Download The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century AudioBook Free
How a seven-year cycle of rain, cool, disease, and warfare created the most detrimental famine in Western history. IN-MAY 1315 it began to rain. It didn't stop anywhere in north European countries until August. Next emerged the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two different animal epidemics killed practically 80 percent of northern Europe's livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all staying farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would state six million lives - one eighth of Europe's total human population. William Rosen pulls on several disciplines, from armed forces history to feudal legislation to agricultural economics and climatology, to trace the succession of traumas that brought on the fantastic Famine. With dramatic appearances by Scotland's William Wallace, the luckless Edward II, and his treacherous Queen Isabella, history's best noted bout of catastrophic climate change comes alive, with powerful implications for future calamities.
