A.D. 1190. The old chronicler Geoffrey de Vinsauf describes a terrible famine and pestilence that happened in 1190, “in the army of the Crusaders at the siege of Acre, owing to the villany of the Marquis of Montferrat, the governor of Tyre, who not only refused to supply the soldiers with food, but would not either allow of the townsfolk to send them provisions.” So great was the famine and the scarcity, that “a moderate measure of wheat which a man could carry under his arm was sold for 100 aurei, a chicken for twelve sols, and an egg for six deniers. The men were reduced to feed on their horses, which they were compelled to kill, not even the entrails being rejected. Men of high rank and the sons of great men fed upon grass even; and herbs such as they once despised and believed not fit for human use, the greatness of the famine made now most sweet to the starving. The public ovens were constantly occupied by men fighting for the bread, and noblemen, suffering from the pangs of hunger, became thieves and stole the loaves from the bakers’ shops.” To add to their misery, heavy rains fell, and pestilence broke out amongst them, so that a thousand deaths happened daily. De Vinsauf says, “The unusual showers, by their constant and continuous fall, had such an injurious effect upon the soldiers, that, with the excess of the affliction, their limbs becoming swollen, the whole body was affected as with the dropsy, and from the violence of the disease the teeth of some of them were loosened and fell out.” But few of those attacked recovered. Every section of this old work, descriptive of this pestilence, ends with a fierce imprecation on the Marquis for his desertion and perfidy. A.D. 1193 and 1194, there was a famine in Italy, and pestilence swept England, continuing till 1196. “The common people perished in every quarter for lack of food, and the fiercest pestilence followed, in the form of acute fever, which destroyed such numbers that scarcely any were left to minister unto the sick; the customary funeral service ceased, and in many places large ditches were made, into which the dead were thrown.”--(Chron. W. Humford, vol. ii. p. 546–7.) There was, A.D. 1196, a great famine and plague in the principality of Catalonia, and 1199, pestilential fever raged at Cordova, in which the celebrated physician Averrhoes observed that every patient who was bled before purging invariably died. England again suffered severely from epidemic pestilence in the year 1200, and also in the following year. A.D. 1205, a severe frost was experienced in England from the 14th of January unto the 22nd of March. A.D. 1206, on the last day of the month of February, there was an eclipse of the sun, which lasted six hours--the darkness was as great as at midnight. This phenomenon was followed by abundant and continued rains, inundations, and severe epidemic pestilence in Spain.