Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), an English political economist, wrote a powerful treatise called An Essay on Population. In it, Malthus stated that, since production increased arithmetically (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) and population increased geometrically (2, 4, 8, 16, 32), the population of a region or a world will eventually increase until there are not sufficient resources to support it. From 800 to 1300, the total production of Europe had increased steadily. Although there had been local food shortages in which many people died of starvation, the standard of living in Western Europe as a whole had risen even while the population had steadily increased.

By the beginning of the 14th century, however, the population had grown to such an extent that the land could provide enough resources to support it only under the best of conditions. There was no longer any margin for crop failures or even harvest shortfalls. At the same time, however, the Western European climate was undergoing a slight change, with cooler and wetter summers and earlier autumn storms. Conditions were no longer optimum for agriculture.

We have noted that there had been famines before, but none with such a large population to feed, and none that persisted for so long. A wet Spring in the year 1315 made it impossible to plow all of the fields that were ready for cultivation, and heavy rains rotted some of the seed grain before it could germinate. The harvest was far smaller than usual, and the food reserves of many families were quickly depleted. People gathered what food they could from the forests: edible roots, plants, grasses, nuts, and bark. Although many people were badly weakened by malnutrition, the historical evidence suggests that relatively few died. The Spring and Summer of 1316 were cold and wet again, however. Peasant families now had less energy with which to till the land needed for a harvest to make up for the previous shortfall and possessed a much smaller food supply in reserve to sustain them until the next harvest.

By the spring of 1317, all classes of society were suffering, although, as might be expected, the lower classes suffered the most. Draft animals were slaughtered, seed grain was eaten, infants and the younger children were abandoned. Many of the elderly voluntarily starved themselves to death so that the younger members of the family might live to work the fields again. There were numerous reports of cannibalism, although one can never tell if such talk was not simply a matter of rumor-mongering.

You might remember the story of Hansel and Gretel. Abandoned in the woods by their parents during a time of hunger, they were taken in by an old woman living in a cottage made of gingerbread and candy. They saw that the old woman was bringing in wood and heating the oven, and they discovered that she was planning on roasting and eating them. Gretel asked the woman to look inside the oven to see if it was hot enough, and then pushed her in and slammed the door. Like most of Grimm's Fairy Tales, this is a rather late tale, but it is illustrative of the grim possibilities with which the old tales for children are fraught.

The weather had returned to its normal pattern by the summer of 1317, but the pople of Europe were incapable of making a quick recovery. An important factor in this situation was the scarcity of grain available to be used as seed. Although historians are still unsure of the validity of the figures, records of the time seem to indicate that a bushel of seed was needed in order to produce four bushels of wheat. At the height of the hunger in the late Spring of 1317, starving people had eaten much of the grain normally set aside as seed, as wall as many of their draft animals.

Even so, any of the surviving people and animals were simply too weak to work effectively. But about ten to fifteen percent of the population had died from pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis, and other sicknesses that the starving sufferers' weakness had made fatal, and there were consequently fewer mouths to feed. So Europe was able to recover, although only slowly.

It was not until about 1325 that the food supply had returned to a relatively normal state, and population began to increase again. Europeans were badly shaken however. The death rate had been high, and even nobles and clergy had perished from hunger. The world now seemed a less stable and "gentle" place than it had before the Great Famine. Another folk tale that arose about this time suggests a new and more violent attitude among the populace, the story of The Mouse Tower of Bingen

The land of the prince-bishop of Bingen, a district on the Rhine river above Cologne, had suffered a severe short-fall in its harvest, and food was in very short supply. Nevertheless, the bishop demanded that everyone pay him their full rents and taxes in money and in kind. He then used the money to buy up what food remained in the market, and stored all of it in the fortress tower in which he lived. He dismissed all of his dependents and servants, and then shut and locked all of the gates and doors to the tower in order to be sure that people would not try to enter and steal the food he had hoarded there. But he need not have worried about that -- the people were all gone. They had eaten every blade of grass and every kernel of grain in the land. Some had died, while others had fled and left the bishop as the only living person in Bingen. Just as he was congratulating himself on having been clever enough to have survived the great hunger in comfort, he heard noises outside and at the doors. He rushed to the top of the tower and saw a terrible sight. All of the starving rats and mice from the entire region had smelled the food and were hurrying toward his tower.

There is an old stone tower in the German city of Bingen, and it is still pointed out to visitors as the famous Mouse Tower of the Bishop of Bingen.