There were ceasefires and truces which halted the battles. Fighting also stopped out of necessity because of weather or food shortages. The Plague also produced suspension of hostilities. Historian Barbara Tuchman writes:
In October 1347, two months after the fall of Calais, Genoese trading ships put into the harbor of Messina in Sicily with dead and dying men at the oars. The ships had come from the Black Sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya) in the Crimea, where the Genoese maintained a trading post. The diseased sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin. The swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. The sick suffered severe pain and died quickly within five days of the first symptoms. As the disease spread, other symptoms of continuous fever and spitting of blood appeared instead of the swellings or buboes. These victims coughed and sweated heavily and died even more quickly, within three days or less, sometimes in 24 hours. In both types everything that issued from the body - breath, sweat, blood from the buboes and lungs, bloody urine, and blood-blackened excrement - smelled foul. Depression and despair accompanied the physical symptoms, and before the end "death is seen seated on the face."
The disease would kill millions, in some places entire towns. Forcing an armistice in the war would be the least of its sociological impacts. European society was put to a severe test. Some failed the test, turning to looting and otherwise exploiting the situation. But many rose to the occasion, as they tended the sick at great danger to themselves. There were no proper 'hospitals' then, but makeshift sick wards were staffed by people who volunteered out of sense of humanity.
In sum, the Plague revealed heroism - naturally, monks, nuns, and priests in large numbers devoted themselves to tending the ill, risking infection, and in some cases, practically ensuring it. But more revealing still were the large numbers of ordinary laypeople who organized themselves into ad hoc infirmaries, taking on those same risks, simply living out the sense of 'being there for others' which is so central to the European tradition.
Sadly, the end of the Plague around 1351 also paved the way for the resumption of warfare. It took society a few years to steady itself, but then the conflict between France and England continued. Ironically, the Plague, among the many sufferings it visited upon Europe, had at least one blessing - peace for a time.
