles a day had crossed the Rhine and Tring into what would one day be southern Germany and then from there had advanced to the gates of Vienna but it was able to cross on more than just land on the North Sea the Black Death took to the water and invaded Scandinavia ships would later be found adrift with nothing on board except ravaged corpses Bergen would be one of the first cities to be hit but it would not stop there it moved east penetrating even into remote areas to set it all a secluded village that was located high in the mountains was so badly devastated that nearly everyone in it died in fact when a rescue party arrived in 1350 nearly a year later the only survivor they found was a young girl named dry pay the poor child who due to a lack of human interaction and guidance had reverted back into an animalistic existence she had begun to hunt wild game like a wolf and had lost the ability to communicate with words now despite these harrowing stories the plague would move on by 1351 the Black Death arrived in Poland but there it was not able to inflict as much damage cities were more spread out and the king Kashmir the third again also known as Kasmir the Great had shut down the borders of his kingdom and had enforced a very strict quarantine is that mentioned before anybody in Poland who showed the slightest signs of plague we're literally bricked into their homes and just as a side note there is one theory that says that Poland had an abundance of cats which would help to curb the rat population and thus saved a good chunk of humanity by 1352 the plague had made it to the gates of Moscow but unlike the Grand RMA or the vir mocked it continued to move east and back into the Eurasian steppe from where it came now make no mistake Europe was left devastated in its wake but by 1353 the Black Death was finally over there is a famous statement which I believe is from William Yates though many authors in history have said similar things it goes the venire we call civilization is only skin-deep though we like to think that Humanity is secure our more barbaric tendencies lie just below the surface and thus this statement implies that it only takes a nudge from some other stressor to knock us down several notches you know to blow us back into the Stone Age kind of thing there may be a certain degree a truth to this but as far as stressors go the Black Death was perhaps one of humanity's greatest catastrophes after all it's estimated that a third of Europe did not survive the pestilence and now historians feel that that number is woefully low worldwide it's also thought that over 200 million people died the fragile network of society in some places broke down or was destroyed entirely and yet civilization persisted a new equilibrium was established and some say Europe emerged in a better spot with so many dead the cost of labour skyrocketed in the cost of food plummeted the landed gentry who ended up on the losing end of this one were now forced to pay higher wages and peasants and serfs saw their standard of living increased indeed some could even build up wealth to pass on to their children furthermore somebody who was previously indentured to the land now had a better chance of leaving an unfavorable position and moving to a new location with the knowledge that they could be employed with the need of labour in such high demand even the position of women was elevated as some took traditionally male roles some historians even go so far as to say that this was the beginning of the end of serfdom this was going to be a time when old ideas and institutions that had previously wallowed in complacency were now put to the test people began to take a very insightful re-examination of their own mortality as such art literature and music were all drastically affected by the plague as can be seen with the emergence of the Danse Macabre chandra - this many historians would also add that a new breed of doctors would begin to question their methods of treatment and out-of-date ideas a now growing middle class would hunger for new concepts and books and an ever-growing disappointment with religious institutions would hasten Europe into the Reformation make no mistake humanity took a major hit but it stood the test the time John Kelly in his book the great mortality summarizes this really well quote after two and a half centuries a rapid demographic growth the balance between people and resources had become very tight nearly everywhere living standards were either falling or stagnating poverty hunger and malnutrition were widespread social mobility was rare technological innovation was stifled and new ideas and modes of thinking were denounced as dangerous heresies the Black Death in the era of recurrent disease helped to end the paralysis and allowed the continent to recapture its momentum a smaller population meant a larger share of resources for the survivors and is often a wiser use of resources human ingenuity also flowered as people sought ways to substitute machine power for man power as a result you had a more diversified economy a more intensive use of capital a more powerful technology and standard a living plague in some broke the Malthusian deadlock which otherwise would threaten to hold Europe in his traditional ways for an indefinite future horrific as a century of unremitting death had been Europe was able to emerge from the charnel-house of pestilence renewed like the Sun after the rained end quote [Music] [Music]

Channel: Flash Point History

Views: 781,299

Rating: 4.7892284 out of 5

Keywords: black death, history of the plague, history of the black death, flash point history, pandemic, plague, covid19, great mortality, bubonic, bubonic plague, plague doctor, history, infection, disease, deadliest plague, medieval history, europe, global pandemic, global epidemic, epidemic, world pandemic, world epidemic, yersinia pestis, the great plague, middle ages, documentary, the plague, Black Death documentary, history documentary, medieval documentary, Full documentary

Id: HYNB4sAxemk

Length: 63min 22sec (3802 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ed8907]

I am sorry, but the comparison is not fair. COVID-19 is nowhere near as lethal as the Black Death and it's mostly killing old and frail people.

[u/collapse1122]

no its way too weak. you would need some super ebola that spreads easy for it to happen.