28.3 Europe: a.d. 1301 to 1400  (Page 8/12)

NOTE: Insert FRANCE IN MID-14TH CENTURY (1328/1360)

Credits can go to some Frenchmen of this century, however. Jean Buridan wrote on theoretical physics and astronomy, anticipating Galiter, Descartes and Newton. Henri de Mondeville and Guy de Chauliac were great French surgeons and Nicole Oresme developed a system of co-ordinates and employed graphs to show the growth of functions, preparing the way for Copernicus. (Ref. 49 , 125 )

Netherlands and belgium

The Dutch had succeeded in reopening the trade route around the Danish peninsula and had somewhat overcome the dominance of the Germanic Hanse in the Baltic trade. (Ref. 137 ) Growing realism and individualism in the arts was the most striking feature in the Netherlands, whose culture was strongly and proudly Germanic. (Ref. 177 )

Farther south in Flanders

British isles

In Great Britain, as a whole, the Black Death dropped the population from 3.7 million in 1348 to 2.2 million in 1377 and it dropped another 100,000 in the next 50 years.

England

The basic cause of the Hundred Years War between England and France was the dynastic quarrel which started with the conquest of England by William of Normandy in the 11th century and which created a state lying on 40th sides of the channel. In this 14th century the English kings still held the Duchy of Guienne in southwest France and they resented paying homage to French kings. Edward I had spent most of his life fighting the Scots and finally was defeated by them, while Edward II was a weak ruler who was finally forced to abdicate in favor of his fifteen year old son, Edward III, while the latter's mother and paramour, Roger Mortimer, actually ruled the nation. Meanwhile Edward II had died in a dungeon, supposedly by means of a red hot poker inserted through a pipe into his rectum, so that there were no external signs of violence. Coming of age, Edward III became upset over the way the French were treating the Duchy of Guienne as well as their activities in the Lowlands and he declared himself the King of France and sent armies through the Low Countries to France, to prove his claim. This king was the most spectacular of the Plantagenets, a conqueror, brave, but extravagant, ostentatious and shallow. His son, another Edward, was the famous Black Prince of warrior fame, who first won and then lost a great part of France for England during the Hundred Years War. Rather than being acclaimed a hero, he seemed to antagonize the people. He never reigned as king because he died before his father and it was his son, Richard II, who became a child king with John of Gaunt, his uncle, serving as regent. (Ref. 40 , 170 ) Additional Notes