The Little Ice Age became a time of trials for Europe and Russia. He showed that even a slight change in temperature can lead to irreversible consequences and radically change life.
Why did it come?
Scientists are still arguing about the causes of the Little Ice Age. At one time it was believed that the Gulf Stream - the main "heat supplier" to Europe, was to blame for everything. The slowdown of the current really became one of the reasons for the cooling, but only one "of".
According to a 1976 study published by Johnn Eddy, decreased solar activity was observed during the Little Ice Age. Also, scientists (in particular, Thomas Crowley) associate a sharp cooling, which began in the XIV century, with, on the contrary, increased activity of volcanoes. Massive eruptions release aerosols into the atmosphere, which scatter sunlight. This can lead to global dimming and cooling.
An important factor that turned the Little Ice Age into a cataclysm of global significance was the fact that the processes that began with its beginning (a decrease in agricultural activity, an increase in forest area) led to the fact that the carbon dioxide contained in the atmosphere began to be absorbed by the biosphere. This process also contributed to a decrease in temperature. In very simple words, the larger the forest, the colder.
European consequences
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The Little Ice Age made the most global changes in the life of Europe. From 1315 to 1317 due to the Great Famine in Europe, almost a quarter of the population died out. Between 1371 and 1791, there were 111 hunger years in France alone.
The Little Ice Age changed the European market. England and Scotland could no longer compete with France in the wine market. Viticulture in northern Germany, England and Scotland ceased. Frosts even affected northern Italy, as both Dante and Petrarch wrote about.
The Little Ice Age also heralded the plague, which was dubbed the Black Death in Europe. This was due to the massive migration of rats, which for the sake of survival began to settle closer to humans.
Hunger
The territory of modern Russia has also been seriously affected by a sharp climate change, although the Little Ice Age affected the Russian lands a little later than Europe. The most difficult time was the 16th century.
Over one century, grain prices in Russia have increased by about eight times - from three or four kopecks for a quarter of rye to 27-29 kopecks.
The years 1548-1550, 1555-1556, 1558, 1560-1561, catastrophic 1570-71 were difficult for Russia. The long period 1587-1591 was difficult.
Tellingly, these same years are marked as stages of the economic crisis in Russia in the 16th century, which caused the greatest demographic losses.
The consequences of the Little Ice Age are reflected in the annals.
1549 - “bread was dear on the Dvina … and there were a lot of people from hunger, 200 and 300 people were put in one pit”. 1556 - Kholmogory “bread did not reach, in the fall we bought a quarter on the Dvina for 22 altyns”, “for 2 years there was a famine in Ustyuz, they ate fir and grass and bitch. And many people died. " 1560/61 - “the famine was great in Mozhaisk and on the Voloka and in other cities in many cities. Many a multitude of people dispersed from Mozhaisk and from Voloka to Ryazan and Meschera and to the lower towns in Nizhny Novgorod."
Historians note that unfavorable changes began to come from the north. In 1500-1550, the population in the North-West decreased by 12-17%, in the 1550s Novgorod Land suffered greatly. In the first half of the 1560s, desolation covered the western counties (Mozhaisk, Volokolamsk). By the 1570s, the central and eastern regions were in crisis.
According to the payment records of the 1570s and 80s, the population decline was 76.7% around Novgorod and 57.4% around Moscow. The numbers of desolation in only two years of catastrophic years reached 96% in Kolomna, 83:% in Murom, in many places up to 80% of the land was abandoned.
Plague
The most severe crop failure in 1570 was described by the foreign oprichnik Heinrich Staden: “There was then a great famine; for a piece of bread, a man killed a man. And the Grand Duke had many thousands of stacks of unmilled bread in sheaves in the courtyards in his basement villages, which delivered maintenance to the palace. But he did not want to sell it to his subjects, and many thousands of people died in the country from hunger, and the dogs devoured."
Following a poor harvest, a plague epidemic followed in 1571. The same Staden wrote: “In addition, the almighty God sent another great pestilence. The house or courtyard where the plague looked was immediately nailed up and everyone who died in it was buried in it; many starved to death in their own homes or backyards. And all the cities in the state, all monasteries, townships and villages, all country roads and high roads were occupied by outposts so that no one could pass to the other.
The plague intensified, and therefore large pits were dug in the field around Moscow, and the corpses were dumped there without coffins, 200, 300, 400, 500 pieces in one heap. In the Muscovite state, special churches were built along the highways; they prayed daily for the Lord to have mercy and turn away the plague from them."
Population migration and growth of the Cossacks
In 1588, the English scientist Giles Fletcher visited Russia. In his book “Driving through Muscovy” he wrote: “So on the way to Moscow, between Vologda and Yaroslavl, there are at least fifty villages, some half a mile away, others a whole mile in length, completely abandoned, so that there are no not a single inhabitant."
The Englishman explains this desolation of the oprichnina, however, in relation to Vologda and Yaroslavl, this explanation cannot be correct, since these were rich oprichnina regions. The conclusion suggests itself: the desolation of these lands was caused by crop failures.
People fled to the south from hunger and poor harvests, and this migration was massive. It was during that period of time that a huge influx of Russian and "royal" slaves was recorded by the Crimean markets. Similar processes took place in the Commonwealth: there was an outflow of the population to the south and the growth of Cossack communities.
The hungry also fled to the Trans-Volga region to the Lower Volga, to the Yaik and Don - where the Cossack population began to grow rapidly after 1570.
The outflow of the population from the central regions caused the frequent raids of the Crimeans to Moscow. The troops of Devlet Gerei several times besieged Moscow, in 1571 setting off a severe fire in the city, which practically destroyed the city. Only the victory in 1572 at the Battle of Molodi saved Russia from enslavement.