During the time of the Black Plague in Europe, was warfare conducted at any significant scale?

by Not_Wilhelm_II
y_sengaku
  • The first outbreak of famous Black Death (1347-53) certainly worked so, but not all the case. Pope Clement III sent the kings of England and France to establish a de facto truce to prepare for the retribution of the Gods against human's sin (Aberth 2007: 73-78).
  • The arrival of the plague in Europe was regarded as a vengenge of the God Gods to diverse sin of human, and the war was without doubt among one of such sins. It did not keep king of Norway-Sweden to launch a 'crusade' against the Russian Orthotox, though.
  • It is important to note here, however, that the Black Death marked just a beginning of the age of kind of co-existence between human and smaller scale of plague outbreaks for more than three centuries. To give some examples, in 1348, 1362, 1374, 1388-89, 1450, 1465, wars and plagues occurred concurrently. The last middle to large scale outbreak of the bubonic plague hit upon Europe in the begininng of the 18th century, but the Europeans waged several long and large-scale wars during the Black Death and this outbreak, just a few to be named would suffice: The Hundred Years War (1337-1453), The Italian Wars (1494-1559), French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), Eighty Years Wars on the indepence of the Netherlands (1568-1648), and the German Thirty Years War (1618-1648).
  • Thus, the age of these plague outbreaks largely overlaps also with the the age of the Military Revolution (ca. 1500-1800), defined by Michael Roberts and Geoffrey Parker and characterized by the incessant wars between emerging states in Europe.

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References:

  • Aberth, John. From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronging Faine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages. 2nd ed. London: Routlege, 2007.
  • Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
  • ________. Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven: Yale UP, 2014.

[Edited]: corrects a critical mistake (Gods->God). Thank you /u/AskMeAboutNurgle for mention it!