The Black Death

The Plague Approaches Europe

The plague moved along the caravan routes toward the West. By 1345 the plague was on the lower Volga River. By 1346 it was in the Caucasus and the Crimea. By 1347 it was in Constantinople.

It hit Alexandria in the autumn of that year, and by spring 1348, a thousand people a day were dying there. In Cairo the count was seven times that.

The disease travelled by ship as readily as by land—more readily—and it was no sooner in the eastern Mediterranean than it was in the western end as well. Already in 1347, the plague had hit Sicily.

History of Western Civilization

E.L. Skip Knox
Boise State University

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