Shorts

The Black Death Reaches Europe, 1347 #Shorts

Oct 24, 2026

Watch on YouTube

In 1347, a plague reached Europe that would later be called the Black Death.

• As it is commonly told, Genoese ships from Caffa on the Black Sea carried plague to Messina in Sicily in October 1347. The famous story of plague-infected bodies thrown into besieged Caffa in 1346 comes from one secondhand account, and plague probably also reached Europe by other routes. (Britannica; Wheelis, Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2002)
• In 2011, researchers reconstructed the genome of the bacterium Yersinia pestis from Black Death victims buried in London in 1348–1350. (Bos et al., Nature, 2011)
• No one knows the exact toll. Estimates run from about a quarter to half of Europe's population; Britannica gives about 25 million deaths in 1347–1351. (Britannica; Wheelis 2002; Bos et al. 2011; National Geographic)
• With fewer workers, wages rose. In England, an ordinance of 1349 and the Statute of Labourers of 1351 tried to cap them. (UK National Archives; National Geographic; History.com)

Sources

• Britannica, "Black Death"
• Britannica, "Italy: Famine, war, and plague"
• Mark Wheelis, "Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa," Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2002
• Bos et al., "A draft genome of Yersinia pestis from victims of the Black Death," Nature, 2011
• UK National Archives, "Plague" (Statute of Labourers)
• National Geographic, "Fast and lethal, the Black Death spread more than a mile per day"
• History.com, "Black Death"

Images

• Burial of plague victims in Tournai, chronicle of Gilles Li Muisis, 14th century. Unknown artist. Public domain.
• Spread of the Black Death in Europe, 1346–1353 (map). Flappiefh. CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Yersinia pestis, scanning electron micrograph. NIAID. Public domain.
• The Triumph of Death, about 1562. Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Public domain.
• Two men threshing, Luttrell Psalter, about 1325–1335. British Library. CC0.