A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Product Information

Read around Richard III and - love him or hate him - along the way you’re not only going to get into the foreground detail of the Wars of the Roses, you’ll begin making some sense of the backstory of the Plantagenet dynasty. The most interesting bits of this book were when she gives a glimpse into the odd lives of people and how they viewed their world.

Peasant women could hold tenancies and in that capacity rendered the same kinds of service for their holdings as men.

Men and women hawked and hunted and carried a favorite falcon, hooded, on the wrist wherever they went, indoors or out--to church, to the assizes, to meals.

The focus on Lord Coucy is supremely appropriate since this nobleman repeatedly pops up as a prime player in many of the century’s key events. Drawing heavily on Froissart's Chronicles, Tuchman recounts the histories of the Hundred Years' War, the Black Plague, the Papal Schism, pillaging mercenaries, anti-Semitism, popular revolts including the Jacquerie in France, the liberation of Switzerland, the Battle of the Golden Spurs, and various peasant uprisings. Nadia May or Donada Peters) has narrated well over six hundred titles for major audiobook publishers, has earned numerous Earphones Awards, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine. In my own review (totally pathetic compared to yours), I explained that focusing on Enguerrand was clever. Then there is Wendy, another friend here, whose opinion I also respect, value and seek out and who has introduced me to many excellent books.The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. As she explains in the Forward, Tuchman initially wanted to study the effects of such a disaster on society. He had seen war as captain or one of the to command in eleven campaigns—in Piedmont, Lombardy, Switzerland, Normandy, Languedoc, Tuscany, northern France, Flanders, Guelders, Tunisia, Genoa; he had commanded mercenaries, and fought as ally or antagonist of the Count of Savoy, Gregory XI, Hawkwood, the Visconti, the Hapsburgs, the Swiss, Navarrese, Gascons, English, Berbers, the Republic of Florence, and nobles of Genoa. In a way, the 14th century musical avant-garde fit in well with the fashions of the times: extravagant headdresses, multicolored, bejeweled jackets and long pointed shoes. This means it puts you in a position to talk about and link the different elements of society and then to speculate about how different factors, like jousting culture and war itself, interact.

This needn’t be a problem, however, as even with no other sources on the period you can think about and evaluate Tuchman’s main arguments and overall narrative just with the information in the book.

This transformation from the feudal system enabled the lords to squeeze the peasants mercilessly by charging rents for everything while no longer bearing any responsibility for the peasants’ wellbeing. Perhaps that's a naive thing to say about a historical account, and perhaps it's the sort of thing that leads to a flawed understanding of historical events. The status of nobility was in “flux”, and the modern state, as we know it, did not yet exist: there was “the vassal-to-lord relationship and not citizen-to-state” [1978: 5]. Armies of the time lived off the land so these men were used to taking anything and everything they wanted. The overview sections were my favorite, because I’m more interested in the essence of the 14th Century than in the timeline.