And to be fair, Europe thrived a lot more after the plague, since massive labour shortages meant the value of labour shot up dramatically, improving the quality of life and culminating in the Renaissance.
Not having to worry about managing your surplus sons helped a whole lot. Sending them out to crusade against the heathens took a lot of coordination and energy. Plague reversed that problem real fast.
In the west! In the east? They switched to less laborious methods if need be, in fact laws were passed so that serf could no longer migrate away from their lords; making them the closest we have ever had to slavery with exception to the slaves we had
And to be fair, Europe thrived a lot more after the plague, since massive labour shortages meant the value of labour shot up dramatically, improving the quality of life and culminating in the Renaissance.
The plague is actually what ended feudalism in Europe.
Not having to worry about managing your surplus sons helped a whole lot. Sending them out to crusade against the heathens took a lot of coordination and energy. Plague reversed that problem real fast.
In the west! In the east? They switched to less laborious methods if need be, in fact laws were passed so that serf could no longer migrate away from their lords; making them the closest we have ever had to slavery with exception to the slaves we had
IIRC the plague was also the thing that invented surnames.
Before you were just John, but after you had to travel to other cities and there might already be a John so you became John Smith or John <nameofcity>