Familiar names popping up: Petrarch, Dante, Ockham. The whole description sounds fairly close to Indian history of the time, which I know better. Just slightly more technologically advanced, and significantly better peasant/commoner conditions. Life is rough. Wouldn’t want it.
Conversation
“Yet if the [chivalric] code was but a veneer over violence, greed, and sensuality, it was nevertheless an ideal, as Christianity was an ideal, toward which man’s reach, as usual, exceeded his grasp.”
Great sentence.
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Well, with a quick account of the Battle of Crécy and the start of the 100 years war, we’re officially into the plague chapters. Tuchman moves very fast through this, 1948-49. It is depressingly and uncannily similar to what we’re going through.
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Way more death of course, but similar dynamics: poor dying more, animals running wild, labor shortage,...
“The sense of a vanishing future created a kind of dementia of despair.”
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“Fields went uncultivated, spring seed unsown. Second growth with nature’s awful energy crept back over cleared land, dikes crumbles, salt water reinvaded and soured the lowlands”
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One big difference: they had no idea how it spread. Didn’t even suspect fleas and rats apparently. Though rats were associated with pestilence generally (the Pied Piper story is from 1284 it seems). That’s our one big advantage. Perhaps the main one.
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Both bubonic and pneumonic plagues were present together so the miasma theory was not entirely wrong even though they thought it was stinky air and malign astrology that caused air transmission. They also believed in sight transmission. Must have been total FUD.
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The official explanation was an astrological one from the professors of the University of Paris. They were widely translated, leading to growth in national languages as a positive effect. Kinda like internet today I guess.
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Lots of prayer and religious life cleansing.
“When it became clear that these [penitence] processions were sources of infection, [Pope] Clement VI had to prohibit them” (initially authorized by the pope).
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Long section on predictable antisemitism followed by fascinating but, new to me, about how flagellants were a heretical movement that challenged the intercessionary authority of priests by claiming their self-flagellation as saving humanity/Christianity
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Apparently very few broad generalizations can be made about the effects of the Black Death. Fir every claimed effect in one place there was an opposite one elsewhere.
Labor shortage and stronger peasant/artisan position was the strongest broad effect. Inflation/wages spiral.
Replying to
The church got generally richer through legacies and Clement VI 1350 jubilee, where you could get absolutions fir money. But it grew much more hated. I guess the seeds of the reformation were planted here.
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TIL about mendicant orders which some in the church tried to have banned
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Tuchman argues that dissatisfaction with the meaninglessness of the suffering, with no changes for the better, is what unleashed the social forces of change. Argues it created modern man, hungry for a better answer than mysterious will of god.
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Interesting: in the wake of the Black Death, both England and France raised knightly orders nostalgically modeled on King Arthur’s round table, with the practical purpose of preventing independent withdrawal by feudals in battle. Chivalry was already a fandom larp in 1351.
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The orders were the order of the garter on the English side, and order of the star on the French side. This stupid affair was apparently the aspirational model of combat.
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Now we’re on to examples of how the whole era was full of ultra-violent psychopaths killing each other, like Charles of Navarre. Tuchman suggests perhaps as a result of Black Death memento mori. This era is motorcycle gangs basically.
Pandemics cause Hobbesian conditions.
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Honor killings, rape, torture, heads on stakes, arms, legs, ears cut off for crimes...
These are horrible, miserable people. Why does fantasy fiction love this age so much again?
Not an age for smart people.
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Ok these people are the worst.
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Tuchman offers theory that since neglect was the standard of childcare till age 7 or so, everyone grew up severely messed up. Sounds about right. A world where having a serial killer psyche is the norm, and being nice is a form of mental illness
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My horrible loud music playing neighbor would have fit right into the post-plague late Middle Ages. Bet he tortures cats. But moving on, having wished a pox on neighbor. We resume our reading.
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Money printer go brr. King Jean tries to get clever debasing currency and trying to reform the military. Long account of Battle of Poitiers, another debacle for the French. The 100 years war seems to develop one confused and stupid battle at a time. Each is harambe-like.
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“Complaints were heard that the archers had killed too many who might have been held for ransom”
This business of capturing enemy knights for ransom is hilarious. The business model was ransoms. Like LatAm gangs. Military objectives had to compete with ransom objectives.
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This tension between archers (remote work, pragmatic war) and knights (melee work, honor war) appears to have been a much bigger deal than I thought. It’s like Jane Jacobs commerce vs guardian syndromes. Archers = win effectively, via strategery. Knights = honor points.
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The French apparently underutilized their archers for honor reasons. Besides being limited to crossbows and lacking longbow capacity.
Must resist crossbow vs longbow Internet bunny trail and return to book.
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Now we’re talking commerce and urban life in Paris. Apparently streets didn’t have names then and people spent hours lost. Also curfew on economic production work after dark and sumptuary laws still constraining conspicuous consumption . Guardian > Commerce. Economy no go brrr.
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“... furniture was meager. Beds, which served for sitting as well as sleeping, were the most important item. Chairs were few: even kings and popes received ambassadors sitting on beds”
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1357, third estate under provost Étienne marcel gets Dauphin to fire old cronies of king jean captured by English and sign a sort of “magna carta of third estate” ordinance. Jean repudiates it from captivity.
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Long section on brigand bands, some the size of small armies ravaging France as it became ungoverned. English knights staying behind to loot after Poitiers and ransomed and bankrupt French knights joining them. Gallantry gone rotten. Medieval mad max.
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These English bands in 14th century France, looting merrily in a nominal truce during the 100 year war, are basically what we’d call terrorists today, except they had no ideology beyond loot. Reminds me of post-Soviet-withdrawal transformation of mujahideen into terror groups.
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“Country families hastened with their goods to take refuge in cities, monks and nuns abandoned their monasteries, highways and roads were unsafe”
So cities were like Rivendell in LOTR 🤔
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Third estate assault on dauphin/regent loses support of nobility. So now it’s peasants plus third estate vs nobility and lame duck monarchy. Meanwhile king Jean is living luxuriously in England as captive waiting to be ransomed. French still trying to do so despite extreme terms
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Now into the Jacquerie rebellion of 1358. When nobility turn to vampiric brigandage, clearly peasantry must turn into zombie mobs. Am rooting for peasants here though. They were the less awful people. Seriously exploited. This is like Trumps vs Trumpies.
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Ah shit. Clearly I backed the wrong conceptual horse here as Rick would say. The Jacques have been slaughtered by the knights. Bloodbath.
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This era in Europe is relentlessly stupid with no redeeming qualities. Just pointless slaughter, plague, and general shittiness. No wonder it triggered the age of exploration in the next century. Who would want to live like this?
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“...short of a fluke like the capture of a king at Poitiers, medieval armies had no means of achieving a decisive result, much less a surrender.” On Edwards’s weird campaign in France in the winter if 1958 trying to exactvthe biggest possible ransom for Jean
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The Treaty of Bretigny... this is some weird-ass shit. Large territorial claims insured by exchanging a king for a bunch of nobility? Apparently this was the occasion when the first franc was minted.
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Our hero, Enguerrand de Coucy is among the nobles exchanged for the king. Eng is apparently going to end up as the son-in-law of Edward... this hostage/ransom shit among royalty was all very nominal. The royalty treated each other like royalty.
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Writer dude Jean Froissart is on the ship carrying noble hostages back to England. He’s gonna make Eng famous. Geoffrey Chaucer is also onboard. Eng is curiously lifeless so far in this long 7 chapter setup. Finally he’s getting foregrounded. I never read the Canterbury tales.
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It’s a be somebody or do something century. Tuchman says unless you were royalty nobody cared about your appearance or character. You were known only by your deeds. Curious kind of dehumanization. Much klout. Very karma.
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No live portraits of Eng exist, only one painted 200y after his death. He was apparently tall, dark, and handsome. And could sing and dance well. Basically a generic harlequin romance cover hero.
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