Geography - Government - History - Economics
Anthropology - Climatology - Psychology - Religion - Military Science
CHURCH, KINGS & PRINTING PRESS
800 AD - The attempt to unify Europe is reborn in the Holy Roman Empire (HRE). It will last 1000 years until Napoleon in the 1800's. In reality the HRE is unified greater Germany. The founding leader of the HRE is Charlemagne, also founder of the Carolingian Dynasty. Its (the HRE)fortunes wax and wane during the coming millenia. It is from the HRE we get the concept of electors. The electors are a group of German, and later British princes and Kings (King George III was one) who elect the Holy Roman Emperor. When Hitler refers to a 3rd Reich, he counts the Roman Empire as #1, and the HRE as #2. As countries and empires are shifting quite rapidly the most stable institution at this point is the Catholic Church and the Pope. All kings within a 1000 miles must be approved by him, even the Holy Roman Emperor.
Charlemagne appoints a descendant of Caeser from Tuscany as a count, named Boniface, he will be the progenitor of the Wettin Dynasty.
European religion is now being challenged by a new one arising from the Arabian desert, a prophet named Mohamed starts a religion called Islam. They worship the Jewish God Jehovah (Yaweh), like the Catholics do, but they do not believe Jesus is God, they think he is just a prophet. So did 60% of the representatives at Nicaea 475 years ago when they chose Jesus as their new God. It is this point which drives warfare for the next 1200 years. Islam will grow larger than Catholicism, it will split in a west, central, and eastern component. The split will concern the succession to Mohamed. In the middle is the Persian Empire, those who want a direct line of succession, on either side, the coastal components, the Ottoman Empire in the West, and SE Asia/Indonesia in the east will be more liberal and want to vote for the successor to Mohamed. This is known as the Sunni/Shiite schism.
886 AD - Siege of Paris - Viking ships sail from the Atlantic Ocean, up the River Seine to Paris, they use catapults and shoot balls of flaming tar into the city winning a ransom. The Vikings retreat to England and beyond. The French flee eastward to Germany. This cements the image of power flowing from the Franks to a more Germanic and Scandinavian flavor.
1000 AD - A concurrent thesis we will explore are: periods of historical development. They tend to run in 500 year cycles. Why is this? It is built into our being, we have two legs, we have two arms, we have five digits, as we get smarter and multiply we start thinking in tens, fifties, hundreds and five hundreds. Smart scientists count even higher.
A quick look at 500 year cycles
1500 BC - Egypt rules
1000 BC - Persia Rules
500 BC - Greece Rules
0 - Roman Empire and Christ
500 AD - Roman empire dies, Catholic church ascendant, dark ages start
1000 AD - Popes going down, kings going up, Islam going up, Catholics going down
1500 AD - New World, New religion, enlightenment, reason, the whispers of industry, colonialism
2000 AD - flight, world war, nuclear, space and cyber
But, we digress, back to 1000 AD, Religion (the Catholic Church) vs Monarchy is the central theme of this time. The passing of the millennium portended a second coming of the Catholic savior which did not materialize. The power is slipping from the church. Meanwhile Islam is pushing in from the east, they have taken Jerusalem. The Pope, needing to get the people back to his side sets up the Crusades, a series of seven wars invading the middle east, to include a children's crusade when the adults had tired of the game. The kids got sold into slavery when they arrived in Jerusalem.
1066 AD - The Normans (French) cross the channel from France and conquer England (Battle of Hastings) from the indigenous peoples (Vikings, Scots, Irish, Danes). They had been fairly free to evolve on their own for 700 years since Roman power had waned. The invaders use a crossbow, a souped up version of the bow and arrow greatly increasing the projectiles range, accuracy and penetrating power. Originating in this period are knights jousting, that is, using extended spears, and horses, and armor, riding towards each other at full gallop. It was more a test of chivalry than combat.
1076 AD - a German king wins concessions from the Pope. The Pope no longer gets to pick Kings. But he gets to kiss them and touch them with his magic wand. Another German king Friedrich Barbarossa (Red beard) a highly loved transcendent leader of the time goes on a Crusade and dies, he becomes a hero/legend for the Germans. Until now the leadership of the HRE was Frankish, it began to shift to a more Germanic scent at this time. Other recent German Kings are Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great.
1200's - The Vikings have discovered the New World but fail to establish any sizable or lasting colony. The English win concessions from their new kings culminating in the Magna Carta, a model for the English Parliament, French Revolution and the US Constitution. With the introduction of the Magna Carta, power of the monarchy vs. a more representative style of politics has peaked. The final Crusade fails. Jerusalem falls to Islam, they will not relinquish it for over 700 years and WW1.
Islam is not the only threat to emerge from the east. It is during this period that the west gets its first exposure to the most impactful development in warfare up to this point, gunpowder. Gunpowder had been under development in China for 1000 years before the west began to use it. Yes, back in 300 AD when the Roman Empire could not even figure out how to fit a horse with a stirrup, the Chinese were using artillery (firecrackers hooked to a bushel of arrows).
A famous name you will recognize from this period is Marco Polo, he and his family had traveled via the Silk Road through Russia to the far east and traded with Ghengis and Kubla Khan of China, the founders of the Mongol Empire, aka the Golden Horde, which would become the largest empire in Earth's history. It is undoubtedly within the entourage connected with the Polos families travels that the recipe for gunpowder, and samples made it back to Europe.
The Golden Horde nearly conquered Europe reaching deep into her territory, nothing could match their gunpowder, use of massed cavalry and skilled archers. Only the death of the Khan back home 5,000 miles away turned the Horde back. The massive invasion and withdrawal also gave the races of Russia, Central Asia and far eastern Europe their darker and mildly oriental features. Until then much of this region had a fairer, blond flavor from the Vikings who had pushed down from the north.
By the time the Mongols were ready for another attempt, another product of the east/west interchange, the plague, was spreading fast. It sucked the energy out of the world for 200 years. The Mongol Invasion of Europe, if one count the 200 million deaths caused by the plague and Black Death is the most deadly conflict of all time. The plague did not originate in China, rather it was picked up at the midpoint of the journey, at Lake Baikal in central Russia. The disease spread both ways.
1300 AD - Having given up on reclaiming the holy land the church now focuses on issues of wealth. The Pope of the time, Boniface (same name as the Count from Tuscany appointed to be progenitor of the Wettin Dynasty) calls for a Jubilee, a redistribution of wealth, a freeing of slaves. It is a scam, the earliest bankers have infested the papacy. The church begins to amass great wealth. Monastic orders such as the Jesuits and Dominican Monks start. The DeMedici family begins to rise.
From this point forward we will refer to a "cabal" and "conspiracy." This conspiracy while not definitively overt in its conception and deployment does have many facets and subgroups within it that are fully aware of its existence, strategies and stated goals. It is that group of humanity which exploits mankind in the name of material wealth. It is not a God, an ideology, or a lover which drives this compulsion, it is the wealth itself, more importantly the fear and subservience this distorted and maximized wealth elicits.
High demand generates high profits. In highest demand is avoiding death. Thus professions which deal in weapons, medicines and heavenly intercession pay well. That is the basic structure of the cabal: a group of families, businesses and professions that conspire to encourage sickness and war and provide the tools to fight them.
1450 AD - The 100 Years War has come and gone. It was fought between England and France over who wold take the throne in France. France wins. England loses her possessions in France. The Plantagenet family is gaining prominence in England.
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Johann Gutenberg has developed the printing press in Germany. Before Gutenberg only TEN copies of the Bible existed that were not in Latin. Knowledge begins to spread rapidly. Closely guarded concepts such as algebra, geometry, a new world across the ocean, that other worlds hang up high in the sky, that we are not the center of the universe, that we can actually read the Bible for ourselves, radical concepts to be sure, begin to radiate.
New advances in sailing such as the shape of the craft itself, and the deployment of the sail, allow for longer and faster trips, with, and against the wind. Fastening cannons to the deck allow the projection of power from ship to shore. The Portuguese explorer Prince Henry the Navigator becomes the first to round Africa and reach India from Europe. Remember, one could not reach the Indian Ocean from the Mediterranean because the Suez Canal had not been dug yet. You had to go the long way and no one had done it in 2000 years, at least, if ever.
The Habsburg Dynasty is beginning to mix (with the help of Jakob Fugger) with European royalty and will eventually sit on the Spanish, Austria-Hungary and Mexican thrones. They (the Habsburgs) are descended from a German family named RotBad (Red Bath/town). Lowenbrau Brewing of Munich Germany is 100 years old.
1492 AD - A group of three Spanish ships (Queen Isabella liked Christo Columbo) reaches the Caribbean Islands setting off a deluge of exploration of the Americas by the Italians and Spanish. For the majority of European history, exploration had been heading east, now it headed west. Mexico and South America is explored in depth before North America. The near monopoly Spain holds on a fresh new supply of silver and gold makes it ascendant at this time. Remember that history runs in 500 year cycles, they knew it even then, and the anticipation grew with the year 1500 on the way.
Earlier we mentioned how climate has affected the progress of history and we mentioned wind. Wind kept the Old World from discovering the New World. North of the Equator, due to what is know as the Coriolis effect, wind tends to blow from the SW to NE. Thus, ships leaving Europe heading west got blown back toward England and Scandinavia. Ships leaving China and Japan also were blown NE and ended up in Alaska or Canada (the first Indians). South of the Equator the opposite hold true, wind blow from the NE to the SW, and factor in also the southern hemisphere holds little land, ships leaving Africa got blown back, or into the Southern Atlantic and down to the Antarctic. Ships leaving in Asia, south of the Equator got blown back, and down into the Antarctic. It seems that wind conspired to keep the bulk of humanity out of the Americas for a million years. The Ice Age enabled a few to get across from Siberia to Alaska. Climate matters.
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