The third horseman
Subtitle: climate change and the Great Famine of the 14th century
By: William Rosen
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 302
ISBN-13: 9780670025893
Subjects: Climate and civilization; Climatic changes; Epidemics; Military History; War and society; Famines; Social conditions; Harvesting; History
Description: "How a seven-year cycle of rain, cold, disease, and warfare created the worst famine in European history ... In May 1315, it started to rain. It didn't stop anywhere in north Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe's livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives--one eighth of Europe's total population. William Rosen draws on a wide array of disciplines, from military history to feudal law to agricultural economics and climatology, to trace the succession of traumas that caused the Great Famine. With dramatic appearances by Scotland's William Wallace, and the luckless Edward II and his treacherous Queen Isabella, history's best documented episode of catastrophic climate change comes alive, with powerful implications for future calamities"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-289) and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue: Eight Crowns in Boulogne, 1308; title: The Fury of the Northmen, 793-1066; title: Henceforth Be Earls, 1066-1298; title: Penalty for Their Betters, 1298-1307; title: Douglas's Larder, 1307-1312; title: Scots, Wha Hae, 1313-1315; title: The Floodgates of the Heavens, 1315-1316; title: A Dearness of Wheat, 1316-1317; title: She-Wolf of France, 1313-1320; title: The Dearest Beef I've Ever Seen, 1320-1322; title: The Mouse Tower of Bingen, 800-1323; title: Long Years of Havoc, 1323-1328; title: Epilogue: The Delicate Balance.