A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

History never repeats itself,” said Voltaire; “man always does.”

Tuchman’s Law, as follows: “The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold” (or any figure the reader would care to supply).

Taxation like usury rested on principles that were anything but clearly defined and so muddled by ad hoc additions, exemptions, and arrangements that it was impossible to count on a definite amount of returns.

Some things haven't changed in the past 700 years.

Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer: matins around midnight; lauds around three A.M.; prime, the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about six A.M.; vespers at six in the evening; and compline at bedtime.

The crown grasped for money by every means and favored the least scrupulous, which was debasing the coinage.

Coins called in were re-minted with a lower proportion of gold or silver and re-circulated at the old face value, with the difference being retained by the Treasury.

system reduced the real wages and purchasing power of the common people while bankers, merchants, and nobles, whose movable wealth was in large gold coins or gold and silver vessels and plate, were less affected.

Jean himself sold his eleven-year-old daughter Isabelle in marriage to the nine-year-old son of the rich and rampant Visconti family of Milan for 600,000 gold florins.

Ostentation was the duty of princes.

war is too unpleasant and costly a business to be sustained successfully without a cause.

Against men habituated to lawless force, violent punishment failed to bring the violence under control.

Philip van Artevelde, fighting in the front ranks, tried to rally them, but from his position could exercise no effective command. He lacked the assurance of the Black Prince at Poitiers to retain control from a hilltop above the battle. Borne backward by the mass as the rout spread, he was trampled and killed under the feet of his own forces, as was his banner-bearer, a woman named Big Margot.

To bring Christians together for a crusade was not seen by a man like Mézières as war but as the use of the sword for the glory of God.

Times of anxiety nourish belief in conspiracies of evil, which in the 14th century were seen as the work of persons or groups with access to diabolical aid.

The Three Ways now proposed were, first, mutual abdication; second, if both popes continued obdurate, arbitration by a selected group; third, a General Council of the Church.