True or False: The Great Famine happened before the Black Death.

The story behind the answer

The Great Famine devastated much of Europe in 1315–1317 (with aftershocks to 1322), while the Black Death swept the continent in 1347–1351. Years of cold, relentless rain at the onset of the Little Ice Age ruined harvests, spread livestock disease, and drove up grain prices, leading to mass hunger and heightened mortality.

This crisis reshaped society: marginal farmlands were abandoned, crime and social unrest rose, and governments’ grain controls often backfired. Crucially, prolonged malnutrition likely left populations physiologically and economically vulnerable, making communities less resilient when plague arrived decades later via trade routes. Together, famine and plague marked a brutal one-two punch that transformed medieval demographics, labor relations, and the trajectory of European history.