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- [00:01]
Alice Fraser
Oh, hello strangers. I'm Alice Fraser, your guide to the galaxies, goblins, dungeons and dystopias we'll be hurling ourselves into in a weekly hero's journey through realms unknown into the dark but sensual heart of all our favorite speculative fictions. We'll navigate the wild realms created by brilliant authors, filmmakers, game designers and more. New episodes drop every week on your podcast app or on YouTube. Do not resist the call to adventure chosen one. Join me for realms unknown.
- [00:30]
Dan Jones
Hello, this Is History listeners. It's Dan here with some very exciting news. Right now, for a limited time, you can get an entire year of this is history plus for just 29.99. That's less than 2.50amonth for the ultimate this Is History experience. We've never done this before, so make sure to jump on it while you can. As a this Is History plus subscriber, you'll get extra episodes every week. Early access to new episodes of this Is History and the Cherry on the Top. It's all ad free. This very special offer will only be available for a limited time. So what are you waiting for? Join today by either visiting the this Is History show page on Apple Podcasts and hitting Start free at the top of the page, or if you listen To Spotify, visit ThisIsHistoryPod.com to get access. I can't wait for you to join us.
- [01:24]
Thanks for listening. The ship's timbers creak as it floats slowly into Bordeaux's harbour. Aboard the dozens of passengers stretch and start getting to their feet. A couple of rats scuttle around the deck, squeaking as they run. As the ship nudges up against the harbour side, the sailors on board clamber over the bows and start tethering ropes to iron posts. A gangplank is heaved over the side and the soldier in charge of the expedition walks down. He runs a hand through his salty, sweaty hair and sighs. It feels good to be on dry land. The crew has been at sea for nearly a week, since the fleet left the south coast of England. Now they're here, the capital of England's Duchy of Gascony, the rich, warm, wine producing territory in southwest France. This should be a fun trip. Seabirds squawk and flies buzz lazily around. Summer is here. The crew of this ship are overdue. A good time. Many of them are veterans of the 1346 Battle of Crecy and the 1347 Siege of Calais, two of the most grueling military campaigns in L memory. Now, in 1348, it's time for them to cut loose, live a little. They've been sent down by the Plantagenet king of England, Edward iii, to escort his favorite daughter Joan to get married. Fifteen years old, with a round, innocent face, Joan is by all accounts the apple of her dad's eye. He hates to be parted from her and has felt pretty sore about letting her go off to get married. Still, that's the way of the world. Joan's husband to be is a young fellow called Pedro, and he's the heir to the throne of the Spanish kingdom of Castile. The plan is for Pedro to come up and meet Joan here in Bordeaux. Then they'll take a leisurely trip back down south to formally tie the knot. The marriage will seal an alliance between England and Castile against Edward's nemesis, the dithering King Philip VI of France. All the men on the ships have to do is babysit young Joan until Pedro turns up. How hard can that be? Yet as they look around the harbor side, the men sense that something's a bit off. In a big city like Bordeaux, you'd expect there to be more going on. Stevedores humping boxes, fishmongers selling off the catch of the day, that sort of thing. But there's no one here besides the lap of the water, the birds and the summer breeze blowing a creaky warehouse door on its hinges. It's silent. Where in God's name is everyone? A minute later, the welcome party appears. It's led by a smart fellow who looks like he might be the mayor, along with a handful of other dignitaries, and they're heading down the harbor side at a fair pace. In fact, they're so pleased to see their visitors that they're waving their hands above their heads. Or at least they're all waving one hand. In the other hand, they seem to be clamping something or other over their faces. It looks like twigs or herbs. They stop a fair distance from the ship and don't seem to want to come any closer. In fact, this is looking less and less like a welcome party by the second. If anything, it's a turn those ships around and get the hell out of here party, which is all very perplexing. The head of the English deputation starts to lose his patience. From what he can work out, the mayor is shouting something about a plague doing the rounds in the town. The Englishman rolls his eyes. Mate, it's the summer. This is a city. There's always a plague of some sort. He strides over and puts his arm around the mayor's shoulder, ignoring the fact that this little twerp nearly has a nervous breakdown. When he comes within three yards of him, he explains in words of as few syllables as possible what the deal is. We've got a princess. She's going to get married. Let us get on with it or I'll stick my sword in the softest part of your bar, Turks. The mayor is shaking his head frantically now, but there's not much he can do. The dock is almost empty, so it's not like he can rustle up any muscle. The ship's crew are determined to come ashore and get on with the job. Edward III himself has set them. It's not long before the English, including the teenage Joan, have disembarked their ships and are making their way into town in search of lodgings, wine, and the directions to the bath houses in whatever order they can find them. Wedding bells are expected. Love is in the air. Little do the English know that they're making a catastrophic error, because the mayor of Bordeaux is no scaremonger. The plague that's sweeping through the city is one that has already devastated whole swathes of France, Italy and realms as far far east as China. Spread by rats, fleas and humans, it's a hideously lethal illness that strikes sufferers down in a matter of days. It spreads at lightning pace and when it gets you your chance of surviving is slightly worse than 50 50. That plague is now starting to rage across Europe and it seems like there's nothing anyone in the world can do to stop it. When it hits England, it's going to take out at least half the adult population. It's going to have a devastating effect on the Plantagenet family and Edward's kingdom at large. It's the worst pandemic in all of human history. The Black Death. I'm Dan Jones and from Sony Music Entertainment. This is history Season 6 of A Dynasty to Die For Episode 7 Apocalypse now say you want to get your.
- [08:49]
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- [10:52]
Anyone who lived through the COVID 19 pandemic, which I'm assuming is like everyone listening right now, has seen firsthand how suddenly and dramatically the world can change when a pandemic hits. But even that was nothing compared to the horrors unleashed by the Black Death. The disease sweeps into Europe in 1347 and it's a catastrophic killer. 40, 50, sometimes 70% of any population it infects will die. For comparison, Covid had a worldwide mortality rate of around 1. When people are infected with the Black Death, they become feverish, sick, and black boils develop under their arms, and then, shockingly quickly, they die painful, horrible deaths. Imagine a disease as nasty and as deadly as Ebola, with an infection rate like the flu and three distinct ways for it to get into your body. Now you're kind of in the ballpark. This plague is not a great leveller. As with most disasters in human history, it tends to be more avoidable, if not survivable, if you're rich rather than poor. But being a king, queen, noble or bishop is no protection if the Black Death gets hold of you, as Edward III and his family are about to find out. First, though, we should Take a moment and understand what the Black Death is, where it comes from and how it manages to spread around virtually every realm in the west between 1347 and 1349. The disease is caused by bacteria, Yersinia pestis. Historians are now pretty sure that it first appears around the Tianshan Mountains between western China and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It probably originates in marmots, think a sort of chubby rodent with a squirrel's face on an otter's body. And it's spread by the fleas that live on marmots fur. But the disease proves able to jump between other flea carrying species, including gerbils, camels and critically black rats. Rats? Where humans go, rats go too. And at this time, humans are moving around a lot. Specifically, the disease is transported from Asia to Europe by the armies and traders of the Mongol Empire, which expands at ferocious speed. During the 13th century, the Mongols build the biggest unbroken land empire the world has ever seen. And chains of caravan trains travel from near Beijing to the Black Sea. Rats carrying plague infected fleas hitch a ride, moving the plague from east to west. In the mid-1340s, the plague gets into the shipping routes around Europe. It's most often said that the explosion happens in 1347 at a siege in the Black Sea port of Caffa, where a Mongol army has been attacking a town controlled by Genoese merchants. One way or another, either through refugees fleeing Caffa for Italy, or with grain shipments being sent after the siege is finished, plague rats get into Italy and from there the Black Death just erupts. And when it does, it's not pretty. Here's a chronicle of the day by a French friar. Those who fell ill lasted little more than two or three days, but died suddenly. Someone who was healthy one day could be dead and buried the next. Lumps suddenly appeared in their armpits or groin and their appearance was an infallible sign of death. Death and sickness came by imagination or by contact with others and subsequent contagion. For a healthy person who visited the sick hardly ever escaped death. Within a week of being bitten by a plague infected flea, the victim will get flu like symptoms, including fever and vomiting. When the bacteria gets into the lymph nodes, they swell up, turn black and occasionally burst. Strains of Yersinia pestis are still around today, but in most cases a doctor will give you a course of hardcore antibiotics, which, all being well, should sort you out. Of course, in the 14th century there are no antibiotics no one has ever heard of. Bacteria panic and scapegoating spread like wildfire. Here's our chronicler again. Men ascribed the pestilence to infected air or water because there was no famine or lack of food at this time, but on the contrary, a great abundance. The chronicler also reports that in many communities in Europe, rumours whipped around that wells had been poisoned by Jewish people, thousands of whom were murdered. But the chronicler quite rightly considers this insane. There must have been some other cause, such as, for instance, the will of God or corrupt humours and the badness of air and earth. A writer in Germany thinks the plague was caused by earthquakes releasing poisoned air into the atmosphere. An Oxford based astrologer blames a lunar eclipse in 1345 which began an hour after the moon rose. And at the same time the two planets were in conjunction in Aquarius, and Mars was with them in the same sign in the light of Jupiter. On this week's subscriber episode of this Is History Plus, I'll be explaining why people also blamed the Black Death on cross dressing, hot pants and sex parties. For now, all I'll say is that crazed explanations are a central part of the horrifying tragedy of the Black Death. People knew that they were living through something truly terrible, but at the same time they had no idea at all what they were really dealing with. Which brings us back to Bordeaux in the summer of 1348, with a fleet of English ships casually disembarking their crews and cargo, despite warnings from the city authorities that they should get out before it's too late. It's easy to ask, with hindsight, what the hell were they thinking? But in a sense, the question is pointless. They bring Princess Joan off the ship and move into lodgings in Bordeaux, at which point it very quickly becomes obvious what the mayor was talking about. They try to flee the city with Joan, but by this point it's too late. The sources aren't entirely clear about dates, but what is certain is that no marriage takes place between Princess Joan of England and Pedro of Castile. We don't need a chronicler to tell us why. We have the information direct from the hand of Edward iii himself. On 15 September 1348, he sends a letter to Pedro's father, King Alfonso XI of Castile. We're sure that your magnificence knows how. After much complicated negotiation about the intended marriage of the renowned Prince Pedro, your eldest son, and our most beloved daughter Joan, which was designed to nurture perpetual peace and create an indissoluble union between our royal houses, we sent our said daughter to Bordeaux en route for your territories in Spain. But see with what intense bitterness of heart we have to tell you this destructive death who seizes young and old alike, sparing no one and reducing rich and poor to the same level, has lamentably snatched from both of us our dearest daughter, whom we loved best of all, as her virtues demanded. Under the circumstances, this is an incredibly dignified letter, which must have been agonizing to Edward to dictate. But it's also a letter written at a time when almost every person in Edward's realm would have known a version of the devastation he's feeling. For by the autumn of 1348, the Black Death has jumped the English Channel, arriving via the ports of the south coast and is cutting a merciless, relentless path through the kingdom. Edward III has smashed all comers in warfare. In Yersinia Pestis has he finally met his.
- [20:19]
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Keep it that way.
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- [21:29]
In September 1349, a clerk working for the Archbishop of Canterbury steps out of his Master's London office to take a break from from his work. He's met by an astonishing sight. Parading through the streets are dozens of solemn faced foreigners. From their accents they sound like Flemings. Every one of them is barefoot and stripped half naked, wearing only a linen cloth wrapped around their waist like a gym towel. They have hoods over their heads painted with red crosses and in their hands they all carry a whip with three tails, each tail tied in a knot with a nail sticking out of it. As these strange folk process solemnly along, they chant hymns and in time, each of them lashes the person walking in front of him on the back with his sharp, wicked scourge. Every so often, they lie down in the road and take turns to thrash each other even harder. Then they get up, blood streaming down their backs, put their day clothes back on and go home. The clerk marvels at the sight, but he knows it's not a one off. These guys are known as flagellants, and although they're officially frowned upon by the Church, they've been seen in cities all over Europe since the plague began. Their theory is that by doing such horrible, painful penance, they might be able to convince God to stop punishing the human race with the Black Death. As it happens, by the time the flagellants get to London, the plague is slowing down. So maybe they were onto something. Or then again, maybe they weren't. Either way, the effect the plague has had on the British Isles has been devastating. In the first place, there's the sheer scale of the loss of life. Local court records from the time make for bleak reading. Men and women dead, leaving lands, properties and animals to their relatives, who often don't come to claim them because they too are dead. In London and other cities, the burial grounds fill up and new lands have to be turned into graveyards. One of Edward III's great friends, Sir Walter Manny, buys 13 acres of land outside London's city walls, and tens of thousands of citizens are rolled into pits there. In the 16th century, one writer sees a stone cross standing there as a death memorial. The inscription reads, in the year of our Lord 13:49, during the reign of the great pestilence, this cemetery was consecrated in which there were buried more than 50,000 bodies, upon whose souls God have mercy. Amen. So many priests die that there aren't enough to hear confessions and administer the last rites. Edward loses two archbishops of Canterbury to the plague within three months. The Church has to make special rules so that dying people can make confession to any layperson, even to a woman if a man is not available. You know things are bad when a plague has the power to rock the medieval patriarchy. Edward doesn't lose any more of his children to the Black Death, but he has plenty to concern him all the same. It's not just the fact that his kingdom resembles a scene from a zombie apocalypse movie. Half the population dying is a serious political challenge to any state in any age. England in 1349 is no different. The most immediate problem is that there aren't enough workers to go round. It's not just priests. England is basically a farming economy, and it relies on human hands to plant and harvest crops, to rear and shear and slaughter animals. Buildings are Built and repaired by people. If your roof blows off your house, you need a roofer to put it back on. If the wheel falls off your cart, you need a wheelwright. And so on. Now, anyone who took the very first lesson in economics class will be thinking that this sounds like a good time for the workers who don't die in the Black Death. The plague has created a shortage in labour supply. So what should happen? Wages should go up. What's more, since half the people are dead, the plague should also mean that there's more land to go around. That means rents should go down. So if you're John the Not Dead farmhand, you should stand to make more money for working and pay less money in rent. Happy days. Well, no, because if you're Edward the Not Dead King, you know that you and your noble pals are facing a big financial crisis. The cost of managing your estates is going to skyrocket and your income from rents is going to fall off a cliff. The moralising writer John Gower sums this viewpoint up. He writes that English workers post plague are sluggish, they're scarce and they're grasping for the very little they do. They demand the highest pay. Edward has to do something. And what he does is to issue a set of laws called the Ordinance of Labourers. Under the Ordinance, it becomes illegal to take or pay more wages than were on offer before the pandemic. It becomes compulsory for everyone under 60 to work. It becomes illegal for employers to overhire staff. It's forbidden by law to give handouts to beggars. The government introduces price controls on food. To say this is heavy handed market interference would be putting it lightly. And it isn't exactly legislation drafted with the plight of the common man in mind. But whatever you want to say about Edward iii, this guy never claimed to be Bernie Sanders. His whole royal project, Black Death or no Black Death, has been about looking after the interests of the aristocracy so that he can rally them around his bigger project of showing Philip VI who's boss and maybe one day putting the crown of France on his own head. And with that in mind, in the middle of the plague, Edward comes up with an idea even more bold and considerably more brilliant than the Ordinance of Labourers. It's an idea that will appeal to the soul as well as the pocket of the greatest knights and nobles in England. An idea that will seek to turn Edward into a new King Arthur and his royal court at Windsor into a new Camelot. It's an idea that still lies at the heart of the British monarchy. To this day, and I'll be telling you all about it. Next time on this is History.
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Sa.