A Short History of the Middle Ages Fourth Edition

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Eight Catastrophe and Creativity (c.1350–c.1500) STRUCK BY A PLAGUE that carried off between a fifth and a half of its populatio ...

Constantinople and Cairo and soon leaving the port cities for the hinterlands. In early 1348 the citizens of Pisa and Genoa, fie ...

workforce was decimated. They were obliged to strike bargains with enterprising peasants, furnishing them, for example, with oxe ...

Plate 8.1: Corpses Confront the Living (c.1441). This unusual illustration shows not only the physical confrontations between th ...

Similarly, in the artistic and literary genre known as the Dance of Death, life itself became a dance with death, as men and wom ...

ephemeral principalities for themselves in the interstices between Mongol-ruled Rum and the Byzantine Empire. At the beginning o ...

Bayezid I (r.1389–1402), they conquered much of the Balkans, taking Serbia (at the battle of Kosovo) in 1389 and Bulgaria in 139 ...

Philip VI in 1337. (See Map 8.2, paying particular attention to English possessions in 1337.) Beyond that were Flemish–English e ...

Genealogy 8.1: Kings of France and England and the Dukes of Burgundy during the Hundred Years’ War As son of Isabella, the last ...

French nobles awarded it, instead, to Philip VI, the first Valois king of France. (See Genealogy 8.1: Kings of France and Englan ...

Map 8.2: The First Phase of the Hundred Years’ War, 1337–1360 English successes were nevertheless short-lived. Harrying the bord ...

sentiments for peace were gaining strength in both England and France; a treaty to put an end to the fighting for a generation w ...

Map 8.3: English and Burgundian Hegemony in France, c.1430 Henry’s plans were aided by a new regional power: Burgundy. A marvel ...

Duchy of Burgundy forged by Philip the Bold (r.1364–1404) was a cluster of principalities with one center at Dijon (the traditio ...

Map 8.4: The Duchy of Burgundy, 1363–1477 Had Henry lived, he might have made good his claim. But he died in 1422, leaving behin ...

duke of Bedford. Meanwhile, with Charles VI dead the same year, Charles VII, the French “dauphin,” or crown prince, was disheart ...

English and supported the French, at least in lukewarm fashion. The Hundred Years’ War devastated France in the short run. Durin ...

Genealogy 8.2: York and Lancastrian (Tudor) Kings All of this would later be grist for Shakespeare’s historical dramas, but at t ...

were confiscated for the crown, and people caught in the middle longed for a strong king who would keep the peace. When the dust ...