11. The Mongols Catapulted Plague-Infected Bodies Into a Besieged City
The Black Death first reached Europe because of a siege in the then-distant Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea. All sieges are tragic for the besieged inhabitants, but this one was even more so, with tragic consequences not just for the people besieged, but for many more people far away. In 1346, the Mongols besieged Caffa, now Feodosiya, in the Crimea. In an era of poor sanitation and medical knowledge, sieges were often as deadly for the besiegers as the besieged, because the armies encamped around the targeted city often came down with illnesses.
That happened during the Mongol Siege of Caffa, and the illness the besiegers came down with was the Black Death. The Mongol commander, Jani Beg, decided to share the misery by catapulting plague-infected corpses over the walls into Caffa, to infect the inhabitants. Some Genoese traders in the city fled, and carried the plague with them to Mediterranean ports. They arrived in Sicily in 1347, which they infected. From there, the Black Death spread north to the Italian mainland, and thence swiftly to the rest of Europe.
