Medieval map 1444

[packman]

AGREE - not much to make out - Try the interactive map for a close-up, very interesting

https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/x4mph8/medieval_europe_in_1444/

[MineralMan]

1. Fascinating.

Going to the link lets you click anywhere on the map to magnify it so you can read even the smallest labels. The Middle East is particularly interesting.

[Act_of_Reparation]

2. Alright, which one of y'all glitter-bombed Germany?

[Shermann]

4. I think they tried to overcompensate for that during WWII nt

[jmbar2]

3. So many separate, small "kingdoms"!

No wonder there were so many wars. This is what America will look like if the state's rights and secessionists have their way.

[malthaussen]

8. Germany at that point was the result of inheritance laws.

They did not follow the laws of primogeniture, under which the eldest (usually male) heir got the whole kit-kaboodle, but instead divided the goodies equally among all the heirs. Hence, a zillion small principalities, but only a relative few hereditary ruling families. This is why Charlamagne's empire broke into three when he died, as it was divided among his heirs, which one could call the beginning of a long process.

Celtic kingdoms followed similar rules of inheritance, which is why they could never unite to oppose a conqueror.

Very few of those "states" in Germany were kingdoms, btw, most were duchies or principalities. Most of the kingdoms in Central Europe were electoral, and the kings (up to the Holy Roman Emperor) had very little real control over the "kingdom." Nevertheless, there was prestige and sometimes a bit of cash in the "king" title, so many, many wars were fought over who got to be this year's notional King. Wars at the time were almost wholly dynastic. Then once the Reformation got underway, they were almost wholly religious.

-- Mal

[cilla4progress]

9. Fascinating!

Thanks!

[jmbar2]

10. Thanks for the elaboration. Did they all just grift off the serfs?

Where did the money come from to support so many duchies/principalities?

A lot of the boundaries would have been within a modern day's bike ride distance. Like each neighborhood had it's own king?

[Tommymac]

17. At the time the real power lay with the Religious leaders. Kings were a dime a dozen.

Money came from the New World via trade.

This division led directly to the religious bloodbath that was the Thirty Years War in the early 1600's.

The population of 'The Germanies' was devastated - I've read that as much as 50% of the population was killed.

link: Thirty Years War
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Thirty Years' War[l] from 1618 to 1648 was one of the most destructive wars in European history, directly responsible for the death of an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians, with some areas of present-day Germany experiencing population declines of over 50%.

[wnylib]

22. They were not getting wealth from the Americas

at the time of this map. The map is dated 1444, about half a century before Columbus.

All those German states, duchies, and principalities were loosely connected as the Holy Roman Empire, which was actually Germanic, not Roman. The German states that evolved out of various Germanic tribes considered themselves the heirs of Rome because they had been Roman military allies until they turned on Rome, invaded (along with other tribes), and claimed themselves the rightful heirs after Rome collapsed (with the help of the German invaders.)

The Holy Roman Emperors were elected by the princes and nobility in the various states. Other nations got involved with ruling the HRE when larger dynastic families developed in Europe (Hapsburgs, Hohezollerns, Bourbons) and intermarried. Consequently, as nation state kingdoms developed and grew, there were wars between nations over who would be the next Holy Roman Emperor.

Sometimes those wars spilled over into the American colonies because the Holy Roman Emperor at one time was Spanish and married into the French Bourbon line, making them eligible to become HR Emperor. This led to French raids from New France (Canada), with their Native allies, on English colonies in New England because England opposed the combined French/Spanish bid to have the next Emperor. It upset the European balance of power too much for the English. My English ancestors were in NE villages that were attacked by New France and their Native allies.

But those colonial wars between the English and French in North America started in the first decade of the 18th century, long after this 15th century map.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. The war in the 1700s was about the Spanish Succession, not the Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire was secure in the Austrian Habsburg family then; the dispute was over who got the Spanish crown, and thus the Spanish Empire in the Americas - a Bourbon or a younger Habsburg. In the end, the Bourbon Philip V got it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spanish_Succession ('Queen Anne's War' in the USA)

Then, in the 1740s, there was a war over the Austrian Succession ('King George's War' in the USA) - which was always going to stay in the wider Habsburg family, but it was a question of whether it went to one the French supported.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Austrian_Succession

But by the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) ('French and Indian War' in the USA), France and Austria were allied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War

The one constant in all these was England/Britain fighting France, not over whether a French or Spanish prince would become Holy Roman Emperor, but just over power and colonial control.

[wnylib]

26. Oops. You are right. I conflated the War of the Spanish Succession

with an earlier (about 2 centuries earlier) battle over European powers when The Holy Roman Emperor was Spanish.

[malthaussen]

25. Yeah, basically. Some of these principalities were pretty damned poor.

Not so very different from other Feudal lords, though, except they were suzerains rather than owing allegiance to somebody else.

-- Mal

[Retrograde]

19. In the 18th and 19th century their major exports

were royal spouses for other so-called kingdoms. You see, your monarch couldn't just marry a subject, no matter how rich, smart, or accomplished, because that would dilute the bloodlines and somehow make the monarch less, well, monarch-ish. So they looked around for someone who's father had a title and an kingdom (or principality, or grand dukedom) and married them off to others of their ilk. The Duchy of Saxe-Coburg married into the royal families of Great Britain (twice!), Russia, and Portugal, and one of them somehow ended up as the king of Belgium (and that's just one set of siblings). And that's one reason they ended up being mostly German and related to each other by the start of WWI.

[wnylib]

23. The French intermarried with the Spanish.

The Norman French who ruled England after 1066 (William the Conqueror) also intermarried with the Scots, and much later, with the English whom they had conquered. Those Normans were actually descendants of Vikings, but had married into the French royal and noble families before the conquest of England.

The Norman Plantagenet lines intermarried with their cousins in England (descendants of Edward III's large family) and fought each other constantly over the throne (Wars of the Roses, aka The Cousins' Wars).

By the time of Henry VIII, the English and Spanish lines had intermarried a few times. By the time of Queen Victoria, the large number of her children had intermarried with so many European royals that she was called the grandmother of Europe. Her namesake daughter married the German Crown Prince, Frederick William. It was their son, Wilhelm II who became Kaiser Bill of WWI. (He was also the jerk who forced my mother's grandparents to flee the German Empire as political refugees.)

[MineralMan]

5. Another thing: You can save the entire map in full resolution.

In Windows, just right click on the enlarged version and click Save As. That will make it easier to browse the map.

[Dave in VA]

7. Thanks for posting

Love looking at old maps. They are always fascinating!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. This is what guides Mockalito in his decisions.

[crickets]

12. Fascinating map and discussion. Bookmarking.

[whistler162]

13. At thge time of the map

Interesting my father's ancestors were Danish at that time and the house my grandfather grew up in was less than 100 years old.

[grantcart]

14. Fascinating. Amazing how large Lithuania is.

[Wednesdays]

16. Poland-Lithuania was the dominant country in Eastern Europe

from the mid 15th to the mid 17th centuries. They were a menace to the Russians, not vice-versa until the 1700s.

[Wednesdays]

15. Within just a few years after that, the French

booted the English out of Normandy.

[paleotn]

18. Beautiful map. Germany, oh Germany.....

What we know as Germany was a mess until the 19th century.

Scotland and The Isles, domain of the Lords of the Isles, were separate then. My peeps were from both sides. Plus the north of England, Lancashire and Yorkshire to the borders, plus the West Country, Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset. 95% of my ancestry in one swath.

[FakeNoose]

20. Lithuania is gigantic on this map, compared to what it is now

Also Sweden is more than double in size to what it is now.

Germany doesn't exist yet, it's just a collection of "postage stamp" kingdoms in 1444. But the Holy Roman Empire - the precursor to modern Germany in many ways - did already exist in the 1400s. It's interesting to study the evolution of the modern countries of Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and others.

Thanks for posting!

[CloudWatcher]

21. Source

https://www.deviantart.com/ratkabratka/art/Europe-1444-Map-879567777

and

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1001277614/europe-1444-history-map

[KY_EnviroGuy]

27. Found what may be the ancestral home of all Republicans....

Angermanland.........




Thanks for posting this fantastic map, Packman.....

[Hortensis]

28. Great map, interesting comments. Thanks, Packman!

[Conjuay]

29. as Terry Pratchett once wrote

"You need a passport to lay down".