Then, inconceivably, torrential rains came again in 1316. The grain crop failed a third year in a row. Europe began to experience the worst famine in its history. When other sources of food ran out, people began to eat one another. Peasant families consumed the bodies of the dead. Corpses were dug up from their burying grounds and eaten. In jails the convicts ceased to be fed; we are told that starving inmates “ferociously attacked new prisoners and devoured them half alive.” Condemned criminals were cut down from the gallows, butchered, and eaten. Parents killed their children for food, and
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