by Caleb Carr
his saddle’s iron stirrups A detail that goes unnoticed by Gibbon reveals itself, in the modern era of military history (and military technological history, especially), as being of enormous importance: Broken’s mounted troops were using metal stirrups. The ancient Romans had no such advantage, accounting for why their cavalry units were not the most feared parts of their armies: it was the bracing offered by metal stirrups that created the stability necessary for men on charging horses to drive spear and lance points into massed infantry, as well as the control needed for mounted archers to fire without gripping the horse’s reins. (There were Asian steppe and American Indian tribes whose warriors could perform this action by way of using their thighs alone to control their mounts, but such were highly exceptional troops, at this time, and relatively rare.) Without the stability and control made possible by iron and steel stirrups, horsemen were relatively easily knocked to the ground; whereas, possessed of this seemingly simple advantage, they were very hard to dislodge from their mounts. Two questions concerning Broken’s cavalry, however, remain: If they were indeed using stirrups, why were their mounted units not larger, more heavily armed, or trained in the performance of massed shock tactics that the innovation allowed? Furthermore, from whom did they borrow the all-important advance in mounted technology, which would literally change the face and fate of Europe? Whatever the case, by failing, on the one hand, to increase the size of units that had been given drastically increased shock power, and, on the other, to arm them with the full range of weapons that heavy cavalry mounted with metal stirrups could employ, and by electing instead to maintain their imitation of the old Roman model despite possessing a tremendous advantage, the Broken army committed an error of enormous magnitude. —C.C.
elected officials It is worth underscoring the point that the Bane’s process of electing various governmental officials, including their chief, was in keeping with the “barbarian”—or at least the Germanic—norm of the Dark Ages. Indeed, Western democracy owes as much (or more) to the codes of these societies than it does to those of ancient Greece and Rome. The Bane’s granting of an at least occasionally preemptive right of fiat to the High Priestess of the Moon does reveal, however, as the narrator suggests, a paradoxical, simultaneous, and deep tie between the exiles’ government and that of the city out of which they had been cast. —C.C.
raft of parchment documents Although both the people of Broken and the Bane could make parchment from the organs and hides of calves, goats, and sheep, “the Tall” were considered the more advanced of the two peoples, in this context, mainly because they preserved the technique of manufacturing parchment scrolls: long sheets of parchment wound around two rods, or batons, with “pages” being “turned” by unwinding one rod and winding the other. The Bane, for their part, relied on loosely bound sheets of parchment, the irony being that, today, the image of the scroll has become emblematic of the archaic: indeed, it is virtually synonymous with ancient and early medieval cultures, while the bound sheets of parchment that the Bane employed were of course the earliest forms of modern books, and were symbols, therefore, of progress.
four-year-old Effi The names of Keera’s children, like those of Sixt Arnem’s, offer important clues as to the cultural drift of each society, Bane and Broken. Effi is a form of the modern German Elfriede, Baza is an Old High German variation of the Slavic Boris, while Herwin is related to the modern Erwin, which is itself a variation of Hermann, still a common enough name in contemporary Germany, despite its original meaning: “friend of the army.” In short, the Bane, for all their imagined “inferiority,” may have been more closely linked to the modern German people than were the subjects of Broken. —C.C.
ackars Ackar is believed to be the Old High German word for “acre,” and the amount of land it represented was reasonably close to that which we continue to assign to the term today. Some premodern definitions of an “acre” can vary a little, since the word literally refers to the amount of ground an ox can plough in a day, and certain unscrupulous, land-hungry authorities used teams of two oxen to get an increased measurement. Then, too, not all ground is equally easy to plough; but despite these and other considerations, the differences between the several legitimate versions tend to be small, and come out somewhere near the modern number of 43,560 square feet. —C.C.
“Alandra” Another Broken dialectal rendering, this time of the modern German Alexandra, which is derived from the older Alessandra. Like its male counterpart, Alexander, the name means “protector”—a fact that, in the case of this particular woman, will prove accurate in one sense, but far more ironic, and even sinister, in another. —C.C.
sukkar The Arabic term for sugar, Arab traders having introduced granulated sugar made from Indian cane into the West only in the early eighth century: very shortly before the events recounted in the Broken Manuscript took place. Gibbon may have let this usage go without comment simply because he found its meaning obvious. —C.C.
phrenetic There are cases in which an archaic spelling for a word that we might think anachronistic goes a long way toward demonstrating how very old some seemingly “modern” concepts are, and I have therefore left them in their original form; “phrenetic” is one such example. —C.C.
surmount their backs The color and general appearance of these creatures, together with their living in northern Germany, mark them as almost certainly being Great Crested Newts (Triturus cristatus), whose range once included almost all of Europe, and who have been reduced in number in modern times only by the loss of their habitat due to human development, to the point that they are now a threatened species. Newts are not, as Isadora seems to indicate, precisely the same animals as salamanders: but both do make up the two classes of the family Salimandridae, and it is therefore likely that no distinction was drawn between them in the ancient world, or during the Dark Ages. In addition, while the differing feeding, mating, breathing, and breeding habits and techniques of the seventy-odd members of this family are impossible to completely detail here, both newts and especially salamanders did, indeed, possess certain very important mystical and spiritual properties, in certain religions and folklores of those eras: they were fire spirits, or “elementals,” just as undines (or, variously, ondines) were water spirits, gnomes Earth spirits, and sylphs spirits of the air. Elementals were thought to be actually composed of their basic element, and the human who could control such a creature could, at least temporarily, control that element. —C.C.
“Emalrec” Though it passes unmentioned by Gibbon, this name contains a mild irony: if we account for the vowel shift of Old High German, it becomes the fairly common Amalrec, a variation of Emmerich, both of which connote “powerful worker”—hardly accurate, in this case, and perhaps an intentional comment upon the state of affairs in the Fifth District, and in Broken’s society generally. Berthe, meanwhile, is obviously an archaic form of Bertha, drawn from the root beraht, meaning “bright” or “famous”: also an irony. —C.C.
such rough material Gibbon continues to pay little attention to the questions of how, and to what extent (a considerable one), judgments concerning wealth and station were drawn from elementary statements about clothing, particularly among women, in Broken as elsewhere in “barbarian” Europe. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that we find still more proof, here, that a woman’s clothing and therefore station in life were signaled by, in descending order, material(s) used, the quality of needlework, and color (expensive dyes obviously being available only to people of means). “Fashion,” as we understand the word today, scarcely existed, even in one of the most advanced societies of the time. In the case of the unfortunate Berthe, for example, the flat statement that she wears “a simple piece of sackcloth … poorly stitched” (sackcloth being a material that, since the time of the ancient Hebrews, had been used by penitents and mourners, who wished to deliberately torment themselves) seems intended to fix her station, in our minds. And indeed it can, if we are aware that sackcloth was no more than the burla
p-like substance used, as the name indicates, for making sacks to hold grains, cotton, root vegetables, and similar items; it cannot, in short, have been a comfortable garment, even if “well stitched,” especially not for a woman who was pregnant, and even less for one who had no “smock,” which, again, during this period referred to a simple robe, usually cotton, that women wore as an undergarment, if they could afford it. —C.C.
“plague” If this seems a leap to a conclusion on Isadora’s part, we should remember that the bubonic plague was constantly on the minds of people throughout Europe, Asia, and especially northern Africa (where most outbreaks began) during this period. Its principal symptoms were widely known, enough so that someone like Berthe could realize that if her husband’s sores had not developed into buboes, the near-black sores that gave the Death its name, the disease was likely not the plague. On the other hand, many other people were not capable of such discrimination, leaving open the possibility that Berthe’s ability was only a product of her association with Isadora, a gifted healer. —C.C.
“rose fever” Variations on this term can be found in more than a few ancient and medieval manuscripts, as can the many other names given to what was almost certainly typhoid fever; but it is important to note that “rose fever” could denote several other mortal fevers and sicknesses that shared crucial symptoms. The most common of these was typhus, and the general inability to tell the difference between the two during ancient and medieval times—evident in the similarity of and relationship between their names—was a problem especially pertinent to and within the Broken Manuscript, as shall be seen. Even Gibbon, given the extent of medical knowledge in his eighteenth century, was in no position to make such distinctions (indeed, it was only in the nineteenth century that typhoid fever and typhus were definitely identified as two different illnesses); and at the time during which the events in the Manuscript were taking place, the lines between pestilences were far more blurred, so that the term “rose fever” likely included several other candidates, as well. Today, we can be more discriminating, and try to accurately distinguish between what were certainly (as we shall soon see) two illnesses that struck at the kingdom of Broken and the lands around it at the same time, but that were collectively labeled “plague” by the stricken peoples; and the most important differentiating factor, in terms of understanding the events that the rest of the Manuscript chronicles, lies in the methods of transmission of these illnesses: direct physical contact with the afflicted, breathing of the same air or drinking of the same water, and finally (as we shall soon see) eating the same diet, a practice that brings into the picture yet another widespread disease with certain similar (actually, more horrific, but, ironically, less virulent) symptoms, a further confusion that would make the situation even harder to analyze. Note: To say more of this last method of transmission at this juncture would be to spoil the suspense that the narrator is working hard to construct, at this as at other points: it is enough that we note, here, that two diseases were actually at work in Broken, and that none of them was actually “the plague” or “the Death,” phrases generally reserved for the Black Death, or bubonic plague.
Finally, it also should be noted that this phenomenon of two diseases being identified as one was not at all unusual, during this historical era; in fact, it is in many ways typical, especially of how little medicine had been allowed to advance by the various monotheistic faiths (for which dissection of the bodies of those killed by the afflictions was a sin), in the four or five hundred years since Galen. —C.C.
“Bohemer” and “Jerej” Both Slavic, and probably Slovak (given the geography), names, of which Gibbon comments, “We know the Slavs to have followed earlier invader tribes into central Europe by the beginning of the sixth century, and we must concern ourselves here with one of the principal groupings of this race, the Bulgars, whom we know to have undergone, by the late seventh century, a fractious division into two or more ‘empires’ of ‘great khans’—neither of which ‘empire,’ we should note, was as powerful or even as large as Broken. One of the chief factions thus produced moved east to the familiar ground of the Volga, while the other pushed on to establish itself upon the lower Danube; and from this forcefully acquired territory, the second group immediately commenced raiding the settlements, not only of the Byzantine [or Eastern Roman] Empire to the south, but of other barbarian tribes in other directions. It therefore seems entirely credible that, by the moment of Broken’s crisis two centuries later, superfluous, criminal, or merely adventurous members of this empire—which had by then become firmly entrenched—might have struck out on their own, to find their fortunes in such famously wealthy kingdoms as Broken. Or, they may have been prisoners of war—or perhaps they even entered Broken, like Heldo-Bah, under the rather sinisterly ingenious policy of indentured servitude that allowed flesh-dealers to cheat Broken’s laws concerning slavery.” The two names, like the two servants, have rather contradictory natures, each being Broken dialectal versions of Slovak names, in the first case for “god of peace,” the second, “worker of the earth.” —C.C.
bulger Gibbon writes, “While we have no specific justification for believing as much, it seems plain, given the information gleaned thus far, that this adjective is connected to a name: ‘Bulgar,’ which remains the shortened form of ‘Bulgarian.’ But there is a matter of interest here that makes the word, perhaps, more than just another Broken adaptation of another people’s name: when the narrator refers to the Frankesh (‘Frankish’) or to the Varisian (‘Frisian’) tribes, the first letter of each name appears in the upper case, as a measure of respect, one not accorded to such tribes as the seksents (Saxons), a name which, as we have seen, the subjects of Broken likely equated with ‘peasants.’ Apparently their attitude toward bulgers was similar; indeed, it is possible that this little piece of the Broken dialect contributed to one of the modern German terms for ‘vulgar,’ vulg, as much as did the commonly-cited Latin vulgaris.” [It should be noted, here, that Gibbon is indulging his sometimes wild taste for speculation. —C.C.]
“red poppy lip paint” Ignored, perhaps not surprisingly, by Gibbon, are these examples of ancient and medieval cosmetics from opposite ends of the safety spectrum: rose water (produced when rose oil is created through the steam distilling of rose petals) was used then much as it is today, for harmlessly scenting and softening the skin, while galena is the naturally occurring form of lead sulfide, with all the toxic implications that the term carries. Fortunately, Isadora is using it, as did many, as eye makeup alone, which would limit the area of application, diminishing absorption through the skin and making accidental interaction with the eye the only real danger. “Lip paint,” in which flower or berry juice was used for tinting, usually had a beeswax base, making the only possible toxic reaction in this case the effect of the poppies themselves: not a concern, as the plants had to have flowered to produce petals for tinting, whereas opium is derived from first scoring the immature seedpods of the plant, then harvesting the thin latex that oozes from the cuts, and finally processing it. —C.C.
surcoat Both Old Saxon and Old Low German had terms that contributed to the word “coat”; and so, while “surcoat” itself is derived from the French and is also a term that came into use in a later period, there was almost certainly an analogous concept in the Broken dialect. The more interesting question here is not one of etymology, but of the object itself, since surcoats bearing heraldic figures are not even thought to have been in use in Europe until well after the eighth century. Yet, because the crest that appears on the surcoat in question—the rampant bear of Broken—involves the emblem of a kingdom, instead of a family or an individual knight, it is consistent with the development of European heraldry, which was still using such crests as most ancient peoples (particularly the Romans) did: to connote national, imperial, or individual military unit identity, rather than family or personal distinction. —C.C.
best marauder sword The debate over which Eastern “marauding” tribes�
�that is, those who raided into Europe, such as the Huns, Avars, and Mongols—as well as which Muslim armies (or, more precisely, which parts of which Muslims armies) carried the kind of curved blade that Dagobert is said to be girded with, here, is one that has persisted for well over a hundred years. Some authorities claim that there is a widespread misperception—largely created by fiction and Hollywood—that such “exotic” or “Oriental” peoples as the Muslims and the Huns used curved, single-edged sabers and scimitars, in keeping with their non-Roman, non-Western appearance. But in fact, while there is strong reason to think that raiding peoples may have adopted such a weapon during the period under discussion for their cavalry units (curved blades being easier to withdraw from an enemy’s body at high speed), those marauder and Muslim soldiers who made up their infantry arms almost always copied the enormously successful double-edged, straight weapons of the Sassanid Persian Empire. As is so often the case, in such debates, one can scarcely do better than to go back to the remarkable archaeological work done by the famed traveler, adventurer, and “Orientalist,” Sir Richard F. Burton, contained in his The Book of the Sword, originally published in 1884, but wisely kept in print by Dover in an only slightly edited and abridged edition of 1987. —C.C.