ABSTRACT
In this chapter, weather-related extreme events, biological hazards such as pestilence, and animal invasions and their detectable socio-economic consequences are presented. Problematic and crisis periods and their major causes in Hungary are discussed, regarding the period 1471–1525. Although, in the long term, the period hosted a significant wet anomaly, it was particularly rich in reported floods, droughts and related weather extremes and cold winters. Plague or pestilence was particularly frequent, and the longest known medieval locust invasion also occurred in this period. Despite great droughts and locust invasion in the 1470s, and many hard winters and Danube floods in the 1480s, no countrywide problems are known, unlike in the 1490s, when significant dearth and food-shortage problems were reported in 1491–1492, 1507–1508 and 1522–1525, but on local-regional level crisis also developed in 1494, 1499–1504 and 1517–1519. Apart from the south, where unfavourable weather conditions further increased the everyday difficulties, bad harvests caused by the occurrence of weather extremes superposed the pressure caused by increased taxation necessary for the southern borderline defence against the Turkish Empire. The result was an increased vulnerability of the poorer part of the society, and led to need, poverty or even famine in different localities.
