The large number of deaths had interesting secondary effects, primarily by causing a labor shortage, especially in towns that were comparatively worse affected than the countryside:
a) serfs slipped away to work in towns;
b) nascent mechanization increased: watermills, windmills, pumps and gunpowder warfare;
c) per-capita wealth & farming efficiency increased.
d) towns developed an even stronger insistence on civic (bourgeois) rights against the crown and nobility.
A lot of changes that with the compass, caravel and cannon prepared Europe to take the lead a 150 years later.
The Renaissance..