ABSTRACT
After 30 years of almost continuous and destructive warfare, the French people in the 1590s had every reason fervently to desire peace. War was not wholly to blame for their troubles, as we have seen (pp. 209 11). A change of climate was partly to blame for poor harvests and rising prices. In Languedoc, grain prices between 1585 and 1600 sextupled, wages lagged behind prices, and textile production fell. As prices reached their highest levels of the century in the 1580s, taxes also rose. In 1586 7 nearly the whole of France underwent a subsistence crisis; in the north, wheat prices rose by almost 700 per cent. And famine struck again in 1590. In Aix, corn prices soared in 1591 2. As people became undernourished, they fell prey to epidemic diseases which the armies also helped to spread. Everywhere in Europe bubonic plague was rife. But there were many other diseases as well, including influenza, smallpox and typhus. In Marseille, in 1580, thou sands died of plague, and other towns - Beaune, Dijon, Chalon-sur-Saone
were also badly hit. All major towns in the Midi suffered at least one outbreak between 1585 and 1598, as did those in Picardy in 1596 7. The countryside was also gravely affected. Wherever plague struck, people fled. These tended to be the better off so that many urban activities, notably markets and fairs, were suspended. Lawlessness was given free rein as municipal officials fled.
