The first to feel the force of the Black Death were the people at the bottom of the feudal system (the villeins and the poor) as they had terrible living conditions; eating rotten food and drinking stale water. Hundreds of them died each day. After that not many were left, many villagers left their villages, family and friends and left to go to the bigger cities to save themselves so little towns rotted away after time. There were also not many priests left, the courageous, most experienced and respected ones died an honorable death, looking after the sick while the others just fled. Also some churches also just vanished because there weren’t enough clergy to do anything. The newly appointed priests were poorly educated and not as experienced so they were not respected. After the Black Death, the birth rate rose as well. To conclude the social effects, I would say that the villagers fled to bigger cities, churches and villages just rotted away and that the birth rate rose were the most important.

          As the villeins were the ones keeping the feudal system going and there weren’t many of them left, the landowners were desperate to find new workers/villeins to work and to farm their rotting land. To convince the workers to work their land the wages rose, then the worker’s original employee wanted to keep them so they had to raise the wages again, just like an auction. The presents soon realized that and demanded more. What was worse was that the market price for food rose and the workers need food to eat, so demanded even higher wages, because of that in some places the wages rose by 500%, this lead to the statute of laborers which is a law to stop wages rising too much.  Surviving widows were really well off some were even richer than most of the men. To conclude the economical disaster, I would say that the peasants got higher wages and food prices rose dramatically.

          The Black Death contributed to the collapse of the feudal system which caused total chaos, this is because of the villeins, the people who supported the whole system died. The surviving villeins noticed that they were special so demanded more and more. As knights and barons lost control of them as the villeins loft without permission and asking to be freemen and the barons and knights had to agree as if they upset them they wouldn’t work for them anymore using that as their weapon, their power grew. This was unprecedented at that time, this has never happened before. You can represent the power of the villeins with two fractions, one before the Black Death and one after; the fractions both have the same numerator which represents the total power of the villeins, the denominator of the first fraction is the total number of villeins before the plague. The denominator of the second fraction is the number of villeins after the plague, looking at the two fractions you will see that the second fraction is bigger than the first in other words, the villeins were gaining power. Another example of this is that the king himself had to be involved in this by passing a law which also never happened. Reacting to this “horrible” law the peasants went as far as challenging the king himself, which later became known as “the peasant’s revolt”. The clergy side was also hit hard. The clergy became very unpopular at that time as the people started to doubt god. This is because the prayers that the clergy said didn’t help at all. To conclude the political effects I would say that all the power was shifted to the peasants which meant that the barons and knights lost power, clergy also lost respect due to the fact that people started to doubt god, the feudal system is collapsing and that unprecedented measures had to be taken.

          I think that the most important effect of the Black Death is the social effects as if the peasants didn’t die there would be not be such a demand for the villeins, which means no economical or political effects (the fraction stays the same). That is what I based my conclusion on.

Within five years the Black Death had killed up to one-third of the population in Europe, it was a disaster. Although every one was affected by the plague at sometime, the worst hit were the peasants. This was because they couldn’t afford to lock themselves away and they lived in confined conditions. These conditions were breeding grounds for rats which increased the spread of the disease. Europe suffered terribly because the peasants were the back bone of society doing all the low paying jobs that nobody wanted to do which included things like farming.

Before the plague Lords and Nobles were responsible for things like law and order. When these people died towns were left without these essential elements. It was a time of great fear.

Religion and trade were two things that suffered during the plague. Christianity lost its credibility because people believed that god was punishing them so when they weren’t cured after going to church they joined on of the many cults that seemed to have appeared in the wake of the plague. People also lost trust in one another they regarded one another with suspicion and they blamed anyone they could for it, minority groups such as the Jews were blamed and punished. Trade was effected deeply too because no body trusted each other. “After a protracted siege, during which the Mongol army under Janibeg was suffering the disease, they catapulted the infected corpses over the city walls to infect the inhabitants.” And after events like this it wasn’t hard to see why. So in time the cities lost contact with each other and it took centuries for some to come together again.

Although the plague was in many respects devastating for all involved there were some rewards for the survivors. These included things for both the rich and the poor.

They both inherited land from the dead and were in many cases much wealthier. The greatest asset for poor was that they mostly labors which were in short supply and they were then given more power to demand higher wages and better conditions. Often they were in better positions than they previously. Things such medicine and technology improved to prevent such a tragedy reoccurring..

Given all the evidence above it appears that there were benefits from the plague but these were only slight compensations for a gross mass of human life from a tragic disease.