The colder and wetter climate that began around the year 1300 continued to create shorter seasons for farming in Europe. In the 1590s Europe suffered from periods of prolonged rain, drought and some exceptionally cold and long winters. In these years, harvest failures occurred in many areas from Norway and Sweden to Italy. There was starvation and plague. More beggars were roaming about. Spain lost perhaps half a million inhabitants. Food shortages caused prices of food to rise. Prophesies were made that the world would end in the year 1600. Instead came a temporary return of favorable weather and recovery. But after 1600 and through the century came more agricultural crises, more food shortages, various economic difficulties in Spain, England, France and the Holy Roman Empire, and here and there some population decline.
Another hell in the 1600s was the work of Europe's monarchs. The first half of the century embodied a lot of warring. It was a century in which monarchs increased the size of their armies and increased taxes to pay for it, a burden on a population already barely surviving. In the1600s were also scattered uprisings by desperate and unhappy people, no uprising big enough to substantially change the political landscape.
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