In the history of mankind’s fight against infectious diseases, no disease has ever been as terrifying as the great European medieval plague that occurred in the 1440s and 1450s. In just six years (1347 to 1353), this unprecedented catastrophe took the lives of approximately 25 million Europeans, accounting for one-third of the total European population at that time. We modern people all know that the source of this catastrophe was the Black Death, which is also known as the plague in medicine. So the question is, how did the Black Death sweep across medieval Europe?

The source of infection of the Black Death was the Yersinia pestis bacterium carried by rats and other rodents. According to existing data, the Yersinia pestis that caused the Black Death originated from Mongolian gerbils, and the earliest carrier of the Black Death pathogen was the Kipchak Khanate (also known as the "Golden Horde"), one of the four major khanates of the Great Mongolia. ”) warriors.

In 1347, the Mongol army of the Kipchak Khanate began to attack the Black Sea port city of Kaffa (now the Ukrainian city of Feodosia). Because Kaffa's defenders resisted very tenaciously, the Mongols suffered great losses. The angry Mongol general ordered the corpses to be thrown into the city with trebuchets, infecting the soldiers and civilians in Kaffa with the plague. In this way, the city of Kaffa will be destroyed.

The Mongols succeeded quickly, and the rotting corpses quickly turned into a plague that spread throughout the city of Kaffa. It didn't take long for Kaffa to fall. However, what no one could have imagined at the time was that the plague in Kaffa did not disappear with the end of the war.

There were many Italians living in Kaffa at that time. After the fall of Kaffa, these Italians chose to return to their hometowns, and the Black Death lurking in them spread from Kaffa to Constantinople (now Istanbul), and then to Sicily, Italy along the Mediterranean route. , Genoa, and the French port city of Marseille. At that time, Europe was in the late Middle Ages, and the living environment in the cities was very poor. The streets and alleys were filthy, and the whole city was filled with a disgusting stench. This situation is of course very bad for humans, but for the plague virus it is a hotbed for the rampant spread. The Black Death spread rapidly in this environment.

In the Middle Ages, there were many countries in Europe, and they were constantly fighting each other. In addition, merchants frequently moved in and out of major cities, which created excellent conditions for the spread of the Black Death. By 1348, the Black Death had become synonymous with death in the minds of Europeans. In many places, entire villages and entire neighborhoods were infected, and then died in droves in despair.

The water city of Venice at that time had relatively ideal isolation conditions, so the Venetians were the first to come up with quarantine measures, that is, ships carrying the plague were not allowed to approach Venice, and all crew members arriving in Venice had to be quarantined on board for 40 days. sky. But what the Venetians never expected was that although the crew was quarantined, the rats carrying the plague bacterium on the ship slipped into Venice unimpeded, and the Black Death quickly spread in Venice.

In just six years, the Black Death spread from Italy to Western Europe, then Northern Europe, the Baltic Sea region, and finally Russia. The whole of Europe was shrouded in the horrific shadow of the Black Death.

Europeans in the Middle Ages had long held stereotypes against Jews. Therefore, when the Black Death was raging, rumors spread that Jews were spreading the plague everywhere. As a result, Jews began to be captured and killed in many places in Europe. The suffering history of the Jewish nation added another heavy weight to the European Middle Ages.

Both the sanitation and medical conditions in medieval Europe were very poor, and they were unable to resist the invasion of the Black Death. So how did the epidemic end? In fact, the disappearance of the Black Death epidemic has confirmed the wise saying of "natural selection, survival of the fittest". The super lethality of the Black Death led to the elimination of a large number of susceptible people, and the number of new pathogen carriers became smaller and smaller. In addition to taking adequate isolation measures, the uninfected people also have a very important point that their bodies are not easily infected by this virus. So when the Black Death killed all its hosts, they themselves were finished. This epidemic, which shocked medieval Europeans, gradually ended without people noticing.

The Black Death was obviously a major disaster in human history. However, this epidemic inadvertently broke the authoritarian status of the European church. Many people began to believe in science rather than God, and European society went from darkness to darkness. The Middle Ages turned to the Renaissance, thus changing the direction of the development of civilization in Europe and around the world.

It is worth mentioning that the Black Death caused the death of many family members in Europe, and their inheritance was inherited by relatives. A few survivors even inherited the entire inheritance of multiple relatives' families, thus becoming rich men and women. When wealth is dispersed in the hands of various households, it can only be regarded as property, but when it is concentrated in the hands of a few people, it becomes capital. It was against this background that the buds of European capitalism began to flourish.

Reference: "Plague and Man"