Original subtitles

(ominous music)

- [Narrator] 1392.

Republic of Genoa, Italy.

The Grand Fleet completes its long crossing

of the Atlantic Ocean.

Laden with gold, the galleons are returning

from their distant colony,

the Latin New World.

At the beginning of the 14th century,

the Republic of Genoa, supported by a thriving economy,

embarked on major explorations.

Having discovered a vast continent

on the far side of the Atlantic,

the Italian city immediately founded

an overseas trading empire.

Today, Genoese naval fleets crisscross the Atlantic Ocean.

The Republic is a beacon over Europe.

The New World speaks Italian.

But none of this ever happened.

In 1347, a tiny grain of sand will trigger

one of the greatest disasters of all time,

the Black Death.

(dramatic music)

Our history is no more than a series of incredible events.

Every one of us can influence its course.

(dramatic music)

The most infinitesimal of our decisions

can influence the future of humanity.

To know the past is to foresee the future.

1347, Siege of Caffa on the shores of the Black Sea.

A Mongol army catapults diseased corpses

onto the defenders.

December 1347, the plague reaches Marseilles in France.

Within a few months, it infects the entire West.

1352, the plague has ravaged Europe for four years.

There are at least 25 million dead.

These three intimately connected events

are key moments in the appearance

and in the spread of the terrible Black Death.

Sixth century Constantinople.

Justinian I, head of the powerful Byzantine Empire,

is stricken with an unknown fever.

Nothing from the gigantic walls of his capital

to his immense fortune

could stave off the terrible disease

that is ravaging his empire.

An invisible plague that kills a man

within just a few days appeared in Egypt,

then spread like a tide of blood

through towns and villages.

In Constantinople alone,

they talk of 10,000 dead in one day.

The deserted streets of the magnificent city

are heaped with rotting corpses.

The scourge has a name.

They call it pestus.

The plague makes it entrance in history.

(birds chirping)

Beginning of the 14th century, Middle Ages.

For 300 years, the West has enjoyed an unprecedented boom.

Exceptionally clement climatic conditions

bathe Europe in warm temperatures

favorable to good harvests.

It's the optimum medieval climate,

also known as the medieval warm period.

The troubles of the preceding centuries have settled.

The newfound peace allows the development

of ancient techniques.

Europe becomes covered in windmills.

New weaving crafts invigorate the textile industry.

Plows increase tenfold the power of peasants

in the freshly cleared fields.

Blast furnaces produce iron and steel.

New cities are founded,

magnificent cathedrals erected in stone lacework.

The demographic boom speaks for itself.

With a population of 30 million

at the end of the ninth century,

Europe numbers around 75 million in 1300.

Flamboyant and energetic, medieval society

at the beginning of the 14th century is also vulnerable.

The 1310s mark the end of the climate optimum.

Europe goes into what is called the little ice age.

- [Woman] Welcome to the memory of humanity.

Here we can control time,

analyze and compare billions of events,

and alter them to rewrite history endlessly.

All thents in our history,

however minute they might be,

are memorized and interconnected.

It only requires one to be changed

for all the others to be shaken to the core.

In our day, the Middle Ages are often considered

to be a dark period of permanent wars and enormous filth.

However, this period, which covers

around 1,000 years of history, had several phases.

The concept of the Middle Ages was invented

by the intellectual elites of the Renaissance

to illustrate an idea.

Their century was rekindling the light

of Greco-Roman civilization after dark ages.

By contrast, they referred to the preceding period

as the Middle Ages,

considering it to be mediocre,

a mere interlude between antiquity and Renaissance.

The term Middle Ages therefore

is less of a scientific verdict

than a value judgment that has survived to our day.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] In the Middle Ages,

the city is a place of liberty, knowledge and pleasures.

It is also a place of rare filthiness.

While Roman cities were designed

and built to a general plan,

medieval cities mainly went through an anarchic growth,

gathered around a defensive core

and contained within a curtain of walls.

The authorities considered cleanliness

to be the business of the individual.

No system of underground sewers,

no centralized garbage management,

no regulations.

In the narrow streets, trash mingles

with the blood from the butchers' shops.

Forges and dye works

spew a pestilential stench into the air.

The poor neighborhoodsinher

from the richer neighborhoods situated on higher ground.

In the 13th century, they start to pave the roads,

dig sewers and ban dumping trash in front of the house.

Questions of hygiene and public health

become serious ones.

In 1220, the Pope's legate founds a faculty of medicine

in Montpellier, France,

which is recognized in the 14th century

as the finest of the age.

Like the faculties of Paris and Bologna,

its knowledge is developed

from the medicine of the Arab world,

itself heir to the ancient writings

of Hippocrates and Galen.

The theories of these two Greek scholars or antiquity

are so ancient and so universally recognized

that nobody dares to question them.

At the heart of their thinking is the theory of humerus,

a proper balance of these humors guarantees good health.

Otherwise, drawing a certain quantity of blood

can restore the balance.

This is the practice of bleeding.

Added to this is the theory of miasmas,

the belief that diseases are spread by bad air.

Dominant until the 19th century,

this theory knew nothing of contamination through contact,

bacteria's favorite method of infection.

Current diseases are relatively well-documented

and well known.

Doctors have a wide variety of plant-based remedies

at their disposal.

But there are few doctors.

And faced with more virulent diseases,

even the best of them are powerless.

Often the only remedy is rest, a balanced diet

and well-aired houses.

- [Woman] The invisible enemy.

Bacteria are the first form of life

to appear on Earth.

Invisible to the naked eye, they are present everywhere

and multiply by dividing cells.

Some live in perfect harmony with their host,

like the countless bacteria

present in our digestive tract.

Others, harmful, are called pathogens

and transfer infections.

This is the case of the plague bacillus.

In all cases, bacteria must have a host

in order to reproduce.

The plague appeared in Central Asia around 20,000 years ago.

Its host is the black rat.

It transfers to humans by way of fleas.

The more rats, the faster the plague spreads.

Now, in the Middle Ages, the black rat

spread everywhere men were to be found,

proliferating in the squalid streets of overcrowded cities.

The aggravating factor, the existence of bacteria

is totally unknown in the 14th century,

not to mention their vectors of infection.

Ironically, cats that could control rats

are regularly driven away

because they are reputed to be satanic.

Nobody really cares about the rodents.

All these elements are in place for the tragedy to unfold.

- [Narrator] 1347.

Caffa, at the gates of Europe.

The Mongols are laying siege

to the Genoese trading post on the Black Sea.

But the Horde is being gnawed

by an invisible sickness both insidious and deadly.

Arriving from the borders of China,

a terrible and extremely contagious disease

is decimating the ranks of the fighters.

The Mongol army is infested with the Bubonic plague.

The horde is rapidly in no state to fight,

even less to take the city.

So the Mongol chief orders plague-infected corpses

to be catapulted over the walls.

The rats, swarming in the nomad camp,

invade the Genoese stronghold,

carrying in their coats an army of fleas

swollen with disease.

The sickness penetrates the lower city,

makes its way along the gutters,

infiltrates the houses.

In the city, the epidemic rages like a forest fire.

To flee the infected air, many ships leave the harbor.

In the fresh air offshore,

the crews believe that they are safe.

This is when the first symptoms appear.

Death is among the passengers.

Sailing along the coast,

the first ships reach Constantinople

laden with their deadly cargo.

Very quickly the first cases of plague appear

in the 1,000-year-old city.

According to witnesses, it can kill a person

within an hour.

Unaware of the danger, merchant ships leave the Bosporus

to sail the trade routes and carry the infection

to all the major ports of the Mediterranean.

Anatolia, the Balkans, the Aegean Sea,

and then the whole of Greece are infected.

At the end of September 1347,

the plague-ridden Genoese ships arrive in Messina

and contaminate Sicily.

The plague passes from cargo to cargo,

ship to ship, city to city.

Genoa is ravaged, then Pisa,

Venice and Marseilles.

The epidemic becomes a pandemic.

No wall can stop it,

no army fight it.

The pestilence devastates villages,

travels up rivers,

swarms at the roadsides.

From Mallorca, the plague spreads to Spain.

It stinks up Tunis, strikes Crete, Cyprus, Egypt.

Alexandria and Cairo are in turn affected,

as are Syria, Accra, and Jerusalem.

For their populations, the only chance of salvation

is to flee, to flee as far as possible

and never come back.

Irresistibly, the contagion crosses French Provence,

ravages Montpellier, Toulouse,

travels up to Rome and infects Lyon.

On August 20th, 1348, Paris is hit.

All over, those infected are shut up.

Whole neighborhoods are put under quarantine.

The city gates are closed.

Nothing can stem the lightning-fast hemorrhaging.

Switzerland, the Holy Roman Empire,

and the English kingdom are all eaten away

by this incurable sickness.

Soon, the whole of Europe is infected.

Humanity is engaged in a merciless battle

against the bacteria.

And it is losing it.

(ominous, dramatic music)

- [Woman] We have just reached a turning point.

A turning point is a key event,

a crossroads in our history

where the world swings one way or the other.

One way or another, the plague would have reached the West.

But by infecting the defenders of Caffa,

the Mongols bypassed the classic methods of progression.

The plague uses maritime trade

to reach directly into the heart of Europe.

Nobody has time to prepare for it.

Without the Siege of Caffa,

it might have taken years to reach Genoa,

then in full expansion.

The city would have had time to prepare,

take measures for confinement.

It would not have seen its people and its countryside

ravaged by the disease.

With its resources preserved,

its shipyards could have continued production

of its excellent ships.

The native city of Christopher Columbus

would almost certainly have engaged in major explorations.

The New World, discovered by the Genoese

well before the Spanish,

would have been covered in Genoese trading posts,

a formidable oceanic Latin trading empire.

America would be speaking Italian.

- [Narrator] 25 million dead.

The Black Death carries off 1/3 of Europe's population

in four years.

In some cities, the dead number over 1,000 per day.

It manifests itself in two forms.

Bubonic plague, whose first sign is ganglions,

the bubos, then come nervous and psychological disorders.

A temperature as high as 42 degrees Celsius

and generalized blood poisoning lead to the death

of two out of three infected persons after a few days.

Pneumonic plague, infected by drops of saliva,

is much faster and can kill a person within a few hours.

Chances of survival are zero.

The sick person is condemned.

In accordance with the theory of miasmas,

it is believed that the disease

is transmitted through the air.

So they protect their faces

when handling corpses or attending the sick.

But nobody protects themselves from the real danger,

direct physical contact with the bacterium

and bites from the fleas carried by the rats.

(gentle music)

The pestilence wipes out whole families.

Graveyards are saturated.

Common graved overflow.

Infected corpses pile up on the streets.

Out of fear of contamination,

authorities ban movement, introduce quarantines,

wall up the contaminated, burn infected cargoes.

People shut themselves up in their houses,

abandon the dead,

throw the agonized bodies into the desolate streets.

Death rules.

The hour is for survival.

Priests and monks are directly hit.

Pursuing their ideal of helping their neighbor,

they are in the front line.

Soon there is nobody left

to administer the last rites to the dying.

A real communal fear arises.

They begin to talk of divine punishment,

of apocalypse.

Those who practice self-flagellation hold processions

while whipping themselves to atone for the sins of man

and obtain God's forgiveness.

All across Europe, they look for scapegoats.

Communities withdraw upon themselves.

Everywhere they mistake the enemy.

Nobody suspects the rodents.

Death appears to strike blindly,

with no distinction of age or sex.

The natural order of things

is turned completely upside down.

Children die before their parents.

The dying no longer receive the last rites.

The whole social model is shaken.

Traditional reference points disappear.

Psychosis spreads at the same pace as the infection.

Europe, subject of famine and stricken by the Black Death,

is in its death throes.

Then, just as suddenly as it appeared,

the Black Death seems to disappear in 1352.

People stop dying.

The symptoms disappear.

The plague bacillus fail to infect the entire population,

often through lack of living hosts to contaminate.

The nightmare is over, for the moment.

- [Woman] What if a scourge like the plague

returned in our day?

How would our contemporary interconnected world,

highly globalized with 1,000s of planes

flying overhead each day,

withstand the sudden unleashing of a worldwide pandemic?

Let's imagine a totally unknown

and highly virulent disease far beyond our knowledge

that would kill a person in three days

and against which not one of our most eminent doctors

would have a cure.

Our nearest ones would start dying

in a horrible suffering for no apparent reason.

Very soon, there would be no fire fighters,

no police, no doctors,

no longer anybody to supply our supermarkets

or keep our nuclear plants safe.

Given an equal percentage,

there would not be just 10s of millions of dead,

but two billion.

Can we imagine the avenues of Manhattan, of Beijing, of Rio?

What would our leaders do?

How would the people react?

Would our society prove more resistant

than that of the Middle Ages?

Or collapse upon itself?

(ominous music)

- [Narrator] The Great Plague of 1348

was only the first wave.

10 years later, the disease strikes again.

The newborn and children are particularly affected.

They then realize that the disease will always be there,

and that it will return,

again and again.

During the next four centuries,

Europe will experience some 20 other waves,

some more, some less powerful.

The plague comes and goes, like the movement of a tide.

In France, 1,000s of villages disappear

for lack of inhabitants.

The building of cathedrals is slowed

for nearly a century.

Scant knowledge of the disease, incomprehension,

fear and panic create a new conception of the world,

of existence, and of death.

Many paintings of the period show gaunt corpses

dragging the living in an infernal dance

against an apocalyptic background.

They invent the image of the Reaper,

implacable death carrying off people by the 1,000s,

scything the living down like straw.

The clergy, helpless and impotent, was decimated.

Replacements are quickly trained to fill the gap.

But you cannot replace a life of study and prayer

with a few years' training.

The 14th century economy, deprived of its workforce,

is totally disorganized.

Workers, now rare, are expensive.

Wages soar.

Fields are empty of farmers.

Harvests are disaster.

The lords, deprived of the revenues, lose power.

The plague triggers a chain reaction

that speeds up the end of the feudal system.

After having been grievously wounded,

the Western world changes face.

Right up to the 19th century,

they continue to believe that the plague is transmitted

by contamination of the air.

They must wait til 1894

and endure dozens of deadly epidemics across the world

before they identify the Yersinia Pestis bacterium

as being responsible.

At the current time, it is still impossible

to estimate the total number of its victims,

even to the nearest few million.

Far from being eradicated,

the plague bacillus is still present on the planet

and mutates at each new outbreak.

Nobody can tell in advance what it will be like tomorrow.

But that is another story.

- [Woman] The Mongols' catapulting

of the plague-ridden corpses

is one of the oldest examples of bacteriological warfare.

From the simple poisoning of wells

to anthrax-filled letters

by way of missiles loaded with virus,

man has always outdone himself

in ingenious ways to infect his enemies.

Now, a bacteriological weapon is extremely dangerous.

Living organism, pathogen capable of mutating,

there's nothing to prevent it

from turning against its user,

or devastating the whole world.

In 1993, a unilateral treaty aimed at banning

the production, the stocking and above all,

the use of bacteriological weapon

was signed by 87 countries.

In the 14th century, Western society, then at its peak,

was devastated by the plague.

In four years, a third of its population died.

And yet, on the edge of the abyss and despair,

society did not go under.

Enduring the worst suffering,

it overcame this trial by adapting, by evolving,

because, although the plague changed the face

of the Western world, although it ravaged Europe

and waged one of iardest battles with humanity,

it ended up losing that battle.

The human species held on and survived.

(dramatic music)