THE Little Ice Age, which began about 500 years ago, had an extraordinary impact on politics, religion and music.
It gripped Europe from the mid-1400s until the mid- 1800s, and was at its coldest from 1645 to 1715, a period known as the Maunder Minimum after the 19thcentury astronomer E. W. Maunder, who documented a drop in solar activity.
The unusually long winters and cool summers saw temperatures in Central Europe fall some 1C to 2C below today’s averages.
The Alps were hit very hard, with glaciers advancing so far that villages were crushed. At Chamonix at the foot of