The Great Famine
Seven years of rain destroy Europe's harvests and kill millions.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 7 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Torrential rain from 1315 ruins successive harvests across northern Europe, and grain prices multiply. Contemporary accounts describe seed corn eaten, infanticide, and cannibalism. Perhaps ten to fifteen per cent of the population dies over the following seven years. It ends a long period of population growth, leaves the survivors weakened, and comes barely thirty years before the plague arrives.