including headings Doing what comes naturally, The Neolithic Revolution, The first farmers, Farm animals, Draught animals, ...
including headings Lands across the Channel, The cause of a long conflict, Edward III's costly adventure, Crécy and Calais, Black Prince and Poitiers, ...
including headings Magyars, Stephen I, The Arpad dynasty, European monarchs, Janos Hunyadi, ...
In 434 two brothers, Bleda and Attila, jointly succeed their uncle in the leadership of the Huns. In the two generations since their defeat of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, these people have steadily won control of a lar...
The Huns, whose name has come to rival the Vandals as an emotive term for destructive violence, arrive in history with an impact as sudden as it is mysterious. They appear from the steppes north of the Black Sea in the l...
As the first emperor in a hereditary dynasty, it is profoundly irksome to Napoleon that he and Josephine have no child - leaving him only with the choice of a brother as his heir. There are now three emperors in Europe....
By the Compacts of Prague, agreed in 1433 and confirmed at a peace treaty in 1436, the Hussites are granted papal permission to give the sacrament in both kinds; their seizure of church lands in their territories is auth...
In 1159 Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, builds a new German town on a site which he has captured the previous year. It is Lübeck, perfectly placed to benefit from developing trade in the Baltic. Goods fr...
During the most recent glacial period (see Ice Ages) the entire Scandinavian peninsula is under a sheet of ice. As the ice cap begins to withdraw, about 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers move north in pursuit of reindee...
Qasim's coup leads to the first occasion when the Ba'ath party achieves a prominent role in Iraq. Twelve of the sixteen members of his cabinet are members of the party, but their loyalty to Qasim is limited. Not much mor...
Early in the 1440s the fortress of Belgrade is placed under the command of Janos Hunyadi, a Hungarian warrior who has proved his worth in frequent encounters with the Turks in these frontier regions. Belgrade, previously...
When news reaches Prague of Huss's death, burnt at the stake in Constance, the movement for reform is greatly strengthened. His successor as preacher in the Bethlehem chapel lists four radical principles upon which the H...
Although Henry Hudson's name is now entirely associated with north America, his aim in the first three of his four voyages is to find a northeast passage rather than one to the northwest. He is commissioned firs...
None of the indigenous animals of Australia is suitable for herding, so the tribes of human immigrants live until recent times by their traditional methods of hunting and gathering. One of their favourite hunting weapons...
During the most recent ice age, from about 20,000 years ago (see Ice Ages), large mammals such as bison roam on the sub-arctic tundra of Europe and Asia. They are preyed upon by two groups of hunters, both much smaller a...
