Imagine France at the end of the eleventh century. In the castle of a powerful feudal lord, three sons are growing up. One day, the eldest will inherit the ...

In popular culture, the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem is often reduced to a single disaster—the Battle of Hattin in 1187. Saladin crushed the Crusader army, ...

On May 18, 1291, the banners of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, and the great cities of Europe still flew above the ...

On Christmas Day in the year 800, an event took place in Rome that many contemporaries saw as the rebirth of antiquity. Inside St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo ...

Spring, 1525. Germany is collapsing into chaos. Across the roads of Franconia march thousands of armed peasants — ragged, hungry, furious men carrying ...

In the second half of the fifteenth century, there existed a state that many contemporaries believed would become the future center of Europe. It was wealthier ...

The Middle Ages were an era in which security was worth more than gold. Kingdoms collapsed within a single generation, kings died in civil wars, nomadic armies ...

A World Where Even the Gods Were Doomed When modern people talk about the end of the world, they almost always mean a catastrophe that can still be prevented. ...

A War That Began With Knights — and Ended With Cannons The Hundred Years’ War is usually remembered as the age of knights, longbows, and cavalry charges. ...

When Europe Sent Children Toward Jerusalem The Middle Ages produced many strange and terrifying stories. Religious wars, plague, famine, fanaticism — Europe ...

A World on the Edge of Change The early 8th century was a time when the balance of power in Western Europe had not yet been decided. The Frankish realms ...

Contents: History is often shaped not only by what happened, but by what did not. The Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe in the 13th century became one ...