Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans, episode 150, the last chivalric battles,

Morgarten and Muldorf, and that's also episode 13 of season 8, from the Interregnum to the Golden Bull.

The 14th century is a time of epic change in practically all areas of social, political and economic life.

It is a time when the certainties of the Middle Ages are replaced by a process of trial and error,

sometimes successful, but almost always violent.

We see new frameworks of how society, and in particular the religious authorities should

operate, how political power should be distributed, and how economic growth could be preserved

at a time when the climatic benefits of the medieval warming period had come to an end.

Ah, and then there was the Black Death.

In this episode we will talk about the political dimensions of this change.

First, how the conflict between the three dominating houses,

the Habsburgs, the Wittlesbachs and the Luxembourgs pans out,

though whilst the mighty lords believe it's all about marriage alliances

and knights dominating the battlefield,

the ground on which their mighty war horses are galloping is shifting.

But before we start a couple of housekeeping things.

We have now reached episode 150.

Which means if you have lesson to every episode,

you would have listened to 311,361 seconds of the history of the Germans, which is 5,189 minutes, or 86.5 hours, or three days, 14 hours and 29 minutes. I salute you.

I also know that for anyone coming to the podcast new, these figures are intimidating.

Therefore, I have gone down further in my attempt to break the show up into seasons.

That does not lead to any changes if you're on Spotify, Pocketcast and many other platforms,

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