A Little History of the World (2 page)

22   
A S
TRUGGLE TO
B
ECOME
L
ORD OF
C
HRISTENDOM
East and West in Carolingian times – The blossoming of culture in China – The Magyar invasion – King Henry – Otto the Great – Austria and the Babenbergs – Feudalism and serfdom – Hugh Capet – The Danes in England – Religious appointments – The Investiture Controversy – Gregory VII and Henry IV – Canossa – Robert Guiscard and William the Conqueror

23   
C
HIVALROUS
K
NIGHTS
Horsemen and knights – Castles – Bondsmen – From noble youth to knight: page, squire, dubbing – A knight’s duties – Minstrelsy – Tournaments – Chivalrous poetry –
The Song of the Nibelungen
– The First Crusade – Godfrey of Bouillon and the conquest of Jerusalem – The significance of the crusades

24   
E
MPERORS IN THE AGE OF CHIVALRY
Frederick Barbarossa – Barter and the money-based economy – Italian towns – The empire – The resistance and defeat of Milan – The dubbing feast at Mainz – The Third Crusade – Frederick II – Guelphs and Ghibellines – Innocent III – The Magna Carta – Sicily’s rulers – The end of the Hohenstaufens – Ghengis Khan and the Mongol invasion – The lack of an emperor and ‘fist-law’ – The Kyffhäuser legend – Rudolf of Habsburg – Victory over Otakar – The power of the House of Habsburg is established

25   
C
ITIES AND
C
ITIZENS
Markets and towns – Merchants and knights – Guilds – Building cathedrals – Mendicant friars and penitential priests – The persecution of Jews and heretics – The Babylonian Captivity of the popes – The Hundred Years War with England – Joan of Arc – Life at court – Universities – Charles IV and Rudolf the Founder

26   
A N
EW
A
GE
The burghers of Florence – Humanism – The rebirth of antiquity – The flowering of art – Leonardo da Vinci – The Medici – Renaissance popes – New ideas in Germany – The art of printing – Gunpowder – The downfall of Charles the Bold – Maximilian, the Last Knight – Mercenaries – Fighting in Italy – Maximilian and Dürer

27   
A N
EW
W
ORLD
The compass – Spain and the conquest of Granada – Columbus and Isabella – The discovery of America – The modern era – Columbus’s fate – The conquistadores – Hernando Cortez – Mexico – The fall of Montezuma – The Portuguese in India

28   
A N
EW
F
AITH
The building of the Church of St Peter – Luther’s theses – Luther’s forerunner, Hus – The burning of the papal bull – Charles V and his empire – The sack of Rome – The Diet of Worms – Luther at the Wartburg – The translation of the Bible – Zwingli – Calvin – Henry VIII – Turkish conquests – The division of the empire

29   
T
HE
C
HURCH AT
W
AR
Ignatius of Loyola – The Council of Trent – The Counter-Reformation – The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre – Philip of Spain – The Battle of Lepanto – The revolt of the Low Countries – Elizabeth of England – Mary Stuart – The sinking of the Armada – English trading posts in America – The East India Companies – The beginnings of the British empire

30   
T
ERRIBLE
T
IMES
The Defenestration of Prague – The Thirty Years War – Gustavus Adolphus – Wallenstein – The Peace of Westphalia – The devastation of Germany – The persecution of witches – The birth of a scientific understanding of the world – Nature’s laws – Galileo and his trial

31   
A
N
U
NLUCKY
K
ING AND A
L
UCKY
K
ING
The Stuart king, Charles I – Cromwell and the Puritans – The rise of England – The year of the Glorious Revolution – France’s prosperity – Richelieu’s policies – Mazarin – Louis XIV – A king’s
lever
– Versailles – Sources of the government’s wealth – The peasants’ misery – Predatory wars

32   
M
EANWHILE
, L
OOKING
E
ASTWARDS
…
Turkish conquests – Insurrection in Hungary – The siege of Vienna – Jan Sobieski and the relief of Vienna – Prince Eugene – Ivan the Terrible – Peter the Great – The founding of St Petersburg – Charles XII of Sweden – The race to Stralsund – The expansion of Russian might

33   
A T
RULY
N
EW
A
GE
The Enlightenment – Tolerance, reason and humanity – Critique of the Enlightenment – The rise of Prussia – Frederick the Great – Maria Theresa – The Prussian army – The Grand Coalition – The Seven Years War – Joseph II – The abolition of serfdom – Overhasty reforms – The American War of Independence – Benjamin Franklin – Human rights and negro slaves

34   
A V
ERY
V
IOLENT
R
EVOLUTION
Catherine the Great – Louis XV and Louis XVI – Life at court – Justice and the landowning nobility – The Rococo – Marie Antoinette – The convocation of the Estates-General – The storming of the Bastille – The sovereignty of the people – The National Assembly – The Jacobins – The guillotine and the Revolutionary Tribunal – Danton – Robespierre – The Reign of Terror – The sentencing of the king – The foreigners defeated – Reason – The Directory – Neighbouring republics

35   
T
HE
L
AST
C
ONQUEROR
Napoleon in Corsica – To Paris – The siege of Toulon – The conquest of Italy – The Egyptian expedition – The
coup d’état
– The consulate and the Code Napoléon – Emperor of the French – Victory at Austerlitz – The end of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation – Francis I – The Continental System – Victory over Russia – Spain and the War of Spanish Resistance – Aspern and Wagram – The German uprising – The Grande Armée – The retreat from Moscow – The Battle of Leipzig – The Congress of Vienna – Napoleon’s return from Elba – Waterloo – St Helena

36   
M
EN AND
M
ACHINES
The Biedermeier era – Steam engines, steamships, locomotives, the telegraph – Spinning machines and mechanical looms – Coal and iron – Luddites – Socialist ideas – Marx and his theory of class war – Liberalism – The revolutions of 1830 and 1848

37   
A
CROSS THE
S
EAS
China before 1800 – The Opium war – The Taiping Rebellion – China’s submission – Japan in 1850 – Revolution in support of the Mikado – Japan’s modernisation with foreign assistance – America after 1776 – The slave states – The North – Abraham Lincoln – The Civil War

38   
T
WO
N
EW
S
TATES IN
E
UROPE
Europe after 1848 – The Emperor Franz Josef and Austria – The German Confederation – France under Napoleon III – Russia – Spain’s decline – The liberation of the peoples of the Balkans – The fight for Constantinople – The kingdom of Sardinia – Cavour – Garibaldi – Bismarck – The reform of the army in defiance of the constitution – The Battle of Königgrätz – Sedan – The founding of the German empire – The Paris Commune – Bismarck’s social reforms – Dismissal of the Iron Chancellor

39   
D
IVIDING
U
P THE
W
ORLD
Industry – Markets and sources of raw materials – Britain and France – The Russo-Japanese War – Italy and Germany – The race to mobilize – Austria and the East – The outbreak of the First World War – New weapons – Revolution in Russia – The American intervention – The terms of peace – Scientific advance – End

40   
T
HE
S
MALL
P
ART OF THE
H
ISTORY OF THE
W
ORLD
W
HICH
I H
AVE
L
IVED
T
HROUGH
M
YSELF:
L
OOKING
B
ACK
The growth of the world’s population – The defeat of the central-European powers during the First World War – The incitement of the masses – The disappearance of tolerance from political life in Germany, Italy, Japan and Soviet Russia – Economic crisis and the outbreak of the Second World War – Propaganda and reality – The murder of the Jews – The atomic bomb – The blessings of science – The collapse of the Communist system – International aid efforts as a reason for hope

To understand how it happened – and why this, his very first book, has never appeared in English until now despite being available in eighteen other languages – we need to start in Vienna in 1935, when my grandfather was still a young man.

After Ernst Gombrich had finished his studies at the University of Vienna, he was unemployed and, in those difficult times, without prospect of a job. A young publisher with whom he was acquainted asked him to take a look at a particular English history book for children, with a view to translating it into German. It was intended for a new series called
Wissenschaft für Kinder
(’Knowledge for Children’) and had been sent by a mutual friend who was studying medicine in London.

My grandfather was not impressed by what he read: so little so that he told the publisher – Walter Neurath who later founded the publishing house Thames & Hudson in England – that it was probably not worth translating. ‘I think I could write a better one myself,’ he said. To which Neurath responded that he was welcome to submit a chapter.

It so happened that, in the final stages of writing his doctoral thesis, my grandfather had been corresponding with a little girl who was the daughter of some friends. She wanted to know what was keeping him so busy, and he enjoyed trying to explain his subject to her in ways she would understand. He was also, he said later, feeling a little impatient with academic writing, having waded through so much of it in the course of his studies, and was convinced that it should be perfectly possible to explain most things to an intelligent child without jargon or pompous language. So he wrote a lively chapter on the age of chivalry and submitted it to Neurath – who was more than happy with it. ‘But,’ he said, ‘in order to meet the schedule that was intended for the translation, I will need a finished manuscript in six weeks’ time.’

My grandfather wasn’t sure that it could be done, but he liked the challenge and agreed to try. He plotted out the book at speed, selecting episodes for inclusion by asking himself simply which events of the past had touched most lives and were best remembered. He then set out to write a chapter a day. In the morning, he would read up on the day’s topic from what books were available in his parents’ house – including a big encyclopaedia. In the afternoon, he would go to the library to seek out, wherever possible, some texts belonging to the periods he was writing about, to give authenticity to his account. Evenings were for writing. The only exceptions were Sundays – but to explain about these, I must first introduce my grandmother.