Of the many settlements that arose in the expansions between 600 and 1200, more than half have not survived. As early as shortly after 1400, a few villages in the "Eßweiler Tal" were destroyed by “Armagnacs”. The inhabitants furthermore had to suffer under the great epidemics of the time. In 1564, the Plague supposedly claimed 200 victims of the 800 people then living in the "Eßweiler Tal". In 1575, Eßweiler itself apparently had only 24 inhabitants left. In 1622, another wave of the Plague swept across the land during the Thirty Years' War leaving most villages all but depopulated. Time and again, as arranged by the lords who held the land, newcomers were brought in to settle the land again; from France, Switzerland and even the Tyrol they came, but the 1648 Peace of Westphalia failed to bring any calm to the land as French King Louis XIV waged his wars of conquest, turning the Palatinate into a battleground. Although the end of the politically and religiously motivated wars after 1700 soothed tensions somewhat, the land itself remained poor. Famines drove a great deal of the inhabitants to migrate to Habsburg-ruled Eastern Europe, Prussian Brandenburg, Pomerania and eventually overseas to North America. Many families from Eßweiler were among the emigrants.