Alexander the Great: Legolas Meets Point Break

In this week's episode, we discuss a man whose reputation isn't just good; It's GRRREAT. In our first interlude, we join Alexander as he uses his genius to take on, and take down the greatest warriors of that time: The Sacred Band of Thebes.

Next, Mark walks us through Alexander's impressive childhood and education under the tutelage of Aristotle. We meet a young man who is destined for great things.  Mark then highlights Alexander's military victories and a few of his strategic errors. Lastly, Mark goes over Alexander's final days and theories surrounding his untimely death at the age of 33.

In the second interlude, we tag along as a soldier battles against Alexander's siege towers and war elephants to protect the Mediterranean capital of Carthage. The global economy hangs in the balance.

In our What if? scenario, Alexander beats a lethal bout of malaria and lives into old age. What other worlds would he have conquered? What other things would he have achieved?

Let's take a trip

Transcript

Introduction
Hello, my name is Mark Bouffard. Welcome to What If World History?

Like you, I share a passion for civilizations, cultures, and stories of the past. This show looks at the epic events that sewed the fabric of our history and sculpted the world we now know. And it imagines: What If they happened a little bit differently?

Would it change the outcome? What might the “new history” look like?

I invite you to explore the possibilities with me.

Before we begin, I’d like to take a quick minute to ask you to drop a review on the podcast in whatever app you are listening. You can also follow What if World History? on Facebook and LinkedIn. We are @spin_history on Twitter and hypothetical history on Instagram.

If this is your first time listening, we will explore events as they happened in our history, then we will envision an alternative timeline and show how it will shape a new future. Along the way, we will put you in the shoes of some of the key players through a series of Diaries.

Let’s take a trip.

Our episode today is:
Alexander the Great: Twentysomething Genius
In this episode, we will look at the life of the world’s first child prodigy, Alexander the Great. And we ponder a timeline in which history’s greatest general lives past thirty-three and unites the Mediterranean Sea and its coastal countries under his progressive rule.

Breaking Up the Sacred Band
Alexander of Macedonia
Chaeronea, Greece
May 21, 338 B.C.

This diary is due, in large part, to the superb story-telling of Steven Pressfield in The Virtues of War. He writes: Those who do not understand war believe it is contention between armies, friend against foe. No. Rather friend and foe dual as one against an unseen antagonist, whose name is Fear, and see, even entwined in death, to mount to that promontory whose Sigel is honor.

Alexander III was a head taller than his colleagues, but he appeared much bigger atop his towering, beautiful white stallion Bucephalus. With curly, flowing blonde locks and a tanned, chiseled face with bright blue eyes, he resembled a cross between Legolas in Lord of the Rings and Patric Swayze in Point Break.

His father had given him the seemingly impossible task of defeating the Sacred Band of Thebes.

Pressfield writes: The Sacred Band are all hoplites, heavily armored infantry. Their panoply is a helmet of bronze or iron, bronze front-and-back cuirass, shin guards, and a three-foot bowl-shaped shield, oak-faced with bronze. They are the most heavily armored infantryman in the world. With shields at high port and lapped, their helmet crowns and eye slits are alone visible above the upper rims. The Sacred Band presents to the foe a solid wall of bronze and iron.

The Band has no cavalry and fears no cavalry. Horse troops are useless, they believe, against the bronze-armored, densely packed, spear-bristling phalanx. They fight in close order. The warrior’s weapons are the eight-foot spear, with which they strike overhand from behind the lapped faces of their shields, and the short Spartan-style cut-and-thrust sword, which they use for close work. The Band advances to the cadence of the flute and has no call for retreat. Its code is Stand and Die.

The two armies line up to seize each other up and match up against specific, scouted counterparts for the day’s fighting. As always before a battle, gangs of local kids dart in bold sprints across no-man’s land. Their dogs chase; it is a great sport for them.

The smell of impending battle lingers in the air. Horse piss sluices in the mud. Alexander could smell the crap, from the men and the mounts, along with liquor and leather. The acrid breath of the mingled squadrons mixed with the tang of the grass and the smell of oil on iron evokes battle like no other.

Sometimes the key to battle is showing the enemy what you want them to see, what they want to see while hiding what is most important from their view.

He has studied their tactics and has a trap ready. Alexander knows the Sacred Band wants to fight at his center so they can swing infantry across his left flank and encircle the Macedonians.

Why not, it worked extremely well in their battles for more than forty years.

Alexander knows this and presents the illusion he is falling for their trap, but Alexander keeps his cavalry out of sight and softens their ranks with javelin throwers. As the armies march towards each other additional troops reinforces the rear of the Sacred Band ready to spring their trap.

Alexander launches a forward attack at a diagonal to the right of the Band and charges with cavalry. The elite soldiers of the Sacred Band are left looking at an empty field. They come forward to attack the exposed flank that is attacking at a diagonal but are met with 800 heavy cavalry at full speed.

Alexander knows one core truth: death is nothing alongside the will to fight. He must be the flame that ignites and holds the will of his soldiers, or all would be lost.

A gap opens between the Sacred Band and the allied soldiers on its flank. In this space, between two very different levels of soldiers, Alexandar charges in.

Bucephalus stands eight feet high and weighs over twelve hundred pounds. His hooves on the earth make tracks broad as skillets; his quarters are the size of kettles, and he bristles with thick iron armor across his chest.

Horses are herd animals and follow the lead animal, even if it’s off a cliff. The other cavalry horses follow Bucephalus in a wedge formation into the midst of the Sacred Band.

Muralists depict the clash of cavalry with lances thrusting and swords slashing. But in the crush, it is the horse who does the damage, not the man. The rider in a melee is, to all purposes, out of his mind. So is his mount, and he, the rider, must use this against the foe. Bucephalus kicks at anything behind him and strikes with his teeth any flesh he can reach.

In a matter of minutes, the Sacred Band dies where they stand. Alexander is anguished at killing such accomplished soldiers, but his pleas for surrender go unheeded. Some wounded soldiers open up their lacerations to ensure their death, while others have to be disarmed to keep from killing themselves. Of the 300 members of the Sacred Band, only six are left. The Band will never fight again as an elite unit.

Through his brilliance and bravery, Alexander has won a great victory and cemented himself at the front of his army as a force of nature that will sweep his foes from the field of battle.


Part 1: Rise of Alexander
Alexander of Macedonia is pretty special. Many would say great. Very few people in history have grabbed the ring of immortality that accompanies a life worth retelling more than 2,000 years later. And certainly, no one else in history has built a global empire by his mid-twenties.

The story of Alexander starts in Greece, which is divided into small kingdoms with names like Macedon, Thessaly, Aetolia, Attica, and Peloponnesus. Amongst these kingdoms were storied city-states like Sparta, Athens, and Thebes.

Jutting into the Mediterranean is the Greek peninsula and hundreds of islands, including the massive island Crete. Across the Ionian Sea on one side of the peninsula is Rome and across the Aegean Sea on the other side of the peninsula is the Persian Empire.

According to history.com Alexander III was born in Pella, Macedonia, in 356 B.C. to King Philip II and Queen Olympias—although legend had it his father was none other than Zeus, the ruler of the Greek gods. Philip II was an impressive military man in his own right. He turned Macedonia (a region on the northern part of the Greek peninsula) into a force to be reckoned with, and he fantasized about conquering the massive Persian Empire.

In A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, Roisman and Worthington detail a key moment in his early life: When Alexander was ten years old, a trader from Thessaly brought Philip a horse, which he offered to sell for thirteen talents. The horse refused to be mounted, and Philip ordered it away. Alexander, however, detecting the horse's fear of its own shadow, asked to tame the horse, which he eventually managed. Plutarch stated that his father, Philip, overjoyed at this display of courage and ambition, kissed his son tearfully, declaring: "My boy, you must find a kingdom big enough for your ambitions. Macedon is too small for you", and bought the horse for him. Alexander named it Bucephalus, meaning "ox-head". Bucephalus carried Alexander through many of his battles and as far as India. When the animal died of old age at thirty, Alexander named a city after him, Bucephala.

In Alexander the Great, Nick McCarty writes: When Alexander turned 13, his father searched far and wide for a suitable tutor. Philip chose Aristotle and provided the Temple of the Nymphs as a classroom. In return for teaching Alexander, Philip agreed to rebuild Aristotle's hometown of Stageira, which Philip had razed, and to repopulate it by buying and freeing the ex-citizens who were slaves, or pardoning those who were in exile. The temple was like a boarding school for Alexander and the children of Macedonian nobles, such as Ptolemy, Hephaistion, and Cassander. Many of these students would become his lifelong friends and future generals.

McCarty goes on to detail: Aristotle taught Alexander and his companions about medicine, philosophy, morals, religion, logic, and art. Under Aristotle's tutelage, Alexander developed a passion for the works of Homer, and in particular the Iliad; Aristotle gave him an annotated copy, which Alexander later carried on his campaigns.

In addition to academics, Alexander was learning how to fight and lead men. But it wasn’t done in the traditional sense. Steven Pressfield, in The Virtues of War, provides this detail from Alexander: My father never schooled me in warfare as such. Rather he plunged me into it. I first fought beneath his command at twelve, led infantry at fourteen, cavalry at sixteen. I never saw him so proud as to when I showed him my first wound, a lance thrust through my left shoulder.

At sixteen, Alexander was left in charge of the kingdom when his father went north to fight the Thracians. At eighteen in 338 B.C., Alexander commanded the left flank of his father’s army where his father pitted him against the legendary Sacred Band of Thebes, who were considered the best soldiers of that era. Utilizing coordinated cavalry charges and diagonal attacks, he routed the band and helped win the day for his father.

But misfortune was around the corner. Soon after the battle, Philip took another wife, Cleopatra, a Macedonian girl of high nobility. The marriage made Alexander's position as heir less secure since any son of Cleopatra Eurydice would be a fully Macedonian heir, while Alexander was only half-Macedonian.

According to thehistoryofmacedonia.com: At the wedding banquet, Cleopatra's uncle, general Attalus, made a remark about Philip fathering a ‘legitimate’ heir, i.e., one that was of pure Macedonian blood. Alexander threw his cup at the man, blasting him for calling him 'bastard child’. Philip stood up, drew his sword, and charged at Alexander, only to trip and fall on his face in his drunken stupor at which Alexander shouted: "Here is the man who was making ready to cross from Europe to Asia, and who cannot even cross from one table to another without losing his balance."

He then took his mother and fled the country but returned in six months. A few years later, Philip was assassinated by the captain of his bodyguards, some say at the orders of Alexander. Regardless, he was proclaimed king by the nobles and the army and assumed the throne at the age of 20.

With a professional army and a thirst for global conquest, Alexander set out to establish Macedon, and himself, as the ruler of the largest kingdom in the world.


Part 2: A Forest of Spears
Alexander was in the position to launch a global crusade of conquest, in large part, because of the work of his father to train an army and innovate its tactics to dominate on the battlefield. Philip’s innovation was the Macedonian phalanx.

In The Greek Armies, Peter Connolly discusses how different they were from their counterparts who took the field of battle. Philip's military reforms were a new approach to the current hoplite warfare which focused on their shield; his focus was on a new weapon, the sarissa, a long wooden and iron pike. Philip also increased the amount of training required for the infantry and introduced regulations on military behavior.

Prior to Phillip’s innovation, sarissa were typically 8-10 feet in length. His soldiers carried 18 ft pikes. Adding 8-10 feet gave his soldiers a distinctive advantage in inflicting injury and death upon their counterparts before they even had a chance to touch the Macedonians.

Connoly goes on: Each soldier carried as his primary weapon a sarissa, a double-pointed pike, which was carried in two pieces before a battle and then slid together when they were being used. At close range, such large weapons were of little use, but an intact phalanx could easily keep its enemies at a distance. The weapons of the first five rows of men all projected beyond the front of the formation so that there were more spear points than available targets at any given time. Men in rows behind the initial five angled their spears at a 45-degree angle in an attempt to ward off arrows or other projectiles. The secondary weapon was a shortsword and was accompanied by a small and flat shield made of bronze plated wood and was worn hung around the neck so as to free up both hands to wield the sarissa. All of the armor and weaponry a Macedonian soldier would carry totaled about 40 pounds, which was close to 10 pounds less than the weight of Greek hoplite equipment.

Both Philip and Alexander used the phalanx to hold the enemy in place while their heavy cavalry broke through their ranks. The Macedonian cavalry fought in wedge formation and was almost always stationed on the far right. The elite infantrymen who served as the king's bodyguard were stationed on the immediate right of the phalanx. The left flank was generally covered by allied cavalry, who served mainly in a defensive role. Other forces—skirmishers, range troops, reserves of allied hoplites, archers, and artillery—were also employed behind the phalanx.

Simple in its design, Macedonian battle formations required significant discipline to wield weapons properly, coordinate key movements and attacks, and take advantage of openings in the line to maximize enemy losses.

Yet despite its simplicity in organization and tactics, this army, bolstered by conquered peoples, marched more than 11,000 miles across the Mediterranean and would remain undefeated in battles against larger armies in Persia, India, Egypt, and Asia Minor.

Philip might have built the army, but it was only Alexander who made them great. Norman Cantor writes in Alexander the Great: Alexander was a very brave man. He personally led his troops and amazed even his enemies with his almost superhuman feats. He suffered at least four major wounds, coming close to death on two occasions. He shared rations with his soldiers, and at times of water scarcity, he refused sustenance. He led his soldiers across deserts and over mountains into places no one else would dare go.

In the process, he gained immortality.


Part 3: All I Do is Win
In Alexander’s time, the Persian empire was the dominant player in the Mediterranean. Its territory stretched along the shores of the sea from today’s Bulgaria, across Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia into India and China on the Asian continent. Against its foes, it could field an army of 100,000.

But before Alexander could take on the Persians, who he had studied since childhood, he first had to consolidate his hold over the Greek peninsula. In Macedon, he eliminated his political rivals and had his father’s most recent wife and daughter burned alive. He even had one of his father’s generals murdered to ensure the army would be led by his friends, with whom he studied under Aristotle.

After a few key wins over the armies in Thessaly, the rest of the Greek kingdoms bent the knee and promised fealty. The other option being the complete destruction of their cities and their women and children being sold into slavery, which was common practice at the time.

With the Greek peninsula under his control, and his army bolstered with conscripts, Alexander set out to conquer an empire.

According to thehistoryofmacedonia.com: the army consisted of 25,000 Macedonians, 7,600 Greeks, and 7,000 Thracians and Illyrians, but the chief officers were all Macedonians, and Macedonians also commanded the foreign troops. The army soon encountered the forces of King Darius III. There were 40,000 Persians and 20,000 Greeks waiting for them at the crossing of the river Granicus, near the ancient city of Troy. 

The Macedonians defeated the Persians, although the Greeks held their ground and fiercely fought. Almost the entire Greek force was annihilated. 18,000 Greeks perished on the banks of Granicus and the 2,000 survivors were sent to forced labor in Macedonia.

After the battle, Alexander visited Gordium. Gordium was the home of the famous Gordian Knot. Alexander knew the legend said that the man who could untie the ancient knot was destined to rule the entire world. To that date, nobody had succeeded in raveling the knot. But the young Macedonian king simply slashed it with his sword and unraveled its ends. Pointing out it was never said how the knot could be unraveled.

In the autumn of 333 BC, the Macedonian armies encountered the Persian forces under the command of King Darius III himself at a mountain pass at Issus in northwestern Syria. The battle again ended with victory for Alexander and tens of thousands of Persians, Greeks, and Asiatic soldiers were killed. King Darius fled the field abandoning his mother, wife, and children who were in camp.

After that significant win, Alexander entered Egypt in 331 BC, where the Persian governor surrendered without a fight. After two hundred years of Persian rule, the Egyptians viewed the Macedonians as heroes. Here Alexander ordered that a city be designed and founded in his name at the mouth of the Nile river, as a trading and military Macedonian outpost. He never lived to see it built, but Alexandria would become a major economic and cultural center in the Mediterranean world not only during the Macedonian rule in Egypt but for centuries after.

Alexander then took his army back Eastward to pursue Darius and end his reign in battle or murder. By the time he caught up to him, he found the Persian king dead in his coach, assassinated by his own bodyguards.

Alexander then marched triumphantly into the Persian capital of Persopolis to assume his place as ruler of the largest empire in the world. But conquest is a thirst that cannot be quenched, and in a matter of years, he set out to invade India and topple its King Porus. In 326 BC, Alexander’s army met at the heavily defended river Hydaspes during a raging thunderstorm. It was here that the Macedonians first encountered war elephants, yet the outcome was still the same, a resounding victory for Alexander.

But the scale of fortune must be balanced with the weight of misfortune. And it was this battle that saw the death of Alexander’s beloved horse, Bucephalus.

Extended supply lines and the prospect of larger armies and a greater number of war elephants convinced Alexander to head back toward Persopolis. He was also dealing with a near mutiny from his men who had seen more than 8 years and 11,000 miles of fighting, marching, and death. Unfortunately for his men, the way home led through the infamous Makran desert.

According to Norman Cantor in Alexander the Great: It took sixty days to traverse the Makran desert, and after getting lost in a blinding sandstorm, the gaunt skeletons that had been Alexander’s army emerged. The disastrous march through the desert has been compared to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in 1812. The losses were staggering. Perhaps 85,000 people started into the desert; only about 25,000 survives. Alexander’s horses, equipment, and supplies were all lost, as were the majority of the noncombatants in the army.

When he arrived in Babylon in June of 323 BC he threw an extravagant feast in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II that would last more than two weeks.

Cantor details: The last ten days of Alexander’s life are somewhat shadowy in content. The rumors that he was poisoned arose because his death occurred so quickly, and no one could die that quickly unless he was poisoned--or at least that was the wisdom of the day. More likely, he developed a fever from malaria or typhoid, but he continued to attend banquets where drinking was heavy.

He took his usual bath each morning, made his customary offerings to the gods, and continued to drink each night. The fever intensified over the ten days, and eventually, he lapsed into a coma. He died on June 10, 323 BC, without leaving any clear-cut directions on his succession. He was thirty-three years old.

Alexander's body was laid in a gold anthropoid sarcophagus that was filled with honey, which was in turn placed in a gold casket

For all practical purposes, Alexander’s empire died with Alexander. His only brother was feeble-minded, and his only heir was a baby. Neither was in any position to assert authority.

So why was Alexander so great? History.com posits: Many conquered lands retained the Greek influence Alexander introduced, and several cities he founded remain important cultural centers even today. From his death to 31 B.C., when his empire finally folded, the period of history would come to be known as the Hellenistic period.

In addition, his armies were never defeated on the battlefield. And although his empire would not last, he is considered one of the most influential, powerful, and brilliant leaders the ancient world has ever produced.


What If? Scenario
Alexander had long taken a hands-off approach to the direct rule of his territories. Often, he would leave the governorship to his trusted generals, or in the case of Punjab, leave the current satrap in place.

During his lifetime, he executed several generals who appeared disloyal to him, so he was able to keep his territories under his control with the threat of execution. But once he died, the generals saw no reason to stay loyal to his memory and began ruling the territories as their own kingdoms. The unified empire, while still heavily influenced by Greek law, language and commerce, quickly dissolved.

A perfect example is Egypt, which was governed by his childhood friend, Ptolemy. After Alexander’s death, the general elevated himself to Pharoah and established a dynasty that would rule from Alexandria for the next 300 hundred years until the untimely death of Cleopatra. Yes, that Cleopatra.

In our What If? scenario Alexander is able to outlast the fever that overwhelmed him through rest and a tea made from the bark of the cinchona tree, which contains quinine. After a week of fevered sleep, Alexander is back on the throne and ready to launch his next campaign.

The target? The Mediterranean shipping empire of Carthage, whose port city was one of the largest of its time with a population of 600,000. Prior to launching his conquest, he bolsters his army with 30,000 Persian youths who had trained in Macedonia, as well as other Greek, Thracian and Indian conscripts, including a horde of war elephants.

He would expand his empire on the back of his motto, “there is nothing impossible to him who will try.”

In 324 B.C. Alexander, at the head of a mighty army, heads across the Arabian peninsula into what is now Tunisia, to lay siege to the coastal city and capital. If he is successful, he will rule more than 60 percent of the Mediterranean coastline and capture a monopoly on global commerce, shipping, and trade. The world’s economy hangs in the balance.


Carthage Gets Trunked
Alphios Desaphonus
Carthage Guard Tower
December 4, 324 B.C.

Alphios Desaphonus peered through the iron slits of his helmet onto the sandy plains that enveloped the landward sides of his city, Carthage. Perched more than 50 feet above the ground on broad stone walls, he stood with sword and shield.

In the black of night, thousands of small fires dotted the entirety of the plains. It looked to Desaphonus like the stars had descended onto the desert like a carpet of dotted lights. The dark soon gave way to the warm glow of sunrise in the east.

He watched with great concern as the Macedonian camp began to stir and gird for battle. Generals bellowed in a cacophony of languages to get soldiers into full battle dress and form into their regiments and phalanxes.

In the distance, he could see the siege towers rolling along through the parched dirt. They were being pushed by huge ambling beasts with elongated snouts and tusks protruding from their long faces. Each animal was close to twenty feet high and covered in cloaks of scaled armor. Riders were perched on small, covered platforms that rested on the backs of these giant beasts.

A pair of these gargantuan monsters pushed each tower towards the walls of the city and his position. More than 30 of these tall wooden towers were rolling slowly towards Desaphonus, each bristling with soldiers and archers hidden behind bamboo rolls that shielded them from view and arrow barrages.

With a foreboding realization, Desaphonus knew this army of beasts, barbarians, soldiers, and seige equipment would roll over him and his fellow soldiers like the waves that crashed on the shores in his peripheral view. He bolstered his heart and his spirit knowing he would face death bravely and with honor.

When the towers, which rose more than 20 feet above his position, were close, large wooden bridges were dropped onto the ramparts. A flood of leather-clad Saracen warriors flooded forward while Egyptian archers fired at him from the elevated tower platforms.
Desaphonus dispatched four of the first soldiers who threw themselves onto the platform. But for each soldier killed, three or four more would rush over the dead bodies. They were gravely outnumbered.

One by one his Carthaginian brothers fell alongside him. The last thing he saw was a wild-eyed soldier swinging a khopesh sword towards his unprotected neck. And then it grew dark.

The wall teamed with Macedonians who cascaded into the city. Once the gates were open, the elephants and soldiers swarmed through the streets towards the city’s grand square. Carthage, the final holdout of Alexander’s bid to own the Mediterranean, had fallen.


What If? Aftermath
With the capture of Carthage, its navy, and its coastal empire, Alexander controls the Mediterranean along the entire South coast through the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, and into Southern Europe.

From the coasts, his kingdom extends hundreds of miles into the African deserts along the Red Sea, through the towering Middle Eastern mountains, and into the dense forests of India and rolling plains of the Balkans.

Every ship that crosses the waters of the Mediterranean, Ionian, Aegean, and Red seas is controlled by Alexander. 

But Alexander has an unquenchable thirst for wealth and power. From his very soul, he believes he needs more to cement his legacy for the ages. Alexander has heard of lands in the Far East, past India, that promise untold riches. In the subsequent years after his victory at Carthage, his ambassadors and emissaries make their way to the Chinese Emperor Chih-Chih more than 1,000 miles from his Persian palace.

Over the remaining four decades of his life and rule, he establishes the modern-day Silk Road to solidify his hold on global trade between the Far East and Europe. His wealth and power grow. In a few years, he becomes the richest ruler in the history of the world. In today’s dollars, he would be worth more than $5 Trillion, with a T.

The durability of his empire transcends more than four hundred years through his son Alexander IV and his progeny. Ironically, over time the Macedonian empire becomes more of a Persian/Middle Eastern Empire as control of the Greek peninsula slips from his grasp.

The ascendance and permanence of Alexander’s empire forestall the inevitable growth of the Roman empire by more than 400 hundred years. Eventually, as with all empires, Alexander’s dissolves as cultures, commerce, and populations evolve beyond his legacy rule.

From the earliest days of his childhood, Alexander had a thirst for greatness. Whether taming a wild stallion or annihilating the armies that took the field against him, he knew how to inspire his men to feats of bravery, ferocity, and supremacy.

Alexander was an amazing general and ruthless conqueror, but a disenchanted ruler. A restless spirit that was always looking for the next adventure, next fight, or next kingdom. He was a man who embraced his destiny to reshape the world and in the process attained the immortality he sought and well deserved.


Conclusion
Thank you for joining me, Mark Bouffard, on this trip. This show is produced by me, Mark Bouffard, and Beto McQuade. My script editors are Clint Buhle and my twin brother, Matt Bouffard. It is mixed and edited by Beto McQuade. The music you hear is Shane Ivers of silvermansound.com.

If you like the podcast tell a friend. Don’t forget to review, like, and subscribe to this podcast. Check out our blogs on whatifworldhistory.com and follow us on your favorite social media channel.

This has been What If World History? In our next episode, we will look at the Black Death, a plague that started in the lands of Ghengis Khan and spread across Europe to claim more than 200 million lives. Instead, we imagine a history in which the continent is not plunged into the Dark Ages, instead art and culture flourish, and reformation reshapes religion and man’s relationship with God.