In October 1347 trading ships from Genoa enter the harbour of Messina in Sicily. At the oars are dead and dying men. They have come from a Black Sea port in the Crimea. The Genoese have a trading post there. The ships tie up at the wharves. Those men who can still walk go ashore. They take the disease with them.
The disease reaches Marseilles in November 1347. By January 1348 it has gone to North Africa through Tunis, westward from Marseilles to Spain and to Genoa and Venice.
In March it goes northward up the Rhône river to Avignon. Between February and May, it gets to Narbonne, Montpellier, Carcassonne, Toulouse, Rome and Florence.
Between June and August, it gets to Bordeaux, Lyon and Paris. It gets to Seville in July. It spreads to Burgundy and Normandy. Then it goes into southern England. It gets to Bristol in July. It goes from Italy to Switzerland and into Hungary.
In 1349 it goes from Paris to Picardy, Flanders and the Low Countries. It reaches Vienna in March. It gets to London in January and Durham in June. It goes from England to Scotland and Ireland and Norway. From there it goes to Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, Iceland and Greenland and then to northern Russia. It attacks Russia again in 1351.
Once the Black Death gets to a place, it kills people for about six months and then fades away. But in the big cities, it dies down in winter and then comes back in spring for another six months. It has gone from most of Europe by the middle of 1350.
Plague comes back many times over the next 350 years although it is never as fierce again. It is not until the early 18th century that it seems to have gone for good but of course it hasn't really.
