36. Rapid Spread of the Black Death
When the Black Death hit Europe and the Mediterranean, it spread swiftly, carried by fleas that fed on rats, and jumped from rats to humans, infecting them with Yersinia pestis. The Genoese traders who had carried the plague with them when they fled from Caffa stopped in Constantinople along the way, gifting it and the rump Byzantine Empire with the pandemic before they continued on to Sicily.
From Sicily in 1347, the plague swiftly reached the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, plus Naples in Italy, that same year. The following year, the plague spread to the rest of mainland Italy, France, two-thirds of the Iberian Peninsula, southern England, the Balkans, Egypt, Anatolia, and the Eastern Mediterranean in general. In 1349, the plague reached Germany and Central Europe, most of Ireland, plus the rest of England, the Middle East, and North Africa. In 1350, Scotland, Scandinavia, and the Baltic shores were hit. By 1351, the Black Death had ravaged all of Europe, except for a relatively unaffected pocket in Poland, plus the western parts of Belorussia and Ukraine.
