the north of Europe (though not in the south), leading to wheat shortages. In 1309
the cold weather was joined by an extremely wet growing season that ruined the
harvest in southern and western Germany; the towns, to which food had to be
imported, were hit especially hard. And yet the towns were themselves
overpopulated, swollen by immigrants from the overcrowded countryside.
HUMAN MANIPULATION OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND
Yet scarcity and famine were hardly inevitable, and in some places they were not
evident at all. Often human actions were responsible for aggravating food shortages
across Europe. Warfare, for example, took a major toll on economic life. As states
grew in power, rulers hired soldiers—mercenaries—and depended less on knights.
But these troops were paid such poor wages that they plundered the countryside even
when they were not fighting. Warring armies had always disrupted farms, ruining the
fields as they passed by, but in the thirteenth century burning became a battle tactic,
used both to devastate enemy territory and to teach the inhabitants a lesson. Towns
were as vulnerable as the countryside. They could defend their walls against roving
troops, but they could not easily stop the flow of refugees who sought their safety.
Lille’s population, for example, nearly doubled as a result of the wars between
Flanders and France during the first two decades of the thirteenth century. Like other
Flemish cities, Lille was obliged to impose new taxes on its population to pay for its
huge war debts.
Pressed by such debts as well as the desire for gain, landlords and town officials
alike strove to get more money. Everywhere, customary and other dues were deemed
inadequate. In 1315 the king of France offered liberty to all his serfs, mainly to assess
a new war tax on all free men. In other parts of France, lords imposed a taille, an
annual money payment, and many peasants had to go into debt to pay it. Some lost
their land entirely. To enforce their new taxes, great lords, both lay and ecclesiastical,
installed local agents. Living near villages in fortified houses, these officials kept
account books and carefully computed their profits and their costs.
But great lords, rulers, and merchants did not simply keep records of agricultural
production; they planned ahead and manipulated the markets. At Constantinople at
the beginning of the fourteenth century, the patriarch noticed a marked increase in
beggars on the street. Moved by their plight, he wrote to the emperor: “everyone
entreats me piteously that [the grain] not leave the capital, and [they] bind me with
oaths to put before any other request to your divine majesty a petition about the
grain.” His letter was clear about both the problem and the solution: “a few gifts and
