Daniel’s Reviews > A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century > Status Update

Hard to tell Tuchman’s bias, but she says a flaw in the new Crusade against Turks was nobles and the Church’s desire for vainglory. They were extravagant to an extreme fault and waste of money which is undeniable. And they barely cared about the suffering Orthodox byzantine empire. They went to help Hungary.

Late century Turk threats on Constantinople and Hungary

Richard II impulsive abuses actions against his own nobles led to his own demise. Also he may have been neurotic by the issues of his time. The peasants revolt, the lollard heresies, lawless bandits throughout his kingdom.

Charles VI’s wife Isabaeu of Bavaria took full advantage of his madness and essentially lived as extravagantly and decadently as possible. Looting Charles’s estates and putting them into her own german family’s hands, being a glutton and dying obese. She favored the crown of Henry V over her own son for France. Insane decadence and abuse of government

When King Charles of France started becoming mad for the last 20 years of his life starting in the 1390s, it led to all sorts of investigations and interest in remedies, which also gave more public attention on sorcery and the occult and eventually condemning of witches. One thing leads to another.

European powers seek peace between England and France in the late century but England absolutely refuses to give up the Port of Calais and they complain that the French use over flowery and complex language, whereas the English are more direct and to the point in their speech, even though both parties technically are speaking French since the English nobles are of Norman stock.