John Cairns’s Reviews > The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History > Status Update

Buchenbach was saying prayers for Barbarossa after the 1st World War. 'Aspects of daily and national life are ...beyond the ...control of governments ...vulnerable to global economic, popular, technological and environmental forces,' not to mention diseases. The glossary explains things but not what 'aulic' means. Richard I had been conspiring with the emperor's enemies the useful chronology finishes that story.

75-100,000 peasants were killed in their war, 10 - 15% of all adult males in the worst areas. William III was blinded and castrated, making him unfit for kingship. Henry VI had prisoners sawn in half. Clemency no longer worked. The French abolished feudalism 1789 but couldn't define what it was till 1838. If Napoleon hadn't ended a 1,000 year old empire, the effect of capitalism and industrialisation would have.

Taxes relying 'on registers assigning assessments only loosely correlated with actual wealth' applies to our council tax, not revised since begun so that the rich of Richmond with their big houses sitting on their fat capital assets pay by now a relatively paltry amount. (I had our band downgraded to B from C for our block, one of the many good things I've done for my neighbours - and me.)

'The Carolingians ...preferred travelling by river .., given the lack of all-weather road' evoked an erroneous bird's eye view of their trundling by a river. Frankish custom was boys could not be kings. Manly Conrad got his way by falling to the floor crying. That's how a woman got rid of Dominic Cummings! (No necessarily to the floor.) Richard's ransom paid for the invasion of Sicily. Wenzel was an alcoholic.

Goethe sold 2-3,000 each book. Advice booklet for peasants 1,000,000. Johann Jakob Moser after writing about a hundred volumes on the constitution could only conclude Germany was governed the German way.

The Mongol invasions, a plague, wiped out a third of Hungarians. A shipwrecked Richard, king as kitchen hand, was caught handling a roast chicken. John would've paid to keep him in prison. Ideas on language were constructed later for nationalistic purposes, like Erse reconstituted synthetically for Ireland or Hebrew for Israel. The most parasitic Estate, the clergy, was senior, from delusive faith they did good.

'Once Philip annexed Portugal... Spain held the other European world empire. An empire is ..defined by the dominance of a core over more peripheral territory. This relationship ...explain(s) collapse through ...diminishing returns, ...further conquests bringing additional administrative and security costs that outweigh gains in resources.' Not so for the Holy Roman Empire, however, which was coreless.

'By throwing three ...officials from a window...' a group of aristocrats 'hoped to force ...the majority to take' their side against the emperor. I'd say the defenestrated of Prague walked away except I'm not assured they walked; they survived, I was glad to learn.

When I used 'their' singularly, Mum corrected me (qv 'the book', www.johnbrucecairns.wordpress.com) 'Christendom ...a realm of peace,' just like Islam, 'where killing... murder, and an external world where exterminating infidels glorified god and Xians dying in combat became martyrs directly entering heaven.' Luther failed to raise scripture to the sole basis of 'truth'. Liars insist their lies are true.

'Stephen VI ...was obliged ...to disinter (pope) Formosus' corpse... and put it on trial. Duly condemned... (it was) thrown into the Tiber. Stephen himself... was strangled. Romanus... ruled four months... Theodore ...twenty days... long enough to overturn the verdict and rebury... fragmenting Formosus.' It was all go in the ninth century papacy, 'caught between (9th century) Roman clans and regional strongmen.'