72 12 THREE GREAT SUCCESSIVE BATTLES: Rudolf of Lorraine fell at Crécy (1346); Frederick of Lorraine at Agincourt (1415); the battle of Nicopolis, which sacrificed the third Lorrainer, took place in 1396.
73 24 CHARLES VI (1368-1422) had killed several men during his first fit of insanity. He was for the rest of his life wholly unfit to govern. He declared Henry V of England, the conqueror of Agincourt, his successor, thus disinheriting the Dauphin, his son.
74 2 THE FAMINES, ETC.: Horrible famines occurred in France and England in 1315, 1336, and 1353. Such insurrections as Wat Tyler's, in 1381, are probably in De Quincey's mind.
74 6 THE TERMINATION OF THE CRUSADES: The Crusades came to an end about 1271. "The ulterior results of the crusades," concludes Cox in Encyclopedia Britannica, "were the breaking up of the feudal system, the abolition of serfdom, the supremacy of a common law over the independent jurisdiction of chiefs who claimed the right of private wars."
74 7 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLARS: This most famous of the military orders, founded in the twelfth century for the defense of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, having grown so powerful as to be greatly feared, was suppressed at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
74 7 THE PAPAL INTERDICTS: "De Quincey has probably in mind such an interdict as that pronounced in 1200, by Innocent III, against France. All ecclesiastical functions were suspended and the land was in desolation."—HART. England was put under interdict several times, as in 1170 (for the murder of Becket) and 1208.
74 8 THE TRAGEDIES CAUSED OR SUFFERED BY THE HOUSE OF ANJOU, AND BY THE EMPEROR: "The Emperor is Konradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, beheaded by Charles of Anjou at Naples, 1268. The subsequent cruelties of Charles in Sicily caused the popular uprising known as the Sicilian Vespers, 1282, in which many thousands of Frenchmen were assassinated."—HART.
74 10 THE COLOSSAL FIGURE OF FEUDALISM, ETC.: The English yeomen at Crecy, overpowering the mounted knights of France, took from feudalism its chief support,—the superiority of the mounted knight to the unmounted yeoman. Cf. Green, History of the English People, Book IV, Chap. II.
74 15 THE ABOMINABLE SPECTACLE OF A DOUBLE POPE: For thirty-eight years this paradoxical state of things endured.
75 15 THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY: a list of the martyrs of the Church, arranged according to the order of their festivals, and with accounts of their lives and sufferings.