Economists have discovered or invented recurrent patterns in the movement of prices, output, etc., to which they have given such names as Kitchin, Juglar, and Kuznets cycles, secular trends, and Kondratieffs or long waves. The term logistic is used here, not in its precise mathematical sense, but as a convenient expression to designate a long-period surge-not cycle-of economic growth. During the past millennium Europe has experienced three such surges, averaging two to three centuries in duration, and may be entering a fourth. (This is, of course, an empirical observation, and somewhat impressionistic at that. There are no compelling theoretical reasons to believe that the character and periodicity of the fourth logistic will resemble the first three. In fact, it requires considerable acuity to discern the similarities in these.) A logistic consists of two phases, not necessarily of equal duration: first a phase of accelerating growth, followed by a phase of deceleration. Thus far Europe's logistics have been separated by an interval (variable in duration) of relative stagnation or even contraction. A case can be made for a logistic in the Mediterranean world in the first two centuries of the Christian era (perhaps beginning in the century before); and the Merovingian era in France may have experienced a minor one as well, although the evidence is much too sparse and unreliable to be convincing. One can, however, speak with some confidence of the first European logistic as having begun sometime in the eleventh century (probably the first half), reaching a peak in the thirteenth, and petering out in the fourteenthsharply punctuated by the Great Plague of 1348-50. There followed for most (though not all) of Europe a century of stagnation and/or contraction. Europe's Second Logistic got underway about the middle of the fifteenth century, allowing for regional variation in timing according to local