edly ravaged by the black plague till after the year 1350, to
which the frequent internal feuds and the wars with the Moors not a
little contributed. Alfonso XI, whose passion for war carried him too
far, died of it at the siege of Gibraltar, March 26, 1350. He was the
only king in Europe who fell a sacrifice to it. The mortality seems to
have been less in Spain than in Italy, and about as considerable as in
France.

The whole period during which the black plague raged with destructive
violence in Europe was, with the exception of Russia, from 1347 to 1350.
The plagues which in the sequel often returned until 1383, we do not
consider as belonging to the "great mortality."

The premature celebration of the Jubilee, to which Clement VI cited the
faithful to Rome 1350, during the great epidemic, caused a new eruption
of the plague, from which it is said that scarcely one in a hundred of
the pilgrims escaped. Italy was, in consequence, depopulated anew; and
those who returned spread poison and corruption of morals in all
directions.

The changes which occurred about this period in the North of Europe are
sufficiently memorable. In Sweden two princes died--Haken and Canute,
half-brothers of King Magnus; and in Westgothland alone four hundred and
sixty-six priests. The inhabitants of Iceland and Greenland found in the
coldness of their inhospitable climate no protection against the
southern enemy who had penetrated to them from happier countries. The
plague wrought great havoc among them. In Denmark and Norway, however,
people were so occupied with their own misery that the accustomed
voyages to Greenland ceased.

In Russia the black plague did not break out until 1351, after it had
already passed through the South and North of Europe. The mortality was
extraordinarily great. In Russia, too, the voice of nature was silenced
by fear and horror. In the hour of danger, fathers and mothers deserted
their children, and children their parents.

Of all the estimates of the number of lives lost in Europe, the most
probable is that altogether a fourth part of the inhabitants were
carried off. It may be assumed, without exaggeration, that Europe lost
during the black death twenty-five million inhabitants.

That her nations could so quickly recover from so fearful a visitation,
and, without retrograding more than they actually did, could so develop
their energies in the following century, is a most convincing proof of
the indestr