The Plague That Accidentally Freed Europe's Enslaved Peasants

[00:00:00]Did you know that the deadliest plague in human history accidentally became the greatest workers revolt ever seen? It's 1347.

[00:00:08]A mysterious sickness arrives in Sicily on a trading ship. Within months, it is spreading across Europe like wildfire.

[00:00:15]People are dying in the streets. Entire villages are wiped out overnight.

[00:00:19]Priests, farmers, merchants, nobles, it takes everyone. By the time it slows down, roughly 1/3 of Europe's entire population is gone. Millions of people dead in just a few years. But then something unexpected happens. The survivors wake up to a different world.

[00:00:36]Lords who once owned everything suddenly have fields with nobody to work them.

[00:00:40]Crops are rotting. Livestock are wandering free. The powerful need workers desperately, and workers know it. Peasants who had never owned anything in their lives start making demands. Higher wages, better conditions, the right to leave. And for the first time in centuries, the lords have no choice but to listen. No protest, no revol- ution, no leader, just death rewriting the rules of power.