Book Review: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

War, persecution, plague, and death galloped over the horizon on an unsuspecting Europe bring the High Middle Ages to an end and ushering in a series of crises the marked the Late Middle Ages. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman looks at this transformative century that saw two nations begin a century long war, the institution that knitted the fabric of Europe together split in twain, and finally the arrival of mass death thanks to a flea hitching a ride on a rat that stowed away on a boat.

Tuchman weaves the book around the life of Enguerrand de Coucy, a French nobleman once married to the daughter of English King Edward III putting him in the middle of events. The events of the 14th century from the Black Death that devastated the population of Europe, the first 60 years of the Hundred Year’s War that brought physical ruin to France and economic ruin to both France and England, the Papal Schism that broke the unity of the medieval Church after its long residence in Avignon that led to disrepute, and the numerous peasant revolts throughout Western Europe as a fall out from everything happening. Throughout the book, Tuchman brought up the medieval warrior code with its chivalry and worldview that the nobility claimed to do then countering it with what they did. Tuchman wanted to draw parallels between the 14th and 20th centuries and there are several that the reader could nod in agreement, however the differences are stark enough that it’s hard to make the connection but then again that might be why it’s a distant mirror. Over the course of 600 pages, Tuchman gives a pretty good portrait of the 14th Century especially regarding France but not at the total expense of the rest of the continent while being readable for the general reader.

A Distant Mirror is a general overview of the history of Europe’s 14th century which is so much more than the Black Death and Hundred Year’s War which Barbara Tuchman brings out in a very readable book.

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