The Fevered Past

Patreon Link: https://www.patreon.com/TheFeveredPast In 1392, the King of France rode out of a forest near Le Mans, killed four of his own knights, and had to be wrestled to the ground by his uncle. He was twenty-three. He had been on the throne for twelve years. He would remain on it for another thirty. Charles VI of France, called the Beloved by his people and the Mad by history, suffered the fi...

In June of 323 BCE, Alexander the Great died in Babylon. He was thirty-two. He had taken the known world from the Adriatic to the Indus in a decade. He had crossed two continents at the head of an army. He had survived a near-drowning in an icy river, a stone to the head, and an arrow through the lung. And then, over the course of eleven or twelve days, a fever did what no army had managed. The mo...

In the summer of 430 BCE, something horrific tore through Athens. The city was at war with Sparta, packed beyond capacity with refugees from the countryside, and entirely unprepared for what came through its gates next. Within four years, perhaps a quarter of the population was dead, including the man who had led Athens into the war. We have an eyewitness account of the disease from Thucydides, wh...