Demographic Crises
Population Loss
Froissart's estimate of the population loss was about right, which is ironic because Froissart wildly exaggerated numbers in almost all his accounts. The best of many revised estimates still put the overall population loss in Europe at about one-third, and similar estimates for China and the Near East are in the same ballpark.
The percentage varied widely from one place to another. In general, cities were hit harder and the bigger the city the harder it was hit. The countryside fared better, but was more vulnerable. If too many people died in a village, the village itself died. That didn't happen to the cities, for they recovered. Where the plague hit hardest, the loss could be as high as 75%.
That was bad enough, but it should be remembered that the plague typically visited a single location for only a few months. During those weeks, it must truly have seemed that the whole world was dying. Not only were half the people dropping dead, even the animals were dying. Corpses littered the streets. Towns ran out of coffins and people were buried in mass graves. Or were simply abandoned in the countryside. This wasn't like anything that had ever been encountered. People had seen war and epidemic before, but never with so much death, never on such a scale, never with such hopelessness.
It's worth citing some numbers, to drive the point home. Florence lost 50% to 75% of its population in a single year. Venice, which kept exceptionally good records, lost 60%. These numbers represent tens of thousands of people. Similar figures can be found for London, Barcelona, Cologne, and so on. Even rural societies suffered, for Scandinavia had a very high mortality, suggesting the presence there of pneumonic plague. France had somewhere between 10 and 15 million people. A loss of a third means up to five million people died in less than two years.
But sometimes smaller numbers are more comprehensible. In one parish in Paris, over the course of eight years, the parish church received 78 legacies (donations of property). In six months in 1348 it received 419. Similarly in Cornwall (England), where parish bequests there averaged four per year, whereas in the plague year there were 85 grants.
At Cambridge University, 16 of the 40 resident professors died in a single summer. In Bristol (England), half the clergy died in one year. In Hamburg (Germany), 16 of 21 members of the town council died, 12 of 34 bakers, and 18 of 40 butchers. In Perpignan (Spain), 8 of the 9 town doctors died and 16 of the 18 barber-surgeons.
And sometimes it doesn't have to be numbers. The death rate at Avignon was fifty percent and was even higher among the clergy. One-third of the cardinals died. Most striking to me, though, is that Pope Clement VI had to consecrate the Rhône River so corpses could be sunk in it, for there was neither time nor room to bury them.
Examples can be added almost without end, but that will be enough. After all the stunning statistics, good old Froissart said it best. "At that time a third of all the world died."