The Almost Forgotten

Matthias Corvinus became King of Hungary as it was beginning to deal with the Ottoman threat. He united the fractured kingdom, bringing powerful magnates to heel and creating a strong centralized state. He created a significant power in Southeast Europe that was able to hold of the Ottomans and take lands from the Holy Roman Empire.

Margaret lived in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and was the daughter of the King of Denmark. Despite obstacles, and general opposition to ruling queens at the time, she not only became the Queen of Denmark, she also was able to gain the crown of two more Scandinavian kingdoms, uniting them in a personal union that last more than century.

Alauddin Khalji became the Sultan of Delhi, and greatly expanded the kingdom. He fended off multiple Mongol invasions, and he in turn invaded most of the Indian subcontinent to his south. He turned a relatively small Sultanate into a great power, and ruled over most of India.

Baibars was the Sultan of Egypt and Syria in the 13th century. Born on the Eurasian Steppe, he was enslaved as a teen, and became a slave soldier. He rose through the ranks to become a general, and eventually the Sultan of Cairo. He helped stop the Mongol advance into the Levant, and effectively ended the Crusades in the Middle East. And he stabilized the Cairo Sultanate for generations.

The Lombards made their way into Italy in the 6th century, and were the bridge between the rule there of Roman Empires, both Western and Eastern, and the Holy Roman Empire. Liutprand was perhaps their greatest king, pulling together a kingdom from the various disunited Lombard dukedoms and creating a state that was the most powerful one on the peninsula for centuries earlier.

Songsten Gampo was the king of a small state in southern Tibet, which had only just begun to expand beyond its perhaps centuries-old domain. From this, he created a long-lasting Tibetan Empire, which ruled most of the Tibetan Plateau for centuries and, thanks in no small part to Songsten Gampo, became the center of Buddhism for perhaps the whole world.

Dion was born in Syracuse and became a trusted advisor to the city’s tyrant. But Dion’s relationship with the next tyrant was no so hot, and after falling out, Dion became a reformer. As a student of Plato, he saw an opportunity to implement the philosopher’s ideal Republic, and he seized the moment to try.

Leukon was the tyrant, then king, of the Cimmerian Bosporus, a territory on the Crimean Peninsula, at the very edge of the Greek world. He took the territory, capitalized on its relationship to the rest of the Greek world to create an important Hellenized kingdom that would last for centuries.

Shutruk-Nakhunte was the most powerful king of Elam. He took this often times disunited culture, and created an empire out of it. Elam existed for thousands of years, but under Shutruk-Nakhunte they managed to be one of the great powers in the region, a rarity for them despite their long-lived civilization.

Burgundy is in turmoil after the death of Charles. His daughter Mary is his heir, but France, as well as the Netherlands, aren’t going to allow her to take power easily. Burgundy, though, survives in some way, beyond Mary, through her marriage into the powerful Habsburg family, and leaves a lasting legacy, at least in the Low Countries

Charles inherited a truly powerful state in Europe upon the death of his father. He was learned and brave, a strong military commander, and looked like he was going to be a leading man in European affairs for generations. But his obsession with his eastern frontier, coupled with a few tactical blunders, made it so that never happened, and ended Burgundy’s dominance.

Philip the Good became the new Duke of Burgundy after his father’s murder. He worked to expand Burgundy’s power, and ruled during its height in a way that kept it strong and secure. But he also missed real opportunities to make it something more.

With Philip the Bold’s death, his strategy of adding more territories to his heir is fulfilled, and John the Fearless inherits what is becoming a Burgundian state. John is even more ambitious than his father, seeking to control France, add to his own territory, and use any means at his disposal to accomplish his goals

The history of the Duchy of Burgundy continues with the first Valois Duke, Philip the Bold. Philip was a gifted statesman who help grow the duchy into a state that would eventually rival France itself.

Burgundy is a region in eastern France, which had once been an independent Germanic Kingdom. It became a Duchy of France before entering a Golden Age in the 14th and 15th century and turning into something even bigger

Nzinga was queen of an African kingdom in today’s Angola. She fought with, and at times allied with, the various colonial and indigenous powers in the region, lost most of her kingdom, gained another, and was able to resist European occupation and keep her kingdom relatively free for decades.

Bayinnaung was a prince and leading general of a small Burmese kingdom. He helped lead it to become a large empire, only to watch it dissolve when his king was killed. But he quickly restored it, before expanding it more himself, creating the largest land empire in Southeast Asia.

Jan Zizka was dead, but the Hussite cause was not. They continued to fight the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. They found a new leader in Prokop the Great, and were able to keep Sigismund at bay, but internal turmoil helped splintered the Hussites, but also helped usher in a real compromise.

The Hussites, now fighting both the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire, find the leader they need to survive against impossible odds in Jan Zizka. Zizka was an incredible commander, who never lost a battle, and helped lay the groundwork for two centuries of a semi-independent Bohemian Church.

The Hussite Wars started in 1419 with the first defenestration of Prague. Here we discuss the road to the war, including the situation in Bohemia, and the preaching and then killing of Jan Hus.

Matilda was the Margrave of Tuscany and for a time was the most powerful leader in northern Italy. She acted as an almost independent leader rather than a subject of the Holy Roman Empire, fighting with it over policy and supporting papal authority over imperial in an effort to reform and revitalize the church

Abd al Rahman, once a legitimate heir to the largest empire in the world, had to hide and flee in exile when his dynasty was overthrown and his family was destroyed. But he wound up in Spain, where he consolidated the fractured Arab conquest and reignited his dynasty.

Cyaxares was the king of the Medes, who helped destroy the mighty and terrifying Neo-Assyrian Empire, create a massive empire based in the small region of Media, and laid the foundation of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Piye was the King of Kush at a time when Egypt was weakened. He ruled over southern Egypt before trouble to his north brought him into conflict with the Egyptian kinglets in the Lower Nile region up North. He defeated them, and brought the Nubian Kingdom of Kish to it’s greatest heights

Ur-Nammu was the first king of the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur. He helped restore native dominance in Sumer after centuries of foreign rule, instituted reforms and rebuilt the Sumerian infrastructure, and helped usher in the final era of Sumerian rule in Mesopotamia under the Neo-Sumerian Empire.