Next pandemic live read, Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, a history of the 14th century through the life of a single minor nobleman whose life was coextensive with the main events, esp the Black Death. https://amzn.to/2ww5ixs 

This is the rare history book that is so engrossing it’s competing and winning against the Terry Pratchett I’m reading (Maskerade) for bedtime escapist relaxation. The 14th century is the right shit show to compare too. Our pandemic so far has been paradise by comparison.

Introduction is an excellent apologia for shortcomings of historical research methodology. Problems or missing/noisy data, biases of eras of historiography etc are deftly discussed. Choice of Enguerrand de Coucy as lens of the story explained.

First chapter is a sketch of French society esp the Coucys milieu at the start of the story. It’s a feudal decentralized polity with weak monarchy, strong sumptuary laws and merchant class slowly buying its freedom from bankrupt crusading nobility. Status currency being debased.

Second chapter is discussion of the deep corruption of the Church in the years following France king Philip IV “the fair” takedown of pope boniface and the papacy moving to Avignon and basically turning into a sort of super corrupt Davos set. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_des_Papes

Learned about Simony. The church was basically a deep state for sale. Purely commercial enterprise. Offices being sold to highest bidder, illiterates being appointed to clergy, all sins washable with money. They were practically asking heaven for a plague. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simony 

This book is not recommended if you want reassurance that we’ve been through worse and returned to normal. It’s building up like a doomsday story and we already know how bad it gets. Spoiler alert: doom

Life for commoners sounds horrible even before the Black Death. Caught between a venal church and a crappy nobility being invaded by a social climbing merchant class. No wonder they clung as fervently to the idea of an afterlife as we do to the idea of a reopening.

Everybody hates the church in the 14th century it seems. Including reformers within who think it ought to reflect Jesus ideal of poverty. Franciscans excommunicated for such ideas. Kings resist Pope’s right to crown emperor. Merchants change at silly economics.

Weird just how much centralized power the church laid claim to, and with corrupt staff at that, purely on the strength of a claim to gate-keeping salvation. Interesting contrast to Hinduism, where there was an equally strong claim but no central Pope making the claim.

Whoa. This is insane.

Long section on how extremely communal guild life was. Capitalists pretty much owned towns and had captured city governments. Town and rural poor equally oppressed.

Also TIL about 1320 Pastoureaux that began as rebellion against oppression and ended in slaughter of Jews.

The 14th century really couldn’t come to terms with the necessity of interest, and the result was antisemitism as a sort of economic doctrine. Christian usury prohibitions grounded in economic illiteracy made periodic slaughter of Jews necessary to balance the budget?

Chapter 2 ends on the cusp of war between France and England with the father of our hero drawn in via complicated marriage alliances, dowries, military commitments in exchange for money etc. Our hero Enguerrand de Coucy, who I will call Eng, is born.

Chapter 3 is a pretty thorough portrait of medieval life in Eng’s milieu. Reads like a history text. Lots of details on child-rearing, education, economic life etc. No big surprises so this is a bit boring. It does surprisingly resemble cartoon views (Monty Python, King Arthur)

Life kinda sucks, the world doesn’t change, progress is not a concept, everybody is waiting to either die or the second coming when there is a lottery chance it will suck less.

Knights must learn how to fight, rude, and... hawk? Why hawks? Toy drones of the time I guess.

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.

“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.

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.

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.”

“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”

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.

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.

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.

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).

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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellant 

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.

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.

TIL about mendicant orders which some in the church tried to have banned https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendicant_orders

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.

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.

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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_of_the_Thirty

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.

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.

Ok these people are the worst.

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

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

“... 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”

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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Ordinance_of_1357

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.

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.

“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

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

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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquerie 

Ah shit. Clearly I backed the wrong conceptual horse here as Rick would say. The Jacques have been slaughtered by the knights. Bloodbath.

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?

“...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

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brétigny

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.

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.

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.

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.

1361, plague is back after 12 years. Everybody is gloom-and-doom. This is relentless shittiness. Including actual shit. London is awash in manure apparently. No wonder the rich lived a barbell life of death sports and nihilistic hedonism.

“Between the happening of a historical process, and its recognition by rulers, a lag stretched, full of pitfalls”

The rulers here are half-criminal brigands anyway. The poor really seem to need the monarch for hope.

tfw the highlight of your day is half an hour of bedtime reading about the Black Death enjoying the schadenfreude. At least one group of people

Now into the story of Eng and his spoiled bride-to-be, Isabella Kardashian-Hilton. Woman sounds awful.

Chapter about women. Seems like the age had a theory of submission around women’s role in the works but in practice they had a lot more unofficial agency than anyone admitted. They ran things while the men were off fighting or being held ransom etc.

Eng and Isabella now married, with 2 daughters. It’s 1367 and they’ve been given a lot of wealth, titles and territory in both England and France. Dude’s married up. Still not gone to life though. Isabella is better portrayed so far.