The Economy

So, why did Holland really leave the empire? Was it because the valiant and tragic countess Jacqueline was “hunted down from one land to the other, all of them mine”. Was it a story of misogyny, betrayal, incompetence, and ruthless power politics? Yes, it was. But it was also a story of economic and climate change and one that links into the herring trade of the Hanseatic League, the decline of Teutonic Knights and even into the Hussite Revolt, topics that seem distant, but mattered.

This week we focus on this, the latter part of the story.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 199 – How Holland was Lost (Part 2) – also episode 15 of season 10: The Empire in the 15^th Century.

So, why did Holland really leave the empire? Was it because the valiant and tragic countess Jacqueline was “hunted down from one land to the other, all of them mine”. Was it a story of misogyny, betrayal, incompetence, and ruthless power politics? Yes, it was. But it was also a story of economic and climate change and one that links into the herring trade of the Hanseatic League, the decline of Teutonic Knights and even into the Hussite Revolt, topics that seem distant, but mattered.

This week we focus on this, the latter part of the story.

But before we start the usual link to historyofthegermans.com/support where you are given the opportunity to keep this show on the road. Plus, as you may have noticed we did quite a few episodes recently upon suggestions from Patrons, so if there is something you care about, let me know and I will see what can be slotted in.

And our special thanks this week go to Kyle R., Erik L, Noel L., Rauschbegleiter, Stefan, Mark P. and Raimonds S. who have already committed themselves to the honorable task of fending off the mattrasses and room rental advertising.

And with that, back to the show

And with that, back to the show

Jacqueline’s fight for her inheritance

Last week we ended with the flight of Jacqueline, countess of Holland, Seeland and Hainault to England and her marriage to the dashing duke of Gloucester. For those of you who have not listened or cannot remember last episode, here is a brief recap.

Jacqueline was the only daughter of the count of Holland, Zeeland and Hainault, aka a big chunk of what is today the Netherlands. Her being a mere woman then got everybody in the region giddy with excitement. Her powerful neighbor and cousin, duke Philipp the Good of Burgundy wanted her lands, as did her uncle, John the Pitiless, the former bishop elect of Liege. And in the background the emperor, Sigismund, wanted to make sure that the Low Countries remained inside the Holy Roman Empire.

The person who was supposed to fight for Jacqueline’s rights was her husband, John, the duke of Brabant. Either by coincidence or by perfidious Burgundian planning, John of Brabant turned out to be a gormless, vindictive and easy to manipulate fool.

So, when Jacqueline’s father died, a mad scramble for her lands began. Her husband did manage to take control of Hainault, ostensibly on her behalf. In Holland and Zeeland however, John the Pitiless was the outright winner. He got the support of one of the local factions, the Cods, which brought him control of about half. When Jacqueline and her allies from the other faction, the Hooks, tried to dislodge him, John of Brabant left them hanging. And to make matters worse, in the subsequent peace negotiations John of Brabant handed John the Pitiless the governorship of the parts of Holland and Zeeland he did not already control. Plus, emperor Sigismund gave John the Pitiless his niece Elisabeth of Görlitz to marry, which added the duchy of Luxemburg to the overall pot.

So, after round one, Holland, Zeeland and Luxemburg are held by John the Pitiless, Jacqueline’s uncle. Hainault is in the hands of John of Brabant, Jacqueline’s husband. But smelling most strongly of roses was Philipp the Good, the duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders, who was in pole position to collect the whole lot should the two Johns die without offspring. And that was pretty likely given the age of John the Pitiless’ wife and the state of John of Brabant’s marriage.

The only one who had received nothing at all was poor Jacqueline. She was trapped. She hated her husband John of Brabant from the bottom of her heart. He had betrayed her in battle and had then handed her inheritance over to her uncle. Moreover, he had humiliated her in public. This marriage was over as far as she was concerned, but absent a divorce or annulment, she would have to stand on the sidelines and watch it all go down the swanny, or more precisely, down the Scheldt to Philipp of Burgundy.

But there was a way to get out of this disastrous marriage. Jacqueline and John of Brabant were first cousins, aka her mother was his father’s sister. Such a close family relationship required papal dispensation. That dispensation had first been granted, but once emperor Sigismund heard about it, he got pope Martin V to withdraw it. The case was still pending before the curia, which so far had only partially revalidated the initial dispensation.

This left enough ambiguity that Jacqueline could declare her marriage null and void from the very beginning. Which is why she fled to England where she married Humphrey the duke of Gloucester, uncle and guardian of the two-year-old king Henry VI.

Humphrey was a more proactive, competent and ambitious man than the gormless John of Brabant, which wasn’t exactly a high bar. But still he was more the kind of man Jacqueline needed to regain her inheritance.

Things were coming to a head at the end of 1424. Humphrey and Jacqueline mustered an army and sailed for Calais. From there they proceeded to Hainault, where they took possession of several of the main cities and fortresses. On January 3, 1425, Hunfrey was declared count of Hainault by the estates of the county. How enthusiastic this endorsement was is hard to judge, since the building where they met was surrounded by English soldiers.

And another thing happened around that same time, Jacqueline’s hated uncle, John the Pitiless breathed his last. The common understanding is that he died from poison. Six months earlier, a Dutch nobleman, Jan van Vliet, who had been married to one of Jacqueline’s half-sisters, admitted to an attempt on John the Pitiless’ life. He declared under torture that he had smeared a slow-acting poison on to the pages of the ex-bishop’s prayer book, all at the behest of an English spy. And John the Pitiless had indeed been struck by an inexplicable disease, which is why an investigation had been launched in the first place. Whether these confessions under torture were the truth is however disputed. For one, John the Pitiless’ death was not particularly useful to Gloucester and Jacqueline, since it brought the much more powerful Philipp the Good of Burgundy into the driver seat, but more significantly, the idea that John the Pitiless would read a prayer book is just preposterous.

The other one to recede into the background is Jacqueline’s former or not so former husband John of Brabant who finds all that politicking and fighting a bit too taxing. He decided to focus more on hunting and frolicking and handed management of his duchies, inheritances and pretty much everything else to his good cousin Duke Philipp the Good of Burgundy.  

So, the field has thinned out. It is now down to just Philipp the Good on one side and Humphrey and Jacqueline on the other.

And Philipp the Good has a brilliant idea. Instead of wasting vast amounts of money on hiring mercenaries and devastating villages, let’s just sort this like men, mano a mano. We set a date and place where we can get into the ring and fight it out to the death. A true trial by combat to determine whether Jacqueline was still married to John of Brabant or not, and then obviously, who would take over her inheritance.

The days when European leaders of this caliber would slug it out in single combat were long gone by 1425, if they ever existed. But Philipp was definitely serious. He submitted to a strict exercise regime, called the greatest swordsmen of the age to his castle to help him train, and oiled his diamond studded armor. The whole thing felt slightly mad, in particular since at the time Philipp the Good had no legitimate heirs. If he had fallen, all his lands would have gone to the least deserving protagonist in this drama, his closest relative, duke John the Gormless of Brabant.

Though the young duke spent most of his days parrying training blows in the courtyard of his castle, he did not rely entirely on this madcap idea. He initiated a more conservative plan B in parallel. He sent out an army to reconquer Hainault, all on behalf of his beloved cousin of Brabant, of course.

This campaign did quite well, in part because of a misunderstanding. The English defenders of a city called s’Gravenbrakel suddenly surrendered their well defended position. They said that they had seen their patron saint, St. George, amongst the besieging Burgundians and decided that God was not on their side. It turned out that the man they had seen had been a Brabant knight whose coat of arms and armor resembled English depictions of St. George.

But that set the tone for events that followed. The English gradually retreated and the date for the trial by combat moved closer.

This whole trial by combat thing was not only insane, it also caused a massive headache for the duke of Bedford, the English regent in France, who was also Humphrey’s brother. Note that we are in the Hundred Years’ War, at a time when half of France was occupied by the English and Joan of Arc was still in her home village trying to get rid of the voices in her head. The reason the English could hold a large part of France and were able to claim the French crown for the boy king Henry VI, was their alliance with Burgundy. And that alliance had only come about because Philipp the Good wanted revenge for the death of his father. Now imagine what would happen if Humphrey ran Philipp the Good through with a sword? John the Gormless of Brabant would become duke of Burgundy. And what use was he? The alliance would collapse, and the English would be thrown out. And even if the opposite happened, i.e., Humphrey would bite the dust of the arena, that would still require Bedford to react, potentially declare war against the Burgundians. And for what? Some waterlogged counties on the North Sea shore.

As far as the English were concerned, Humphrey and Philipp must never meet again. So, Humphrey was made lord protector of England with the task of reigning in an overbearing bishop of Winchester. Humphrey turned to his wife and said something along the lines of, sorry dear, will have to nip over to London, little business I need to take care of, will be back in a jiffy, Tallyho. And off he went, sending a letter to Philipp asking for a postponement of the fight. Ah, and he also took along one of Jacqueline’s ladies in waiting, Eleanor of Cobham, who was now waiting on her lord’s hand, feet and other parts of the anatomy.

Jacqueline would forever defend her husband Gloucester and refute all the stories she was told about his behavior back in London. But..

With Gloucester and most of his army gone, the Burgundians advanced even more quickly. Jacqueline and the remaining English had not endeared themselves to the inhabitants of Hainault and support for their most noble lady was at best lukewarm.

When Philipp and his army appeared before Mons, the capital of Hainault, Jacqueline urged the burghers to fight. They refused. She got angry and pulled the whole, I am your countess and you do what I want, and pointing to the man standing next to her, she said, if you do not, here is my English knight in shining armor who will make you. To which the burghers said, you mean this guy? Yes. Ok. They grabbed the unfortunate soldier and beheaded him right in front of the countess. She was a tough lady, so it took two more heads to hit the straw before she relented. The city of Mons and with it all that remained of Jacqueline’s support in Hainault surrendered to Philipp the Good.

Jacqueline, beloved cousin that she was, was brought to Ghent to live out her days as an honored prisoner. Her county of Hainault was now firmly in the hands of Philipp the Good.

As for Holland and Zeeland, the death of John the Pitiless meant that formally the county had reverted back to Jacqueline, or more precisely, Jacqueline’s husband, whoever you believed that to be. And given there were two, the towns and cities of Holland and Seeland had to make a choice. Many chose to open their gates to John of Brabant, but not all. Correction, John of Brabant obviously could not be bothered with all of that and had appointed his cousin Philipp the Good to take up this task as well, so most of the cities opened their gates to Philipp the Good, but not all.

Which gets us to the final act of the drama, Jacqueline, the most wickedly betrayed woman in the world, as she complained to Gloucester, made one last move. On the night of August 31^st, 1425, she told her servants that she wished to take a bath and not to be disturbed. Whilst her guards decided this was a perfect time to take a break, she changed into men’s clothes and strolled out of her prison and into the bustling streets of Ghent. At the city gates two of her men were waiting with horses. She got into the saddle and rode, without stopping, all the way to Holland.

There she found support in the cities that had refused to submit to Philipp the Good. She made her headquarters in Gouda. A four year long war ensued. Against all the odds, Jacqueline won 2 battles, Philipp only one. Her husband Gloucester sent two armies, one was brutally massacred when they got lost in the shallow waters of the Dutch coast, and the other turned tail before landing. But in the end, she did not stand a chance against the might of all of Burgundy, Flanders, Brabant, Limburg, Hainault and the Cod faction in Holland.

On the 3^rd of July 1428, Jacqueline surrendered. She exchanged the kiss of Delft with Philipp, which apparently wasn’t really a kiss. The cousins, now reconciled, paraded through the city. The population, exhausted by the long war, cheered. Jacqueline recognized Philipp of Burgundy as her heir and retired to one of her castles in Hainault. She married one last, a fourth time, for love, not for politics, and died, aged just 35. By then John of Brabant was long dead and so was his brother Philipp of St. Pol who I left out to keep the story simple. Neither of them had legitimate heirs.

Their heir was Philipp of Burgundy who had won the jackpot. He had gained Holland, Zeeland and Hainault as well as Brabant and Limburg. In 1441 he bought the county of Luxemburg from Elisabeth of Görlitz. That together with a number of further acquisitions including the county of Namur brought the Low Countries together into what became the Burgundian and later the Spanish Netherlands.

The foreign policy reasons she did not stand much of a chance.

Ok, that is the story of the kings, dukes and counts, their marriages and wars. But is that really the full story? Me thinks not. There are a couple of reasons things turned out in favor of Burgundy that have little to do with the gormlessness of John of Brabant or the fact that Jacqueline was a woman in a profoundly misogynist world.

The first point is the obvious one. Burgundy and England were in an alliance against the dauphin of France, Charles VII. This alliance was absolutely crucial for the English position. Over the course of the Hundred Years War the English have won all the battles but had never been able to hold on to any territorial gains. And the reason was simple – demographics. England’s population had dropped to 2 to 3 million following the Black Death. France on the other hand held still 10 to 12 million people. In other words, France had 4 to 5 times the population of England. And as a consequence, all the territory, except for Calais, that England gained after Crecy and Poitiers, had been reconquered by France in the years that had followed. And the English were fully aware of this. Having Burgundy and its vast military and economic resources on their side gave them at least a chance of defeating the dauphin.

Therefore this whole business in Holland was a massive distraction for the English crown, in particular for the Regency council. As much as his brothers may have been sympathetic to the hugely popular Humphrey to acquire his own principality, there was no way they would jeopardize the alliance with Burgundy.  Hence English support for him and Jacqueline was constantly delayed and even withheld.

On top of this strategic disadvantage, the fact that England’s monarch was a child, who would turn into an adult with serious problems, was weighing on Humphrey’s ability to support Jacqueline. He had to make a choice between protecting his family’s hold on England versus a remote chance of acquiring Holland. And a chance that would shrink to near zero if he gave up his position on the regency council. So, even though Humphrey was clearly not an ideal husband, there are some solid reasons for his absence from the battlefield.

With England opening the doors for Burgundy, we get to the question that we had started with, why didn’t the empire push back against Philipp the Good?

It certainly wasn’t the case that the emperor Sigismund was not interested. The western border of the empire was the homeland of his family. Fending off French encroachment on what used to be Lotharingia, was the reason his ancestor, Henry VII, had taken the imperial crown in the first place. (episode 144). His niece, Elizabeth of Görlitz was duchess of Luxemburg, and he had used her to exercise influence in the region. In 1409 he married her to Anthony of Brabant, the father of John the Gormless. That was his way of counteracting the shift of Brabant towards Burgundy that had gotten under way in the previous generation. Then, in 1417, just when Jacqueline’s father died, he married her to John the Pitiless.

Sigismund insisted that he, as emperor elect, was the overlord of all these counties and duchies, Holland, Seeland, Hainault, Brabant, Limburg and Luxemburg. And as such it was his job to decide who would inherit them once the male line had ended. And his choice was John the Pitiless, the husband of his niece.

And at the same time, he was working hard to undermine the marriage of John of Brabant and Jacqueline, which he rightly perceived as a way the Burgundians were trying to get hold of the lot. And he had a lot of influence here. The current pope, Martin V had only just been elected at the Council of Constance, the event Sigismund had brought about and that he largely controlled. It was Sigismund who got pope Martin V to revoke the dispensation for Jacqueline’s Brabant wedding, which was also the legal means by which Jacqueline could marry Gloucester.

But where was Sigismund in 1425? His champion, John the Pitiless, was dead. And we do not see Sigismund replacing him, say by putting one of the Bavarian or Palatinate Wittelsbachs forward. Some of them, like the Bavaria Munichs, were his close allies and friends. Or he could at least endorse Gloucester who had the advantage of not being Philipp of Burgundy. It is hard to say what such a move could have achieved, but in the precarious balance that prevailed in the Low Countries, it could have provided at least political cover for whoever he endorsed.

So, why didn’t he? The answer is simple – The Hussites. The Hussite war had kicked off with the First Prague Defenestration in 1419 and in 1421 Sigismund suffered his worst defeat at Kutna Hora and Nemecki Brod (Episode 180). That was followed by further humiliations in 1424, 1426 and 1427 when the imperial crusaders ran away in panic when they heard the Hussite’s gruesome drum approaching. These defeats also weakened the king’s position in Hungary where Venice and others made inroads. The resumption of the conflict between the Teutonic Knights and the kingdom of Poland was another issue closer to home that required his massively overstretched attention…and so he had to let it slip.

The domestic reasons she struggled.

And then there were the most fundamental, the economic and climatic reasons, why the low countries turned their back on the empire.

As of today, 26% of the Netherlands lie below sea level, protected by an elaborate system of dikes, storm surge barriers, pumps and canals. This infrastructure goes back a long way and had a huge impact on the politics and culture of the region.

There are three large rivers that empty into the North Sea in Holland and Seeland, the Rhine, the Maas and the Scheldt. Each of them formed massive deltas that in the Middle Ages kept the whole region under constant threat of flooding. Early flood defenses comprised simple dikes about a meter high, protecting individual towns and villages.

Throughout the Middle Ages these flood defenses expanded to protect not just isolated settlements, but larger areas that could then be drained and turned into pasture or exploited for peat. This land reclamation had come to its completion in the 14^th century when current technology could not push it any further.

In the late 14^th and early 15^th century a number of interlocking strains of events caused a string of catastrophes. One strain was the excessive harvesting of peat, largely used for heating at the time. The volume of peat removed was of such a magnitude that more and more areas dropped below sea level.

Then you had a weakening of the dike administration. As dikes became larger and more complex, they were no longer the responsibility of just one village or one local lord. From as early as the 12^th century, the Dutch formed water councils responsible for the construction and maintenance of the flood defenses across wider areas. Overseeing these water councils was the High Water Council established by the counts of Holland in 1255. These structures were and are unique. Because a dike is only as strong as its weakest part, everybody who benefitted from it, which was pretty much everybody, had an interest in where and how the dike was built and maintained. Which in turn meant that people cooperated a lot more across larger areas than in most other regions of Europe at the time. Finding consensus on dike building and maintenance was a vital necessity, to the extent it seeped deep into the culture. When I worked in the Netherlands my colleagues would trace Dutch corporate culture all the way back to the water boards and their focus on consensus and meritocracy.

And that is also where its weakness lay. Once the dike infrastructure had expanded across the whole region, consensus and co-ordination at the top level of the High Water Council was ever more crucial. But consensus was not the prevailing political mode since 1345. The takeover of Holland by the Wittelsbachs had triggered a persistent civil war that became known as the war between the Cods and the Hooks. It is usually said that the cods were more progressive and linked to the merchants in the cities, whilst the Hooks tended to be more on the side of the landowning nobility. Though this may be very broadly correct, we find that there were constant shifts between the parties and some of the counts of Holland like Albert and his predecessor William V supported the cods, whilst William VI and Jacqueline relied on the Hooks. They are a bit like the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, factions that have been at each other’s throats for so long, nobody can remember why they were fighting in the first place.

A country divided, where neighboring towns, villages and lords are constantly at low level war, forming the consensus over the maintenance of dikes was hard to come by. Which meant that the dikes had fallen into disrepair.

At which point the last of the calamities struck, the climate. As I might have mentioned, the climate changed from the late 13^th century onwards. The medieval warm period had come to an end and the little ice age was building up. It would take 400 years to reach its peak, but already by the early 15^th century it got a lot colder.

And with that temperature drop came more and more regular storms. In 1287 the St. Lucia’s flood had broken open the Zuiderzee causing massive devastation, killing maybe 50 to 80,000 people, but it also opened Amsterdam an access to the sea. The St. Marcellus flood in 1362 took about 25,000 lives. In 1394 a storm forced the citizens of Oostende to give up their homes and move a few miles inland. The image of whole villages packing up all their belongings including their church decorations and bells and moving to higher ground became common place.

And then came the three St. Elisabeth’s floods. The first one on November 19, 1404, feast day of friend of the podcast St. Elisabeth of Thuringia, caused again vast flooding across Flanders, Zeeland and Holland. Following this disaster Margaret of Flanders, the mother of John the Fearless, ordered that all the dikes between Dunkirk and Terneuzen, i.e., the entire length of the Flanders coast shall be connected. This structure, as we would expect, was named not after her but after her son, the Graaf Jansdijk. It prove to be an enduring and extremely beneficial investment. Until today it is noticeable that the Belgian coast is almost a dead straight line until Knocke-Heist where the Graaf Jansdijk turned inland. Beyond that, the coast becomes messy, full of islands, some drying, some visible and meandering rivers and inlets.

In the tense political atmosphere of Holland of 1404, such an infrastructure project was not feasible. Which is why the second St. Elisabeth Flood of 1421, again on November 19^th, was so devastating. Whole areas, like that between Dordrecht and Breda drowned in the flood along with all its people and animals.

One baby was saved in the most extraordinary manner. It had ridden out the storm in its crib and the family cat had steered their precarious raft through the waves by balancing on the edges. The child was named Beatrix and later married a wealthy merchant in Dordrecht.

And in 1424 it happened again, this time the outcome was milder as most of the lower lying lands had already been vacated.

After this experience and seeing the much more efficient handling of the situation in Flanders, it is not surprising that the population demanded a more effective government. They did not care who it was, just someone competent, able to organize the flood defense. And despite his propensity for bling and mad trials by combat, that was miles away from the sober attitude of the Hollanders, Philipp the Good was a very effective administrator. Jacqueline on the other hand – nobody knew. She was never given a real chance to run a territory.

In the century that followed Holland’s storm defenses became more and more sophisticated. They not only gained in height, but they were backed up by drainage canals and the most Dutch thing one can imagine, the windmills. These windmills aren’t all there to crush grains or saw wood, but to drain the water into canals and rivers. The first of them was built in 1408 near Leiden and at its peak there were ~10,000 of them patiently keeping the Dutch men and women’s feet dry.

Whilst all this was going on, the economy in the Low countries and particularly in Holland and Zeeland underwent a fundamental change. Cereal production was gradually replaced by pasture. That may be down to the salination of the lands in the floods, but more likely down to a combination of a colder climate tipping much of the marginal land to unproductive, and the influx of cheap grain from the Baltic, brought over by Hanse merchants.

The Frisian cows appeared everywhere, and with them the cheese the entrepreneurial Hollanders produced and sold all across Europe. It also forced a lot of people off the land and into the cities. Once there, they were looking for work.

And they found that in fishing, namely fishing for herring. If you remember episode 111 when we made the point that herring fishing in the narrows Öresund between what is today Denmark and Sweden was the true reason for the Hanse’s rise. In a world with 140 fast days when one was only allowed to eat animal protein in the form of fish, alligator, lizard, puffin or, weirdly, beaver, something like salted herring was a hugely important commodity.

In the peace of Stralsund in 1370 the Hanse established a monopoly on Baltic trade that included a monopoly over the herring market of Skanor, the place where almost all of the Baltic herring was traded. That monopoly became a rope around the Hanse’s neck, as former trading partners became competitors who instead of buying from and through them, sought ways to circumvent and then break the Hanse monopoly.

And that is where the Dutch came in. North Sea herring may not be quite as tasty as the Baltic variety, but it was available in abundance, cheap and outside the Hanse monopoly. This competition in the herring market led the Dutch cities slowly but surely away from the Hanseatic League, they had previously been allied with. Some had been members of the Hanse and other, like Dordrecht and Amsterdam had at least preferred trading partner status.

This rivalry grew as the Dutch moved from building fishing boats to merchant vessels, in particular when these caught up and then surpassed the Hansekogge in terms of speed and load capacity.

And then there was the beer market where both the Hollander and the Flemings picked up on the use of hops instead of Kraut, thereby becoming heavy competition for the brewers of Einbeck, Hamburg and Bremen, a rivalry that goes on until today.

In 1438-1441 these tensions between Holland and the Hanse cities turned into an outright war. They took advantage of complex Danish and Hanseatic politics to gain access to the Baltic Sea, a privilege they maintained, whilst the Hanseatic league went into its slow decline.

So, if we want to sum up why Holland left the Holy Roman Empire, there is some blame to lay at the feet of Sigismund’s predecessors and then his decision to have Jan Hus burned at the stake. But the main reason was that for Holland to preserve its land, it needed a political infrastructure that could maintain the complex system of flood defences, and that competent political infrastructure was Burgundy, not the Empire. And as the economy of Holland and Zeeland came into collision with the Hanse, which was after all the association of the merchants from the Holy Roman Empire, their exit was sealed.

It would take a little longer before the exit was formalised. But already in 1428, Philipp the Good established the Hof van Holland, the highest court in the counties. On paper this court should have allowed appeals to the imperial courts but never did and in 1549 was moved outside imperial jurisdiction. And in 1648 the formal separation took place, the culmination of a war that lasted 80 years and that we will not discuss here.

And that is all we have time for today. I have not yet decided what we will do next week, but rest assured, there are still a few stories to come.

And one last thing. I sometimes wonder whether all these deviations from the straight storyline that we have made these last two years, the seasons on the Hanseatic League, the Teutonic Knights, on the Hussites were really necessary. If we had not done them, we would now be in the midst of the 30 Years War. And that would certainly have been helpful in terms of the reach of the show.

Honest question: Did I take the right decision. Was it worth it going through the Eastward Expansion, the Hanseatic League, the Teutonic Knights, the Hussite revolt and now the empire in the 15^th century? Or should I have pressed on? And going forward, would you prefer a more straightforward run through the history?

By the way, if you have not listened to any of these seasons or want to listen again, they are available both here on the History of the Germans Feed and as separate podcasts. The links to those are in the show notes.