The Third Horseman

Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century

By: William Rosen

Narrated by: William Hughes

How a seven-year cycle of rain, cold, disease, and warfare created the worst famine in European history.

In May 1315 it started to rain. It didn't stop anywhere in north Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 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 remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives - one eighth of Europe's total population.

William Rosen draws on a wide array of disciplines, from military history to feudal law to agricultural economics and climatology, to trace the succession of traumas that caused the Great Famine. With dramatic appearances by Scotland's William Wallace, the luckless Edward II, and his treacherous Queen Isabella, history's best documented episode of catastrophic climate change comes alive, with powerful implications for future calamities.

©2014 William Rosen (P)2014 Blackstone Audio

Interesting, mostly focused on England & Scotland

Interesting book, weaves the reign of Edward 1 and 2 of England together with the impact of climate change in the early 1300s.

A wonderful mystic like Book

What a lisent this book is. It covers how people in world adapted to the 400 year warming trend from 1000 AD. until 1400 AD.
Mostly how UK and Ireland behaved.

should be titled "The Scottish Wars."

the book is a fair accounting of the 13th century but concentrates more on the Scottish Wars rather than on climate change and famine. we narrated, a good editor could have arranged the chapters to marry the scientific aspects of climate change with the history of the kings of England and Scotland.

One of my favorite listens

This book, although written about the effects of weather and drought on countries and history was SO WELL WRITTEN that it increased my understanding of the kings and monarchs in the time period and history in general. I will listen again!

A litany of gruesome ways to die

I enjoyed the book, especially the sections on the climate change that led to the 7-yr famine begun in 1315. There was a somewhat brief description of the medieval warm period which led up to the start of the 14th century. Things were great then: abundant crops, relatively abundant food, new warmer areas to be colonized. Starting about the turn of the century, things began going badly. The book provides the facts behind Mel Gibson's Braveheart. William Wallace at 6'5" to 7' would have been better played by Liam Neeson. Starting with William Wallace's 'traitor's death,' Rosen describes a long litany of ways that members of all classes of society and their domestic animals died, each seemingly more gruesome than the last. The most awful for the majority of people was starvation due to crop failure from intense rains which washed away crops and soil followed by drought. Most of the focus of the book is on Scots-English politics, with some on the Welsh and a little about France and the Holy Roman Empire (German states). There is passing reference to the 1840s Irish potato famine and the Chinese famines which rivaled or exceeded the 14th century famine in the misery they caused. This is a grim book for a grim period of history.

Pronunciation of names leaves much to be desired.

It would improve the performance if the reader had been instructed in the pronunciation of some of the places and names,
which, when so weirdly pronounced, lead one to wonder whether he actually knows anything about medieval history. Very disappointing.

Not your typical history book

Fascinating discussion of medieval history of Britain’s survival of the sudden change in climate between 1315 and 1320. One of the best books I have read on this period. It describes not only the politics of the period, ie, the wars both in country and with other countries, the economics that created the feudal social order, and the organization of British society as a whole, etc., but how the Little Ice Age disrupted “life as usual.” This book makes plain how easily a small, temporary shift in climate affected not just Britain, but the whole of European society. I especially liked the layered look at how the loss of two years of normal summer weather affected the various levels of society.

Interesting, but the premise not fully developed

I found the book very interesting. However these authors premise that many of the events of the 14th century were caused by the end of the Medieval Warm Period , did not seem to be the main thrust of the book. Rather the book was an interesting discussion of Scottish history; As well as discussion of transitional periods in military tactical development. Perhaps I incorrectly anticipated that the book would be far more similar to Jared diamond’s “guns germs and steel” then it turned out to be. Overall I would recommend the book to future listeners with the caveat that the authors premise could be far better developed and more concentrated on the issue of climactic impacts on historic developments.

Great!

This was a great book! Puts so man things into perspective from the 8th to the 14th century. Worth the read.

Very informative

There was so much detail I almost felt like I was there. The climate change stuff just seemed like the obligatory nod to today's sensibilities when the real goal of the author was an in depth look at a turbulent time in European history whose ripples we're still feeling.