The Black Death

Towards the middle of .the fourteenth century some Italian merchants who were occupied in trading with China by the overland route were besieged by the Tartars in a small town on the river Don. They were, however, driven out of this town, and many of them, together with their merchandise from China, found refuge in the fortified post of Caff a, in the Crimea. Later they were again besieged in this town by the Tartars, and the siege lasted for nearly three years. The Italian traders were, no doubt, greatly overcrowded at Caff a, and were exposed to all the hardships of a long siege. Plague broke out, either within the town or among the barbarians around it, and finally caused so great a mortality among the Tartars that the siege was raised, and the enemy returned home to spread plague throughout the Middle East. Those of the Italian merchants who were left alive departed by sea to Genoa, and although there was no plague on board their ship, the disease appeared at Genoa within a few days of their landing, in the spring of the year 1347. From Genoa the plague spread gradually