It has become increasingly accepted over recent years that the economic effects of war upon European society may only be seen in their true perspective when studied in the context of the long-term developments of the late Middle Ages. This approach to history sees the thirteenth century as a period of fairly general expansion and prosperity, when populations grew and the land needed to sustain them was developed. Although in many places both population and prosperity had ceased to grow by the last years of the century, the rapid decline which occurred in much of Europe in the first half of the fourteenth century shocked contemporaries. It must have seemed that nature (or was it God manipulating nature?) had turned on man to punish him.

Between 1315 and 1317 prolonged rains and unseasonal weather in many parts of northern Europe lead to dearth, lack of seed corn, a shortage of salt (which could not be properly dried when the sun failed to show itself for long periods), followed by epidemics of murrain among sheep and cattle. These years of famine which, in some places, recurred in 1321 and 1322, are now regarded by many historians as the turning point in the history of the period. For these disturbed years led to greater numbers living on the poverty line, to an increase in crime, a further decline in population (that of Flanders had decreased by 10 per cent in 1315–16), uncertainty in England about the wool trade and, very important, a marked rise in the surrender of land holdings, clear indications of a crisis and of little hope being placed in the immediate future.