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The Third Horseman

Audiobook

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, 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.


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Publisher: Blackstone Publishing Edition: Unabridged

OverDrive Listen audiobook

  • ISBN: 9781482988741
  • File size: 309599 KB
  • Release date: May 15, 2014
  • Duration: 10:44:59

MP3 audiobook

  • ISBN: 9781482988741
  • File size: 309657 KB
  • Release date: May 15, 2014
  • Duration: 10:44:56
  • Number of parts: 11

Formats

OverDrive Listen audiobook
MP3 audiobook

subjects

History Nonfiction

Languages

English

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, 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.


Expand title description text