Part 19 (1/2)

Empire-of-the-Month Club

As in the Old World, the Americas saw an ebb and flow of dominant cultures, although there were fewer of them competing simultaneously.

In South America, the Chimu used advanced irrigation techniques to build an impressive empire along the coast of Peru. By the end of the fourteenth century, however, they would give way to an even more impressive group known as the Inca.

In Mexico, the Toltec nation built an imposing capital at Tula, near the Central Valley of Mexico. The Toltec empire was based on stealing or extorting loot from neighboring groups, which is not a particularly sound basis for an economy. By the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Toltecs were out of business and being replaced by the new kids on the block, the Aztecs. The Aztecs parlayed their success as mercenaries for other groups into a formidable society that came to dominate Central Mexico until the coming of the Europeans in the early sixteenth century.

GOODBYE, CAHOKIA.

The Mississippians' ability to grow maize let them settle down in a city at the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers, on a fertile floodplain called the American Bottom. Called Cahokia, the city probably covered about six square miles and had a population of as much as thirty thousand people at its peak.It featured a fifty-acre earthen plaza, surrounded by a wooden stockade with a series of watchtowers. More than one hundred earthen mounds dotted the city, on top of which were various domiciles, religious centers, and astronomical sites. The largest, later dubbed Monk's Mound, was a thousand feet long, seven hundred to eight hundred feet wide, and a hundred feet high.Cahokia's trading routes extended as far west as the Rockies and as far east as the Atlantic. At its peak, the city was probably the largest in North America (until it was surpa.s.sed by Philadelphia in about 1800).By 1300, however, Cahokia was abandoned. Scholars are not completely certain why, although theories range from political instability to the depletion and/or pollution of the area's natural resources such as woodlands and waterways.

In North America, a group known as the Mississippians took advantage of fertile lands and good location in what is now the American Midwest to become proficient farmers and traders. They did well until the mid-thirteenth century, when environmental stresses caused by rapacious land practices may have caught up with them and ended their run.

In the less hospitable Southwest, a group known as the Anasazi built incredible edifices into the sides of cliffs. They also adopted clever methods of farming and irrigation that enabled them to support populations in excess of what the local environment could ultimately support. As in the case of the Mississippians, the local environment won, and the Anasazi pretty much faded away in the 1200s.

WEAVING A TALE.

The history of William the Conqueror's fight for the crown was recorded in a novel way: a 230-foot-long, 20-inch-wide embroidery called the Bayeux Tapestry. The tapestry is made up of hundreds of scenes joined in a linear sequence, and is believed to have been commissioned by William's half-brother. And since the winners generally write history, the account is heavily slanted toward William's version of things.

Royalty Watch He Came, He Saw, He Conquered England When Edward the Confessor cashed in his chips in January 1066, after twenty-three years as king of England, he left no obvious heir. But that didn't mean there were no candidates for the post. In fact, there were at least three: Harold G.o.dwinson, Edward's brother-in-law; William, Duke of Normandy; and Harald Hardrada, the king of Norway.The trio of claimants quickly embraced the generally accepted eleventh-century way of settling such disputes: they went to war. Hardrada and Harold slugged it out first, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, near York. Harold won, slaughtered most of Hardrada's troops, and paused to catch his breath.As it turned out, he didn't have long to rest. A couple of days after the fight at Stamford Bridge, William, Duke of Normandy, landed his army on the southern end of England, near the town of Hastings. Harold rushed south, and on October 14, the two armies collided.It was a tough all-day battle, but in the end William's archers and cavalry prevailed. Harold was killed, and William continued his trek toward London. He was crowned king of England on Christmas Day in 1066.The Queen Machine She was one of the most powerful women of the twelfth century-and she lasted about four fifths of it. Eleanor of Aquitaine was the queen consort of France, and then of England. Three of her sons (Richard I, John Lackland, and Henry III) became kings of England, and two daughters married and/or bore kings and emperors. She went on a Crusade, and helped encourage good manners and troubadours.Plus, she lived to be eighty-two, which was pretty remarkable for anyone in the twelfth century, let alone someone as busy as she was.Eleanor was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, a large and independent duchy in southwestern France. This made her a very eligible fifteen-year-old when her dad died and left her as his heir. And that explains why she was married to the French king Louis VII in 1137.Four years later, Eleanor volunteered about a thousand of her va.s.sals to fight in the Second Crusade-and threw in herself and three hundred women to go along. Although the women didn't do any actual fighting, Eleanor did get to Constantinople and Antioch, and discomfited the Crusade's male leaders enough to get women officially banned from future efforts. (In fact, there were rumors that Eleanor had a dalliance in Antioch with her uncle Raymond, who was a prince there.)In 1152, Eleanor and Louis wheedled their way out of their loveless marriage by persuading Church officials to dissolve it on the grounds they were distant cousins. But Eleanor wasn't alone long. Less than two months later, she married King Henry II of England, giving the two of them control of all of England and much of France.How could anything fortunate, I ask, emerge from their copulations?-Twelfth-century writer Gerald of Wales, raising a rhetorical query about the union of Eleanor and Henry II, since she was rumored to have slept with her father-in-law, too When not having kids by Henry (eight of them), Eleanor pretty much ran her own kingdom in Aquitaine. Her court at Poitiers became a haven for troubadours and poets and a fountain of etiquette and courtly manners.But when her sons rebelled against Henry and she sided with her progeny, Henry had her placed under house arrest-for sixteen years. In 1189, Henry died; Richard ascended to the throne, freed his mother, and put her in charge of England while he went off on the Third Crusade.When Richard was held for ransom, Eleanor raised the dough. And when Richard died, she helped her second son, John, hold on to the throne. She also arranged the marriage of a granddaughter to a grandson of her first husband, Louis VII. All in all, she was one busy mom until she retired to an abbey in France, where she died in 1204 and was buried. And even at that, she outlived all but two of her children.

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WHO'S UP, WHO'S DOWN Chimu: UP UP One of the more successful of the pre-Colombian societies in South America, the Chimu often go unmentioned in history books because they had already fallen when Europeans got to the New World. But for most of the Middle Ages, they were definitely up.An agricultural society, the Chimu rose to prominence in the Moche River Valley in Northern Peru. Their major a.s.set in putting together an empire was a knack for irrigation in an area that was and basically still is a desert. The Chimu linked rivers and built ca.n.a.ls as long as fifty miles. Their water system allowed them to grow enough food to sustain a sizeable population. The Chimu capital city was Chan Chan, on the northern coast of Peru. At its peak, the forty-square-mile city had a population of more than fifty thousand, ensconced behind adobe and brick walls that were as much as ten feet thick at their base and thirty feet high.While the social structure was strictly divided along cla.s.s lines, the Chimu did extend equal legal rights to females and treated their elderly fairly well: If you could make it to the age of sixty, you didn't have to pay taxes or serve in the military. Of course, if you committed a crime, a common punishment was to be burned alive.Beginning in about 1000 CE, the Chimu began expanding their sphere of influence up and down the Peruvian coast. By 1400, they controlled as much as six hundred miles of the coast. But their biggest a.s.set-their irrigation system-was also a liability when the rival Inca nation attacked the Chimu in the 1460s. The Inca disrupted the water supply enough to bring down the Chimu, and inherit their mantle as the area's top dog.Mongols: UP AND ALL OVER UP AND ALL OVER If the Mongols had a motto, it might have been ”Have weapon, will travel.”They started out as a nomadic group of, well, nomads in the eastern part of Central Asia. The Mongols were loyal almost exclusively to their close relatives, so it was difficult for them to organize themselves on a larger scale, despite their prowess in battle.

The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.-Genghis Khan

That all began to change in the last half of the twelfth century, with the rise of a man named Temujin. Pushed around and poor as a youth, Temujin rose to power by combining extraordinary courage in battle with an uncanny knack for Mongol-style diplomacy. This consisted mainly of forming alliances and then betraying them if something better came along.

A ”DIVINE WIND” TODAY KEEPS MONGOLS AWAY Although the Mongols had conquered a big piece of Europe and Asia by 1274, they still had a yen for more, and turned their attention to the island nation of j.a.pan.In the fall of 1274, Kublai Khan packed up a force of about forty thousand Mongol and Korean fighters on nine hundred s.h.i.+ps to invade. After initial success, a fierce storm blew in and destroyed part of the fleet. Demoralized, Kublai's forces withdrew.They tried again in 1281. This time Kublai put together two armies totaling 140,000 men in more than 4,000 s.h.i.+ps. Once again, the invaders did pretty well against the outnumbered defenders. And once again, a major typhoon blew in, smas.h.i.+ng much of the Mongol-Korean fleet over a two-day period. The storm forced the biggest part of the invading army to beat a hasty retreat, and the part that was left behind was either slaughtered or captured.Although Kublai wanted to try yet again, he died before he could get a third invasion off the ground, and the j.a.panese would remain unconquered until the middle of the twentieth century, at the end of World War II.And the typhoons that proved so valuable in fighting off Kublai's armies? They were called kamikazes (”divine winds”), and they helped convince the j.a.panese people that they were protected by the G.o.ds.

By 1206, Temujin had united the Mongol tribes into a single confederation, and they had designated him ”Genghis Kahn,” or ”universal ruler.” Genghis quickly put together a relatively small but lightning-quick army of superbly skilled mounted archers who could travel up to sixty miles a day to surprise opposing armies.The Mongols had a pretty simple game plan: They were magnanimous to those who surrendered without a fight, and slaughtered those who chose battle. Under Genghis, they conquered Central Asia, Northern China, and Persia.Nor did they slow down after his death in 1227, adding most of modern-day Russia and the rest of China. The Mongol Empire got so big, in fact, that it was divided into four regional empires, each with its own khan.The Mongols weren't great administrators, but they were smart enough to absorb bright bureaucrats from the people they conquered. They were also savvy enough to do the same with skilled artisans, even transferring them around to various parts of the empire where they were needed. They were relatively tolerant when it came to religion, and encouraged trade.By the mid-fourteenth century, the Mongol empire had pretty much run out of steam, plagued by a lack of great leaders-and by the plague. The empire's last big gasp came in the form of a nomadic Turk named Tamerlane, who molded himself after the great Genghis. In the last half of the century, Tamerlane's armies conquered much of Afghanistan, Persia, and India. He died in 1405, and not long afterward, the Mongol Empire (actually empires) collapsed for good.Crusaders: DOWN DOWN The eighteenth-century Scottish historian-philosopher David Hume called the Crusades ”the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.” That's a tough statement to argue with.From a medieval Christian's perspective, Pope Urban II launched the Crusades in 1095 with a n.o.ble cause: to liberate the Holy Land from pilgrim-hara.s.sing Seljuk Turks.European Christians responded with enthusiasm, and the First Crusaders actually succeeded in taking Jerusalem in 1099. They celebrated with a wholesale slaughter of the city's occupants. While most of the Crusaders went home, the ones who stayed behind built ma.s.sive castles and set up mini-kingdoms around the area.In 1146, several European leaders launched the Second Crusade, ostensibly designed to reverse the losses of several Christian cities in the Holy Land. The Crusaders burned and looted their way to Constantinople, stumbled across Asia Minor, and then made it to Damascus, where they were routed and lost most of their army.

FOUR GOOFY THINGS ABOUT THE CRUSADES.

1. Peter the Hermit. A French priest who got hara.s.sed when he tried to visit the Holy Land and helped recruit volunteers for ”the Peasants' Crusade,” part of the First Crusade in 1096, Peter the Hermit lost 25 percent of his force on the way. Most of the rest were killed or captured by the Turks while he was elsewhere. Peter tried to desert when he and his Crusaders were caught in a Muslim siege of the city of Antioch, then talked the besieged Crusaders into attacking the besiegers, who promptly slaughtered them. After the Crusaders took Jerusalem, Peter went back to Europe. A French priest who got hara.s.sed when he tried to visit the Holy Land and helped recruit volunteers for ”the Peasants' Crusade,” part of the First Crusade in 1096, Peter the Hermit lost 25 percent of his force on the way. Most of the rest were killed or captured by the Turks while he was elsewhere. Peter tried to desert when he and his Crusaders were caught in a Muslim siege of the city of Antioch, then talked the besieged Crusaders into attacking the besiegers, who promptly slaughtered them. After the Crusaders took Jerusalem, Peter went back to Europe.

2. Walter the Penniless. A French knight who wasn't actually broke, Walter got his name when later historians mistook his French surname Sans Avoir, as ”without means” instead of as a reference to the Avoir Valley. Anyway, he coled the Peasants' Crusade with Peter, and was in charge when most of the Crusaders got wiped out. That included Walter. A French knight who wasn't actually broke, Walter got his name when later historians mistook his French surname Sans Avoir, as ”without means” instead of as a reference to the Avoir Valley. Anyway, he coled the Peasants' Crusade with Peter, and was in charge when most of the Crusaders got wiped out. That included Walter.

3. The Goose Crusade. According to Jewish historians, a fanatical group of German peasants decided in 1096 that a goose had been ”blessed by G.o.d.” They followed it around for a while, and along the way attacked and killed any Jews they encountered. According to Jewish historians, a fanatical group of German peasants decided in 1096 that a goose had been ”blessed by G.o.d.” They followed it around for a while, and along the way attacked and killed any Jews they encountered.

4. The Children's Crusade. Sometime in 1212, large groups of poor people wandered around France and Germany, and the word got around that thousands of children were marching to the Holy Land. It was probably more aimless shuffling of homeless people than a crusade, but a bunch of kids apparently did show up in Ma.r.s.eille to seek pa.s.sage to the Holy Land. Most of then ended up being sold into slavery in North Africa. Sometime in 1212, large groups of poor people wandered around France and Germany, and the word got around that thousands of children were marching to the Holy Land. It was probably more aimless shuffling of homeless people than a crusade, but a bunch of kids apparently did show up in Ma.r.s.eille to seek pa.s.sage to the Holy Land. Most of then ended up being sold into slavery in North Africa.

In 1187, the Muslim armies under Saladin retook Jerusalem, which triggered the Third Crusade. This one was notable for pitting Saladin against the English king Richard I, the Lionhearted. The battle basically ended in a draw, with the Muslims agreeing to reopen the Holy City to Christian pilgrims.Not content with a record of 1-1-1, Pope Innocent III launched a Fourth Crusade in 1198. It was a disgraceful event, marked mainly by the ma.s.s slaughter of thousands of innocent Jews along the way and the sacking of Constantinople, which wasn't even Muslim but, rather, Eastern Orthodox.A few more halfhearted or imbecilic tries were made, but by 1291, the last Christian stronghold in the region had fallen, and the Great Crusades, which had cost hundreds of thousands of lives, finally fizzled out.London: MOVING ON UP MOVING ON UP All world-cla.s.s cities have a setback or two from time to time. One of London's came in 13481349, when the Black Death may have taken more than 25 percent of the city's population.

WONDER FOOD.

White bread was the most desirable of medieval breads because it was the most finely ground and the least likely to have dirt and other stuff in it.

But the city made a lot of progress during the Middle Ages. First, William the Conqueror made it the capital for Norman kings and built the first version of the Tower of London. Between 1050 and 1300, quays were built along the Thames River to expand the waterfront and increase the city's importance as a trading center. In 1176, construction of a stone bridge over the Thames began and was completed just thirty years later. An impressive building called Westminster Abbey was rebuilt between 1245 and 1269.In 1085, the city had a population of about ten thousand. By 1200, it was up to thirty thousand and just one hundred years later it was up to eighty thousand. The city grew up in two parts: Westminster, where the government stuff was, and the City of London, which was the center of commerce. The parts gradually grew together.Naturally there were a few problems besides the plague. In 1087, a major fire burned down a big part of the city. In its aftermath, some of the wooden buildings were replaced by stone walls and tile roofs instead of straw. But the city's narrow, twisting streets and crowded conditions made fire a constant threat. And there was something of an air pollution problem because of the burning of a whole bunch of low-grade coal.But business opportunities abounded, fueled by the one hundred trade guilds that were important political contributors, and which therefore had a lot of clout when it came to running the city. And as of the twenty-first century, the city is still one of the world's greatest.Church-State Relations: DOWN DOWN One of the most dominant aspects of medieval politics, particularly in Europe, was the touchy relations.h.i.+p between Church and State. As political systems and nation-states became more sophisticated, their rulers became more openly secular in their political dealings.This put a strain on what was still a symbiotic partners.h.i.+p between the secular politicians and the Church: The lay rulers needed the Church's imprimatur to legitimize their activities, and the Church needed the lay rulers' military resources to back their ecclesiastical activities.A cla.s.sic clash of the two interests came in the late eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII told Henry IV, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (which was basically Germany, Austria, and part of northern Italy), to stop appointing bishops and other Church officials on his own. These appointments were an important tool for Henry and other rulers, since they helped them ensure local religious leaders' support when they wanted to do stuff.Henry retaliated by getting his bishops to call for the pope to step down; and Gregory retaliated by excommunicating Henry in 1077. When subordinate princes threatened to revolt, the emperor was forced to apologize to the pontiff-by kneeling in the snow outside the castle where the pope was staying and kissing the papal toe.That's pretty humiliating for an emperor, and Henry eventually withdrew his apology-and was excommunicated again. This time, he marched on Rome and seized the city; Gregory hired a Norman leader named Robert ”the Resourceful” Guiscard to drive Henry out, and Guiscard and an army comprised mainly of Saracen fighters did so.Then Guiscard's forces spent a few days sacking the city before escorting the pope back in.The dispute over Church appointments lasted beyond the lives of both Gregory and Henry. In 1122, an agreement called the Concordat of Worms (yes, really) basically called it a draw, and the issue was allowed to die.But the uneasy relations.h.i.+p between Church and State continued to be, well, uneasy. By the end of the thirteenth century, a council of princes, and not the pope, was choosing the emperor. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Church itself had become so divided that in 1378 two popes were elected, one in France and one in Rome. Not until 1417 did the two factions reunite.

Let another a.s.sume the seat of St. Peter, one who will not practice violence under the cloak of religion, but will teach St. Peter's wholesome doctrine. I, Henry, king by the grace of G.o.d, together with all our bishops, say unto thee ”come down, come down, to be d.a.m.ned throughout all eternity!”-Emperor Henry IV, in a 1077 letter to Pope Gregory VII, after Gregory ordered the emperor to stop appointing church officials on his own