The population of most European countries suffered a heavy death toll in the fourteenth century, and after 1400 epidemics of plague and other diseases continued to cause bouts of high mortality. These were less virulent and more localised than the initial Black Death of 1348—9, but evidence from Tuscany, England and the Low Countries suggests that most places experienced between eight and twelve serious epidemics in the fifteenth century. Relatively small numbers of children were recorded for each married couple; for example, in the Lyons region from a mean of 3.9 children mentioned in each will of the 1320s, the figure diminished to 1.9 in the 1420s. Such statistics need to be treated with caution, though the general message of a shortage of children is repeated too consistently to be explained in terms of under-reporting. Small families could reflect simply another aspect of mortality, the vulnerability of infants and children to disease, but are likely to derive also from such factors as changes in the age of marriage. At the lowest point of the population decline, which in many regions was reached at some point between 1420 and 1450, total numbers had been reduced to a half or two-thirds of those prevailing before the Black Death. So the population of the contado of Florence declined from about 300,000 in 1338 to 104,000 in 1427; Provence could muster about 400,000 people in 1315—16, but only 150,000 in 1471 (after a few decades of recovery). National population figures must be a matter of guesswork, but France has been said to have fallen from 18 million people in 1330 to below 10 million in 1450, and the English population can be estimated at about 6 million before 1348 and 2.5—3 million in the mid-fifteenth century.
The desertion and shrinkage of settlements followed from the demographic crisis. Farms, hamlets and whole villages fell into ruin, and can sometimes now be traced on the ground from the archaeological evidence. In Germany from a total of 170,000 settlements known from before the Black Death more than 40,000 disappeared in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. ‘Quotients’ (percentages of villages deserted) varied from region to region, but reached as high a figure as 60—70 per cent in Brandenburg or the uplands of Swabia. Thousands of lost villages have been found in other European countries, with some quite high ‘quotients’, such as 38.4 per cent in Provence. ‘Quotients’ of deserted farms varied in different parts of Sweden from 10 to 36 per cent, but in Scandinavia Norway bore the brunt of the recession — a half of its farms were abandoned, and these tended to be sited in high and remote places, with less fertile soils; the smaller, poorer and more recent settlements were most likely to lose their inhabitants.
As the countryside was emptied of people and houses became ruined, so large areas of arable land fell out of cultivation. In the Parisian basin perhaps 60 per cent of the former cultivated area was no longer under the plough by the mid-fifteenth century. Sometimes this led to the loss of agricultural land, and it was invaded by scrub. But more often pasture replaced the corn-fields, and provided a profitable living for its occupants, who could obtain better prices for animal products than for cereals. In addition high labour costs were avoided as a single shepherd or herdsman could manage animals on an area of land that would, if under crops, have needed at least two full-time and a dozen part-time workers. In some places the change was carried out completely — the former territory of a village, like many in the midlands of England, became an enclosed pasture. Or, as in the war-devastated French province of Quercy, transhumant flocks from neighbouring regions occupied the now empty grasslands. More often a mixed farming system shifted its emphasis, so that a higher proportion of the land was used for grazing, and individual peasants acquired larger flocks and herds. In Languedoc peasant flocks of 200 sheep were commonly encountered in the fifteenth century.
These developments in farming amounted almost to a new ecological balance, reflected in the scientific evidence of pollen samples by a diminishing proportion of cereals and the weeds of cultivation, and increases in grass and tree pollen. Woodland, long in retreat before the axes of colonists, began to recover lost ground. In the German Seulingswald the area under trees increased by almost a third. The conservation of woods for timber and fuel, and other resources such as game, was relaxed for the first time for centuries — in 1401 the Grand Master of the Waters and Forests of France could proclaim ‘Go into the forest, cut down trees, assart, make charcoal ... hunt ... rabbits, boars and other wild beasts.’
Agriculture changed to meet the needs of a new diet. Before the fall in population, when the mass of people had to eat the cheapest sources of calories, cereal foods predominated: bread, often made of rye or barley rather than wheat; oat cakes in the uplands; many varieties of porridge based on oats, pulses or barley; and pasta in southern Europe. In the fifteenth century ordinary people — artisans, peasants, even labourers — consumed slices of meat in quantities previously enjoyed only by the aristocracy. Sicilian vineyard workers were given 1.2—1.6 kg per week; English harvest workers received 1 lb of meat for every 2 lb of bread; and even prisoners in Murcia (Castile) were allowed 40 g of meat each per day. Cereals were still the mainstay of the diet, but the more expensive (and nutritious) wheat tended to replace barley and rye as the main bread grain, and a higher proportion of the cereal crop in northern Europe was brewed into ale or beer, or used to feed animals.
Over most of Europe trends in the rural economy reflected the scarcity of people. Grain prices moved from year to year depending mainly on the quality of the harvests, and also under such influences as variations in the currency and the disruptions of war: but an overall downward trend can usually be detected for the first three-quarters of the century. The amount of land under crops had diminished less than the numbers of consumers, so creating an excess of supply over demand. The prices of animal products, such as wool, hides, meat, cheese and butter, either increased, or declined less than grain prices. Wages often moved upwards, especially when calculated in terms of the amount of food that they would buy—workers were scarce, and their value was consequently enhanced. The price of manufactured goods tended to rise in relation to grain prices, so that for at least part of the period the effects of the ‘price scissors’ were felt; the nobility in particular found that the goods and services that they wished to buy became more expensive, in contrast to the sale price of the produce of their estates. Rents tended to decline. These were often so complicated, consisting of many different dues and payments, made in the form of cash, labour and goods, that changes are not easily detected. But champart rents, by which peasants, mainly in southern Europe, paid an agreed proportion of their produce, had at the peak of agricultural expansion in the thirteenth century amounted often to half or one third of the crop, were now commonly diminished to a quarter or even less. Cash rents which were fixed by bargaining between landlord and tenant, and which were therefore most likely to be subject to market forces (such as leasehold rents and entry fines), also declined. And payments fixed by custom, such as servile dues, were also reduced, or even abolished altogether after tussles between lords and tenants. Lords had to make concessions if no one would take a heavily burdened holding: in Germany vacant lands might be let under the Odrecht, by which they were not liable to payments for a number of years. In that country and elsewhere the conditions of tenure improved for the peasant — formerly precarious tenancies became hereditary, and the number of years for which leases ran were extended.
These changes reduced the wealth and power of the noble and clerical landlords, and led to improvements in conditions for at least part of the peasantry. The lords suffered a drop in income in a number of ways: complete loss of rent and tithes from deserted holdings; reductions in rent reflecting their weaker bargaining power in relation to scarce tenants; and accumulations of arrears of rent as tenants could not or would not pay. Before the Black Death many lords had been directly involved in some form of agriculture, but by about 1400 the high costs of labour and low price of produce forced them to lease out their remaining demesnes and granges to farmers. Over many parts of Europe the nobility complained of impoverishment, and monasteries ran into debt. Nobles were forced, notably in France, to gain a higher proportion of their income from office holding. In Germany and other areas nobles are reported to have been reduced in number, so concentrating landed resources in fewer hands.
Peasants experienced some beneficial changes, such as reduced rents, and many former serfs gained their freedom. They had the opportunity to extend their holdings by acquiring land cheaply, and are found with two or three tenements previously occupied by separate families. If peasants are defined in terms of the small scale of their landholding, then we begin to doubt if individuals who accumulated forty hectares or more can really be described as peasants. The relaxation of population pressure helped the great majority (who certainly were peasants) with middle-sized holdings of two to twenty hectares of arable, by increasing their shares of common pasture, woodland and marshland. The smallholders (the definition varies from region to region, but certainly included those millions of households with less than two hectares) would have gained from the increase in wages, because they expected to obtain a proportion of their income by working for others. Doubts surround those middling or upper sections of the peasantry who had a surplus to sell, and who hired labour, because they would have experienced some of the problems of profitability encountered by the lords in their agricultural production. But these doubts should not be stressed too much. A high proportion of their crops went to feed the peasants’ household, and a relatively small amount was sold, so they did not feel the full effect of falling prices. In general the demographic crisis caused a good deal of misery for those who were widowed, orphaned or forced from their homes and land, but it also led to a downward distribution of incomes and promoted geographical and social mobility.
The changing climate contributed to the crisis. The long cold period which is usually dated after about 1550 was apparently preceded by relatively cool and wet weather. On the uplands temperature changes could have encouraged the abandonment of farms, for example in Norway, and promoted the more general conversion of arable land to pasture. Weather patterns, while not as unstable as in the previous century, still led to a succession of bad harvest years, of which the most severe episode was the north European famine of 1437—9. Harvest failures did not just cause hardship for those deprived of food. They distorted the whole economy, as consumers transferred their expenditure from non-essential items to food, so causing a slump in commerce and unemployment in industry.
Man-made disasters also had their impact, notably the later phases of the Hundred Years War in France, the Hussite Wars in central Europe, various internecine conflicts in Germany and the internal disruptions in the Low Countries, especially over the disputed succession to the Burgundian lands in 1477—92. All of these can be shown to have destroyed farms, villages, crops and livestock, prevented cultivation and trade in agricultural produce and increased taxes and insecurity outside the immediate war zones. Perhaps such violence stemmed in part from the demographic crisis, as the nobility turned to war as a means of recouping their lost income from land. Military activities certainly contributed to the depth of the recession by compounding existing shortages of manpower and capital.