On the whole, despite many fluctuations, the product of the tithe became more stable during the seventeenth century. We can, if we like, talk of a general crisis in the seventeenth century, but the situation, at least in France, was not the same as that produced by the dramatic collapses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the seventeenth century cereal production did not necessarily fall permanently below the ceilings reached in the sixteenth century (or, shall we say, below the levels of recovery equal to those which had been reached before the Black Death of 1348). But it often fluctuated around levels distinctly lower than these ‘ceilings’, at least during a few particularly dangerous periods. In any case, cereal production, at least in France, did not often exceed the levels mentioned above. It would be more accurate to talk of a period of stagnation or stability (stabilization or ‘normalization’) rather than of ‘general crisis’ in the seventeenth century.

As far as the medium, as opposed to the long, term is concerned, one thing is clear: whatever the differences in timing between one European country and another, there was a general crisis in Europe around 1640–50 – the result of wars, taxes, the weather, occasional revolutions and possibly a shortage of precious metals for minting.