I can't speak to Europe, but in the same time period in Asia, they were basically what they're like today at least as far as the materials used, though of course no one was using Anki back then. Of course, other people learned through immersion, as people have for as long as there's been language.

As for more formal methods, if you had the means you'd have a tutor to work with you. Then of course you'd also want materials. Fortunately for historians today, those still exist.

In the 14th century and on, the most popular text for learning Chinese for Koreans was called the Nogeoldae 老乞大. Geoldae is "Khitai", the people who ran the Liao Dynasty and Korea's longtime neighbours. No is just "old".

This was the de facto text that anyone learning Chinese would have followed, and it was so popular that for centuries after it was still being republished with modifications and updates. Here is the first page of the 1795 edition, which has the same Chinese dialogue as all the rest.

大哥伱從那裏來

Older Brother, where are you from?

我從朝鮮王京來

I am from the capital of Korea

如今那裏去

Where are you going today?

往北京去

I go to Beijing

So, basically the same sort of dialogues you see today in beginner books.

The Korean writing is more interesting for a couple reasons. First, it represents both the Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time (right side) and the Korean pronunciation (left), but also, there are also Korean translations for each sentence.

So the very first sentence, 大哥伱從那裏來, has

다거니충나리레

da geo ni chung na li le

for the approximate Chinese reading, and

때거녜쯍나례래

ttae geo nye jjyung na lye lae

for the Korean pronunciation as of the 1790s, but then also offers an explanation in late 18th century Korean (큰형아네어차온드러셔조다), which it pretty dope. Then there are the red dots, which are tone pattern markings, either one dot on the left, one on the right, or two on the right (somtimes looks like c or ɔ).

This makes it a sort of Rosetta Stone for working out both Early Mandarin and older forms of Korean.

The whole things is like this. The first chunk is the dialogues without any Korean script, but then it's repeated with transcription and translation.

And all the dialogues are equally practical. Things like

伱這蔘共多少斤重

how much ginseng do you want [to buy]?

or

伱去買羊

go buy a sheep

咱們一同去

let's go together

我也要知道些價錢

I also want to know how much they cost

It's pretty fantastic.