For almost 400 years, the Ottoman Empire dominated Southeastern Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East. Founded by daring Turkic horsemen, the empire soon lost much of its original vitality, settling into a curious state of functional dysfunction that hid all kinds of dark secrets.

10Fratricide

The early Ottoman sultans didn’t practice primogeniture, where the eldest son inherits everything. As a result, various brothers sometimes claimed the throne and the early days of the empire were plagued by pretenders, who tended to take refuge in enemy states and cause trouble for years. When Mehmed the Conqueror besieged Constantinople, his own uncle fought against him from the walls.

Mehmed dealt with the problem with his customary ruthlessness. When he took the throne, he had most of his male relatives executed, including an infant brother strangled in his crib. Later, he issued his infamous law: “And to whomsoever of my sons the Sultanate shall pass, it is fitting that for the order of the world he shall kill his brothers. Most of the Ulema allow this. So let them act on this.”

From that point on, each new sultan had to take the throne by killing all his male relatives. Mehmed III tore out his beard with grief when his young brother begged him for mercy. But he “answered never a word,” and the boy was executed along with 18 other brothers. The sight of their 19 shrouded bodies rolling through the streets was said to have moved all Istanbul to tears.

Even after the initial round of murders, the sultan’s relatives weren’t safe. Suleiman the Magnificent watched silently from behind a screen while his own son was strangled with a bowstring; the boy had become too popular with the army for the sultan to feel secure.

9The Cage

The policy of fratricide was never popular with the public or the clergy, and it was quietly abandoned when Ahmed I suddenly died in 1617. Instead, potential heirs to the throne were confined in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul in special apartments known as the kafes (“the cage”).

A prince of the Ottoman Empire might spend his whole life imprisoned in the kafes, monitored constantly by guards. The imprisonment was usually luxurious but strictly enforced, and many a prince went mad from boredom or else became debauched and dependent on alcohol. When a new sultan was taken to the Gate of Felicity to receive the allegiance of the viziers, it might be the first time he had been outside in decades, which wasn’t ideal preparation for a ruler.

The threat of execution was constant. In 1621, the Grand Mufti refused to allow Osman II to have his brother strangled. But the chief judge of the Balkans was rushed in to give a counter opinion, and the prince was strangled anyway. Osman himself was later overthrown by the military, who had to extricate his surviving brother from the kafes by pulling the roof off and hauling him out with a rope. The poor man had been two days without food or water and was probably too insane to notice that he had become sultan.

8The Palace Was A Silent Hell

Even for the sultan, life in the Topkapi could be stifling in the extreme. It was considered unseemly for the sultan to speak too much, so a form of sign language was introduced and the ruler spent most of his day surrounded by complete silence. Mustafa I found this impossible to bear and tried to have it banned, but his viziers refused to allow it. Mustafa soon went insane and was seen throwing coins into the sea for the fish to spend.

Palace intrigue was endemic as viziers, courtiers, and eunuchs jockeyed for power. For 130 years, the women of the harem gained great influence and the period became known as “the sultanate of women.” The dragoman (chief interpreter) was always powerful and always a Greek. The eunuchs split along racial lines, and the Chief Black Eunuch and Chief White Eunuch were often fierce rivals.

Caught in the middle of this madness, the sultan was watched everywhere he went. Ahmet III wrote to his grand vizier complaining that “If I go to one of the rooms, 40 pages are lined up; if I have to put on my trousers, I do not feel the least comfort, so the sword-bearer has to dismiss them, keeping only three or four men so that I may be at ease.” Spending their days in total silence, constantly watched, in such a poisonous atmosphere, a number of the later Ottoman sultans became mentally ill.

7Executions

The Ottoman government held the power of life and death over its subjects, and it wasn’t afraid to use it. The first court of the Topkapi Palace, where petitioners and visitors had to gather, was a terrifying place. It featured two pillars where severed heads were displayed and a special fountain solely for executioners to wash their hands. During the periodic palace purges, mounds of tongues might be piled up in the first court while a special cannon boomed every time a body was thrown into the sea.

The Ottomans didn’t bother to create a corps of executioners. Instead, the job strangely fell to the palace gardeners, who split their time between murder and creating many of the delightful flowers we know today. Most of their victims were simply beheaded. But it was forbidden to spill the blood of royalty and high-ranking officials, so they had to be strangled instead. As a result, the head gardener was always a huge, muscular man capable of choking a vizier to death at a moment’s notice.

In the early days of the empire, the sultan’s officials prided themselves on their obedience to his whims and it was customary for them to face execution with quiet grace. The famous vizier Kara Mustafa was much respected for greeting his executioner with a humble “So be it” and kneeling for the cord to loop around his neck.

In later years, standards slipped. In fact, the 19th-century governor Ali Pasha fought so hard against the sultan’s men that he had to be shot dead through the floorboards of his house.

6The Death Race

But there was one way for a loyal official to escape the sultan’s wrath. Beginning in the late 18th century, it became the custom that a condemned grand vizier could escape his fate by beating the head gardener in a race through the palace gardens.

The official would be summoned to a meeting with the head gardener and after exchanging greetings, the vizier would be handed a cup of iced sherbet. If it was white, the sultan had granted him a reprieve. If it was red, he was to be executed. As soon as he saw the red sherbet, the vizier would start sprinting.

The vizier would sprint through the palace gardens, darting between shady cypress trees and rows of tulips, presumably watched by hidden eyes behind grated harem windows. The goal was the Fish Market Gate on the other side of the palace. If the vizier reached the gate before the head gardener, he would merely be exiled. But the head gardener was younger and stronger, and he would usually be waiting with his silk cord.

Still, a few viziers did make it, including Haci Salih Pasha, the last vizier to face a death race. He was widely congratulated and later became a provincial governor.

5The Mob

Despite being theoretically second only to the sultan, grand viziers tended to be executed or thrown to the mob as a scapegoat whenever anything went wrong. Selim the Grim went through so many grand viziers that they began carrying a will with them at all times. One begged Selim to let him know in advance if he was to be executed, only for the sultan to cheerfully respond that he was already lining up a replacement.

The viziers also had to placate the people of Istanbul, who were prone to marching on the palace and demanding executions whenever anything went wrong. An 18th-century British visitor observed that “when a minister here displeases the people, in three hours time he is dragged even from his master’s arms [and] they cut off his hands, head, and feet.”

Not that the people were afraid to storm the palace if their demands weren’t met. In 1730, a ragged soldier named Patrona Ali led a mob into the palace and effectively took control of the empire for several months. He was stabbed to death after trying to make a butcher who had lent him money ruler of Wallachia.

4The Harem

Perhaps the most terrifying feature of the Topkapi palace was the Imperial Harem. This consisted of up to 2,000 women, most of them bought or abducted as slaves, who served as the sultan’s wives and concubines. They were kept cloistered deep in the seraglio, and for a man to look upon them meant instant death. The harem itself was guarded and managed by the Chief Black Eunuch, who eventually leveraged the position into one of the most powerful offices in the empire.

Conditions in the harem itself presumably varied, although little information is available about events within its walls. It was said that there were so many concubines that some might barely set eyes on the sultan. Others managed to gain influence over the running of the empire. Suleiman the Magnificent fell madly in love with a Pole called Roxelana, married her, and made her a key adviser.

Roxelana’s influence was such that a grand vizier sent the pirate Barbarossa on a desperate mission to kidnap the Italian beauty Giulia Gonzaga in the belief that she alone would be a match for Roxelana’s charms. The plan was foiled by a brave Italian, who burst into Giulia’s bedroom and got her onto a horse just before the pirates arrived. After thanking the man profusely for saving her, Giulia supposedly had him stabbed to death for seeing her in her nightgown, a deed which won her the admiration of all Italy.

Kosem Sultan achieved even more influence than Roxelana, effectively running the empire as regent for her son and grandson. But she met her match in her daughter-in-law Turhan, who had Kosem chased down and strangled with a curtain before taking her place as regent.

3The Boy Tribute

One of the most notorious features of early Ottoman rule was the devsirme (“collection”), a tribute of young boys from the empire’s Christian subjects. Most of the boys were enrolled in the Janissary Corps, the army of slave-soldiers who were at the forefront of the Ottoman conquests. The tribute was carried out irregularly whenever the empire felt it might need the manpower and usually targeted boys aged 12–14 from Greece and the Balkans.

Ottoman officials would summon all the boys in the village and check their names against the baptismal records from the local church. They would then select the strongest, perhaps taking one boy from every 40 households. The boys would then be grouped together and marched to Istanbul, with the weakest dropping dead along the way. The Ottomans produced a detailed description of each boy so that they could be tracked down if they escaped.

In Istanbul, the boys were circumcised and forcibly converted to Islam. The most handsome or intelligent were sent to the palace, where they were trained to join the imperial elite. These boys could aspire to reach the very highest ranks, and many became pashas or viziers, like the famed Croatian grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed.

The rest of the boys joined the Janissaries. First, they were sent to work on a farm for eight years, where they learned Turkish and gained strength. In their twenties, they formally became Janissaries, the elite soldiers of the empire who were subject to iron discipline and indoctrination.

There were exceptions to the tribute. It was forbidden to take a family’s only child or the children of men who had served in the military. Orphans were off-limits for some reason as were the untrustworthy Hungarians. The citizens of Istanbul were also excluded on the grounds that they “did not have a sense of shame.” The tribute system died out in the early 18th century when the children of Janissaries were allowed to become Janissaries and the corps became self-sustaining.

2Slavery

Although the devsirme had died out by the 17th century, slavery remained a key feature of the Ottoman system until the end of the 19th century. As time went on, most slaves came from Africa or from the Caucasus (Circassians were particularly prized), while the Crimean Tartar raiders provided a steady flow of Russians, Ukrainians, and even Poles. Muslims couldn’t be legally enslaved, but that rule was quietly forgotten whenever supplies of non-Muslims dried up.

In his classic Race And Slavery In The Middle East, the scholar Bernard Lewis argued that Islamic slavery developed largely independently of Western slavery and therefore had a number of key differences. For example, it was somewhat easier for Ottoman slaves to gain their freedom or attain positions of power. Ottoman apologists also like to claim that it was less racist, treating white and black slaves alike, a claim that is somewhat undercut by the writings of the actual black people who lived under Ottoman rule.

But there is no question that Ottoman slavery was an incredibly brutal system. Millions of people died in slave raids or were worked to death in the fields. That’s not even getting into the castration process used to create eunuchs. As Lewis pointed out, the Ottomans imported millions of slaves from Africa but very few people of African descent remain in modern Turkey today. That alone tells a story.

1Massacres

On the whole, the Ottomans were a rather tolerant empire. Aside from the devsirme, they made no real attempt to convert their non-Muslim subjects and welcomed the Jews with open arms after they were expelled from Spain. They never discriminated against their subject peoples, and the empire was practically run by Albanians and Greeks. But when the Ottomans themselves felt threatened, they could turn very ugly.

Selim the Grim, for example, was very alarmed by the Shia, who denied his authority as defender of Islam and could be double agents for Persia. As a result, he marched across the east of the empire, slaughtering at least 40,000 Shia and driving countless more from their homes. When the Greeks first began to press for independence, the Ottomans turned matters over to their Albanian irregulars, who cheerfully committed a number of terrible massacres.

As the empire declined, it lost much of its old tolerance, growing more and more vicious toward its minorities. By the 19th century, massacres were growing increasingly common. This famously reached its terrifying climax in 1915 when the empire, just two years from collapse, orchestrated the massacre of as much as 75 percent of its Armenian population. Some 1.5 million people died in the Armenian Genocide, an atrocity that Turkey still refuses to fully acknowledge.

In 1547, Grand Prince Ivan of Moscow declared himself tsar of Russia. He is now better known as Ivan the Terrible. For almost 400 years, the tsars ruled one of the largest empires in history, stretching across forest and steppe. Opaque and brutal, the mighty Russian Empire hid all sorts of dark secrets.

10The Wild East

Not too long after Columbus discovered America, the Russians began colonizing Siberia. The initial expansion was driven by merchants like the powerful Stroganov family, who were hungry for priceless furs.

Their agents were Cossack mercenaries who expanded Russian power with extraordinary cruelty. When the Sakha chief Dzhenik revolted, he was skinned alive and then his baby son was suffocated with the skin. The Aleut Islanders attacked tax collectors in 1764, so the Russians burned 18 villages and massacred hundreds.

Germs were even more effective than Russian guns and steel. The isolated Siberians were almost as unprepared for European diseases as their distant cousins in the Americas. In the 17th century, smallpox killed over 50 percent of many Siberian tribes. Among the Sakha and Evenk, the death rate was at least 80 percent. The Aleut population dropped from 20,000 to under 5,000 in less than two generations.

9Torture

The Russian emperors often resorted to cruel tortures to shore up their power. Ivan the Terrible was known for roasting his enemies alive in a giant skillet, which he had made specially. This apparently started a trend since some Cossacks complained in 1640 that a provincial official had been roasting them in huge pans as well as “pulling out their veins.”

The Empress Elizabeth was fond of having tongues ripped out with pliers. Peter the Great preferred the knout, a brutal leather whip that sliced 1.3 centimeters (0.5 in) into the flesh with every blow. Peter also personally supervised prisoners being stretched on the rack and burned with hot irons.

Under Catherine the Great, rebels were suspended by a metal hook pushed through their ribs and left to die. Others were hanged on rafts, which floated down the Volga as a warning.

8The Court Was Brutally Violent

Theoretically, the Russian tsar was perhaps the most absolute ruler in Europe with the noble boyars as the only real check on his power. In practice, the Russian court tended to be a snake pit, with competing factions often resorting to violence to gain power.

As a child, Peter the Great huddled terrified in a corner while armed men rampaged through the palace massacring his mother’s relatives. Ivan the Terrible was sure that boyars had poisoned his mother when he was just eight.

They were relatively lucky. Feodor II lasted seven weeks on the throne before he was strangled. Peter III was murdered on the orders of his own wife, who ruled for 30 years as Catherine the Great. Paul I was throttled and kicked to death in his bedroom. One of the assassins then woke up Paul’s son with the words, “Time to grow up. Go and rule!”

Little wonder that many tsars became paranoid and cruel. Peter the Great had his own son flogged to death. Ivan the Terrible also killed his son during an argument.

7The Imprisonment Of Ivan VI

Ivan VI became tsar in 1740 when he was just two months old. He was overthrown a year later by his cousin Elizabeth. On her orders, Ivan was placed in solitary confinement at age four. He remained there for 20 years.

For most of that time, he was kept in the Schlusselburg Fortress, where nobody even knew who he was. His cell had no windows, so he never saw daylight and “never knew whether it was day or night.” The guards were forbidden to speak to him. His only entertainment was a copy of the Bible.

Unsurprisingly, Ivan developed mental problems. He remained locked in his room at Schlusselburg until 1764 when Catherine the Great took pity on him and had him murdered.

6The Oprichniki

After a troubled childhood, Ivan the Terrible became increasingly deranged after a period of illness and the death of his wife. Turning against the powerful boyars, Ivan surrounded himself with a group of mercenaries and commoners who were given land grants around Moscow.

These were the notorious Oprichniki, who dressed all in black and carried severed dog heads as a symbol of the fate that awaited traitors. They acted as Ivan’s secret police, torturing and executing anyone suspected of disloyalty to Ivan.

In 1570, the Oprichniki stormed into the city of Novgorod and massacred over 10,000 of its citizens. The once mighty trading town never truly recovered.

5Impostors

The Russian Empire was oddly afflicted by impostors, who usually claimed to be a deceased member of the royal family. During the “Time of Troubles” in the early 17th century, no fewer than three impostors emerged and claimed to be Ivan the Terrible’s son Dmitri, who had died as a child.

False Dimitri I even managed to be crowned tsar in Moscow, although he was soon murdered. False Dimitri II was essentially impersonating False Dimitri I and gathered a vast Cossack army that ravaged the north. False Dimitri III was called the “Thief of Pskov” after taking that city, but he was defeated and executed in 1612.

In the 18th century, the Cossack Pugachev orchestrated a huge revolt by claiming to be the murdered Peter III. Another False Peter turned up in Montenegro, which he ruled for five years until the Ottomans paid a barber to cut his throat. At least three other Russians also claimed to be Peter, including a founder of the Skoptsy sect.

4Cults And Sects

The Russian Church was intense and prone to schism, and it seemed that sects and cults flourished everywhere in the vast Russian Empire. The Khlysty were known for their frantic singing and dancing and were said to wildly whip themselves to show contempt for their physical bodies.

The Molokane (“Milk Drinkers”) refused to serve in the military and tried to establish pacifist communes in Siberia. The Doukhobors (“Spirit Wrestlers”) preferred their Living Book of hymns to the Bible.

Strangest of all were the Skoptsy, who considered sex the source of all sin and practiced ritual castration and genital mutilation. Male Skoptsy would slice off their testicles and cauterize the wound with a hot iron. Others went further and hacked off their penises as well.

Female Skoptsy were expected to slice off their breasts or nipples, and some form of female circumcision was practiced as well. The Skoptsy also castrated their young children, so the sect only survived by converting new recruits. It lasted over a century.

3Self-Immolation

The largest Russian religious split came under Peter the Great, when Patriarch Nikon undertook reforms to bring the Russian church into line with the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy. Among other things, he decreed that the Russians should make the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of two. Led by the Archpriest Avvakum, many Russians refused to accept this.

Calling themselves the Old Believers, these traditionalists held services in secret where they crossed themselves with three fingers. The state called them Raskolniki (“Splitters”) and persecuted them relentlessly. Many Old Believers came to believe that the end of the world was at hand. If they suspected they had been discovered, whole villages would gather together, set fire to the church, and burn themselves alive.

2Famines

The Russian Empire was never noted for its efficiency, and its rulers often struggled to respond to the periodic famines that were a feature of life in the provinces. As late as 1891, the tsar responded to widespread crop failures by forbidding newspapers to report on the problem or even use the word “famine.”

After much foot-dragging, he eventually banned crop exports and attempted a program of famine relief. As a result, “only” about 400,000 people died in the famine of 1891–92.

There were worse examples. In 1601, a volcano erupted in Peru and sparked a series of unusually long winters. The resulting famine killed two million Russians, one-third of the population at the time. The tsar was too busy with a looming civil war to do much. “Dead bodies were found with hay in their mouths, and human flesh was sold in pies in the markets.”

1Serfdom

The Russian Empire was built on the backs of the serfs, who were bound to a particular estate and forced to work for the landowner who controlled it. By the 17th century, landowners were allowed to buy and sell serfs, effectively making them indistinguishable from slaves.

Nobles were not technically allowed to kill their serfs, but they could flog or punish them as they saw fit. There were no real consequences if a serf died of his injuries. Landowners could also send their serfs to Siberia or enlist them in the army against their will.

Serfdom was abolished in 1861. At that point, Russia had a population of almost 63 million, at least 46 million of them serfs.

For 1,000 years after the Western Roman Empire fell, the Eastern Empire of Byzantium stood strong. Ancient and powerful, the Byzantine court soon became known as a warren of intrigue and secrets. No one was safe, and no one could be trusted.

10Assassinations

Since the Byzantines always felt that an unpopular ruler could be replaced, a number of emperors died violent deaths.

Constans II was clubbed to death with a soap dish while resting in his bath. Michael III lost both his hands trying to block a sword. Nikephoros Phokas was warned of a plot and ordered a search of the palace, but his wife had hidden the assassins in her bedroom, which no guard would dare to search. They stabbed him to death that night.

At least, Leo the Armenian went out in style. Ambushed on Christmas Day by assassins disguised as a choir of chanting monks, he seized a heavy cross from the altar and battled them around the Hagia Sofia until his arm was cut off and he was struck down. Less romantically, the killers then threw his corpse into a toilet.

9Mutilation

The Byzantines believed that disfigurement disqualified candidates for the throne. As a result, emperors often mutilated their rivals rather than killing them outright. Blinding was popular, as was cutting off noses and tongues. In later years, castration became the most common practice.

In some ways, mutilation was considered kinder than execution. John IV Laskaris lived for 40 years after being blinded. But it was undoubtedly brutal. Empress Irene had her own rebellious son blinded in the room where she had given birth to him. The youth died of his wounds a short time later.

However, it was sometimes possible to come back from mutilation. Basil Lekapenos was castrated as a boy to prevent him from causing trouble when he grew up. With the throne closed to him, Basil became a powerful courtier and ruled through a series of puppet emperors.

8The Noseless Emperor

The terrifying Justinian II was first overthrown in AD 695. The rebels cut off his nose and slit his tongue down the middle before exiling him to the Crimea. Undeterred, Justinian escaped to the land of the Khazars and began plotting a return to power. The new emperor bribed the Khazars to murder their guest, but Justinian was warned and personally strangled the assassins before escaping to Bulgaria in a fishing boat.

Forging an alliance with the Bulgarian khan, Justinian returned to Constantinople and led an army through the sewers and into the city where he took a terrible revenge on his enemies. Regaining the throne, he ruled for another six years, wearing a golden nose and using an interpreter to translate the gurgles from his ruined tongue.

His cruelty eventually grew too much, and he was overthrown again in 711. This time, they killed him.

7Intrigue

Today, the word “Byzantine” can refer to an atmosphere of confusion and intrigue, and that was certainly true of the court in Constantinople. There, eunuchs and courtiers jockeyed for influence and emperors ruled through powerful favorites.

In one ninth-century example, the eunuch Staurakios helped Empress Irene overthrow and blind her own son. Staurakios himself was soon forced from power by the eunuch Aetios, who schemed to make his brother emperor. But Aetios failed to guard against the finance minister Nikephoros, who orchestrated a coup and reigned as emperor until the Bulgarians converted his skull into a drinking cup.

This atmosphere of intrigue lasted until Constantinople fell. Even as the Ottomans massed outside the walls, Grand Duke Loukas Notaras was reportedly scheming to secure lucrative court positions for his sons.

6Civil War

In the ninth century, Michael I was forced to resign by a trio of his generals: Leo the Armenian, Michael the Amorian, and Thomas the Slav. Leo became emperor. But when he fell out with Michael, the Amorian’s followers infiltrated the Christmas service and hacked Leo to death. Thomas the Slav rose in revolt against Michael, sparking a massive civil war which badly weakened the empire against the Arabs.

Similar problems arose in the 10th century when Bardas Phokas’s rebellion was put down by General Bardas Skleros. When the eunuch Basil Lekapenos schemed against Skleros, he started his own revolt in self-defense. Lekapenos countered by releasing Phokas from prison and putting him in command against Skleros.

Phokas defeated Skleros in single combat and destroyed his forces. But Phokas, Skleros, and Lekapenos then teamed up against the young Basil the Bulgar-Slayer. Typically, they soon fell to infighting and Basil successfully secured power. He later became famous for blinding thousands of prisoners and sending them back to Bulgaria, where Tsar Samuel promptly died of horror.

5The Purple-Born

The Byzantines had long considered purple the imperial color, with only members of the royal family allowed to wear certain purple dyes. Eventually, the emperor built a special room with walls made of the precious purple stone porphyry.

Imperial children born in this room were dubbed porphyrogennetos (“purple-born”). They were immensely prestigious and weren’t supposed to marry outside the empire, although Vladimir of Kiev famously demanded a Purple-Born bride as the price for military aid and his conversion to Christianity.

The Purple-Born also attracted great loyalty from the common people. Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos was overthrown as a boy, but his Purple-Born status protected him and he was allowed to remain as co-emperor for 24 years.

When Basil II died, the only remaining Purple-Born were the sisters Zoe and Theodora. The citizens of Constantinople rioted at every attempt to remove them from power, and the pair dominated the empire until Theodora’s death in 1056.

4Riots

As citizens of the greatest city on Earth, the people of Constantinople were never afraid to express themselves, often through violence. In the most famous example, fans of the Blue and Green chariot racing teams united to riot against Justinian I.

The emperor was prepared to flee, but the day was saved by his wife, Theodora, who proclaimed that she would rather die an empress than live as a commoner. The rebels were subsequently massacred.

Not all riots destabilized the empire. One particularly bloody civil war was effectively ended by a prison riot. Megaduke Alexios Apokaukos was inspecting his new jail when the political prisoners ran amok and murdered him, crippling his faction.

The assertive tendencies of Constantinople’s citizenry survived the Ottoman conquest, and many a sultan cowered inside the Topkapi Palace while an enraged mob tore his vizier to pieces.

3Castration

Eunuchs served the Byzantine state in every capacity, from courtiers to priests to generals. (The eunuch Peter Phokas became famous for defeating a Scythian warlord in single combat.) They were perceived as nonthreatening because they had no children to inherit their status.

However, eunuchs like John the Orphanotrophos (manager of Constantinople’s orphanage) became notorious for leveraging their brothers into high office. John himself grew so powerful that his whole family had to be castrated and exiled by a nervous emperor.

Castration was technically illegal in the empire. As a result, many eunuchs were enslaved outside the empire as young boys and then castrated just before they were brought across the border. But it wasn’t unknown for impoverished Byzantine parents to castrate their sons in the hope that these boys would grow up to secure lucrative positions at court.

2Sex Slaves

Multiple sources from the period allege that eunuchs were frequently used as sex slaves because they maintained their youthful looks. This was officially forbidden, but the church struggled to find a way to stop it without condemning slavery (and thereby the emperor).

The problem is illustrated in the 10th-century Life Of St. Andrew The Fool, which basically puts the blame on the eunuchs. A character does point out that “if a slave fails to obey, you surely know how much he will suffer, being maltreated and beaten.”

But Andrew insists that “if the slaves do not bow to the abominable passions of their masters, they are thrice blessed, for thanks to the torments you mention, they will be reckoned with the martyrs.”

1The Zealots Of Thessalonica

In 1341, the empire was undergoing one of its regular civil wars. The new emperor was nine years old, and his father’s friend John Kantakouzenos had been appointed regent. The boy’s mother, Anna, and Megaduke Alexios Apokaukos formed an alliance to usurp the regency, sparking a massive conflict.

But this time, something different happened. In the city of Thessalonica, the common people seized control from the aristocracy. Calling themselves “Zealots,” these revolutionaries championed the rights of the poor. Accounts from the time claim that violent mobs of Zealots attacked and slaughtered the rich.

The Zealot council ruled Thessalonica for the duration of the civil war. For a time, they swore allegiance to Megaduke Apokaukos, but they remained hostile to the aristocracy and eventually asserted their independence by murdering his son.

The revolution was only put down after John Kantakouzenos became emperor. Some of the Zealots invited the Serbian king Stefan Dusan to take the city, but others found this unpatriotic and fighting broke out. Kantakouzenos took the city easily and executed the leading Zealots.

The gradual process of decline that brought the Roman Empire to an end is one of the all-time favorite history topics. That a nation so powerful could fall has always acted as a warning to any subsequent state that rose to a privileged geopolitical position. The ascension of Commodus in AD 180 is considered by many as the beginning of the end. But in reality, the exhaustion of Rome had started long before.

10 Unclear Succession System

Augustus, the first Roman emperor, could never establish a clear imperial succession system. The result: When the time came to replace an emperor, there were numerous rivals for the throne competing with one another.

Sometimes, the potential emperors had an incentive to end the service of the ruling emperor prematurely so that they could take the throne for themselves. This is part of the reason behind the long record of imperial assassination plots.

The imperial succession was a fragile, unstable system. Within the first 200 years of imperial tradition, Titus (r. AD 79–81) was the only emperor who succeeded his own father, Vespasian, and Commodus in AD 161 was the first emperor to be born to a ruling emperor, Marcus Aurelius (r. AD 161–180).

9 Currency Debasement

When Emperor Nero faced serious economic issues, he decided to debase the currency. Nero reduced the purity of Roman coins by decreasing the amount of precious metal in them. He did this gradually, expecting that the coins would still be accepted for their nominal value. But the reduction in purity became noted, followed by inflation.

The coin debasement became a tendency followed by subsequent emperors. The denarius, the most common Roman coin in circulation, had an average silver content of 91.8 percent during the time of Nero (r. AD 54–68), 76.2 percent during the time of Marcus Aurelius (r. AD 161–180), and 58.3 percent by the time of Emperor Septimius Severus (r. AD 193–211).

8 Inflation

Debasement of Roman coins triggered a severe inflation problem. By AD 301, Emperor Diocletian was forced to issue an Imperial Edict on Prices to control inflation. During the 150 years prior to Diocletian’s edict, the value of silver had increased 86 times and gold, 45. The edict did little to solve the inflation problem.

A measure of wheat in Roman Egypt that sold for six drachmas in the first century AD increased to 200 drachmas by AD 276. Egyptian wheat sold for 78,000 drachmas in AD 324 and over 2 million drachmas by AD 334. The price of 0.5 kilograms (1 lb) of pork was fixed at 12 denarii by the edict but cost 90 denarii by AD 412.

Another side effect of inflation was the hoarding of coins. Unlike the debased coins, the “good coins” were kept as long as possible. Archaeologists have found many coin hoards from the late Roman Empire, a sign of economic uncertainty.

7 The Year Of The Four Emperors

The AD 68–69 period is known in Roman history as “The Year of the Four Emperors,” which may be considered a premonition of the countless episodes of imperial instability and double-crossing that would later affect the Roman emperors.

After the death of Nero in June 68, the three emperors that followed only reigned for a short time: Galba for seven months (assassinated), Otho for three months (committed suicide), and Vitellius for eight months (also assassinated). In AD 69, Vespasian became the next emperor until his death in AD 79.

The political turmoil of this period is reflected in the writings of Tacitus. His introduction to this period of Roman history (Histories 1.2) reads: “The history on which I am entering is that of a period rich in disasters, terrible with battles, torn by civil struggles, horrible even in peace and four emperors killed by the sword.”

6 Army’s Diminishing Returns

During the times of the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire, the Roman army was supported with the booty of conquest. Each new region that was conquered by the Romans brought new land, new slaves to be sold, new taxpayers, and other forms of wealth.

When the Roman Empire reached its maximum size, the army activity became largely defensive. There was no booty conquest to support the soldiers, and the army had to be supported by taxes.

Once the guarantor of Roman growth and prosperity, the army gradually and ironically became a necessary evil that drained the wealth of the Roman people. The increasing tax pressure required to run the army forced many members of the Roman middle class into poverty (Matyszak 2008: 227).

5 Barbarian Pressure

Previously, one traditional explanation for the fall of Rome was that barbarian invasions led to its disintegration. Although the barbarian pressure played a role, this was not the only reason for the fall of Rome.

Many waves of barbarian armies weakened both the northern and eastern borders of Rome, gradually shrinking the size of the empire. Rome lost Britain in AD 406 when the Roman legions stationed there were summoned to continental Rome due to the threat of the Huns. Rome was sacked in AD 410 by the Visigoths under the leadership of Alaric.

By AD 455, Spain and North Africa were lost to the Vandals, who also sacked Rome the same year. Barbarian pressure was not a new thing in Rome. What was different this time was the almost complete incompetence of the Roman army to successfully repulse the invaders as they had many times in the past.

4 Praetorian Guard Corruption

The members of the Praetorian Guard, a special branch of the Roman army, were household troops for the emperor and his personal bodyguards. As the power of the army increased, the Praetorian Guard occasionally got involved in the process of appointing new emperors, usually favoring those who favored them.

Their involvement grew larger until they were able to literally make and unmake Roman emperors. In many cases, the Praetorian Guard simply murdered these emperors. By the third century AD, no Roman emperor could rule without the support of the military in general and the Praetorian Guard in particular.

Perhaps one of the most astonishing signs of the Praetorian Guard corruption was a practice called the “donative.” This was an economic incentive paid to the Praetorian Guard.

The reasons for this incentive varied. But one type of donative contributed to the political instability of Rome: A pretender to the throne would promise to pay a substantial reward if he became emperor. The sooner the acting emperor “finished” his government, the better for the Praetorian Guard’s pockets.

Emperor succession became truly messy during the late history of the Western Roman Empire. Many emperors died by the sword of their own bodyguards, who were anxious to receive their donative.

3 Concentration Of Wealth

Although Rome is often depicted as a glorious and advanced nation in the imagination of the general public, social inequality was deeply rooted in Roman society. The backbone of the Roman economy was agriculture. It has been estimated that more than 90 percent of the late empire’s population were rural poor and endured a precarious existence.

This also implied an imbalance between the rural and the urban. Cities were sometimes seen as “predators” on the labor of peasants leading to the exhaustion of the land. Based on osteological studies of Roman skeletons from all periods and all parts of the empire, health issues linked to malnutrition were a common occurrence (Tainter 1990: 133; McKeown 2010: 58).

2 Size Of The Empire

The size of the Roman Empire caused a number of issues. Distances were so long that travel across the empire took weeks. Its borders were so big that they required a considerable army presence to keep them safe. But above all, it was no longer possible to control this vast realm from the city of Rome.

These challenges forced Emperor Diocletian to split the empire in two. The Western Roman Empire was centered around Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire had the city of Byzantium as its capital.

The size of the Roman Empire is central to the study of its fall. It has stimulated many academic discussions about the limits of territorial expansion affecting all political units of a considerable size. Even today, historians and sociologists keep exploring this intriguing topic.

1 Romulus Augustulus Deposition

On September 4, AD 476, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain. Odoacer had served in the Roman army for years and had attained the rank of general.

A Roman emperor being deposed by a military leader was nothing new in Rome. The novelty was that nobody else was named emperor after Romulus Augustulus’s deposition and that Odoacer was crowned as king of Italy.

At this point, the Roman Empire was a shadow of its former self. Even the capital of the Western Empire had been moved from Rome to Ravenna. The Roman West was no longer an empire. It had dissolved into several smaller political units (kingdoms and city-states). The imperial traditions remained alive in the Eastern Roman Empire until its fall in 1453.

In the 13th century, the Mongols erupted from their isolated homeland, forming one of the greatest empires the world has ever known. Although they had a reputation as simple warriors, the Mongol ruling family soon became the richest and most powerful clan on Earth. Moving from felt tents to their great palace city at Karakorum, the Mongol court hid all sorts of dark secrets.

10Murder

Genghis Khan committed his first murder at age 14. According to a near-contemporary chronicle known as The Secret History Of The Mongols, the young Temujin was often bullied by his older half-brother Begter. After Begter stole some food from them, Temujin and his younger brother Qasar crept up on Begter through the long grass and riddled him with arrows.

Unsurprisingly, Genghis remained fond of murder as a problem-solving method and a number of his enemies died sudden and suspicious deaths. A particularly petty case involved a famous Mongol wrestler named Buri, who had made the mistake of humiliating Genghis’s brother Belgutei in a match before Genghis’s rise to power.

The Secret History relates that after Temujin became Genghis Khan, he invited Buri for a rematch. Frightened by the khan’s power, Buri took what he thought was the safe option and allowed Belgutei to throw and pin him.

But at a signal from Genghis, Belgutei pressed his knee into Buri’s back and hauled on his collarbone, breaking his spine. The paralyzed wrestler was then dragged outside and left to die, presumably while contemplating his decision to throw a match before a ruler who had never respected cowardice.

9Executions

Although Genghis Khan restricted the use of torture, Mongol executions were often extremely grisly. When Guyuk Khan suspected that the powerful courtier Fatima had poisoned his brother, Guyuk had her tortured into confessing before “her upper and lower orifices were sewn up and she was rolled up in a sheet of felt and thrown into the river.”

The Mongols traditionally had a taboo against shedding royal blood, so another favorite method of execution was crushing. The Abbasid Caliph al-Musta’sim was rolled up in a carpet and trampled to death by stampeding horses. After the Battle of the Kalka River, captured Russian princes were shoved under some floorboards and crushed as the Mongols held their victory feast on top of them.

Genghis himself ordered that a captured Tangut ruler be renamed Shidurqu (“Loyal”) before he was crushed, so that his spirit would be forced to serve the Mongols in the afterlife. He was lucky compared to the Persian noble who was covered in sheep fat, wrapped in felt, and left tied up in the hot sun to meet his fate.

8Intrigue

Despite the Mongol reputation as bluff, uncomplicated warriors, they were as fond of intrigue as any other people and the court often resembled a snake pit of competing factions. One of the earliest and most serious incidents came during the reign of Genghis himself when the shaman Teb Tengri began maneuvering to replace the khan’s brothers as the dominant power at court.

Teb Tengri first targeted the khan’s brother Qasar, reporting a prophetic vision that Qasar would try to take power for himself. Genghis immediately ordered Qasar arrested and seemed likely to sentence him to death.

The day was saved by Genghis’s mother, Hoelun. When she heard that Qasar had been arrested, she drove her cart through the night and burst into the khan’s tent. With Genghis too astonished to respond, she untied Qasar, whipped her coat off, and demanded to know if her sons could recognize the breasts that had suckled them. She then berated Genghis up and down the tent until the ashamed khan agreed to release his brother.

The shaman waited until Hoelun died before making another move, stealing the inheritance that should have gone to her youngest son, Temuge. When Temuge complained, Teb Tengri’s brothers beat Temuge and forced him to kneel and beg the shaman for his life.

This time, Genghis’s wife Borte intervened, warning that the shaman might move against Genghis one day. At this, Genghis resorted to his favorite trick and staged a wrestling match in which Teb Tengri’s back was broken and the paralyzed shaman was left outside to die.

7Sex Slavery

Although many Mongol women rose to positions of great power, the Mongols themselves weren’t exactly feminists. Foreign women captured on their campaigns were forcibly married to Mongol men or forced into service as concubines. The Mongols also often demanded young maidens as tribute from subject peoples.

In one famous example, the Siberian queen Botohui-tarhun (“Big And Fierce”) became one of the few people to defeat a Mongol army when she lured one of Genghis’s generals into an ambush. A later expedition defeated the Siberians and captured Botohui-tarhun, who was married off to a Mongol soldier and disappeared from history.

Some noble women made the best of a bad situation. When Genghis conquered the Merkids, he gave their princess, Toregene, to his son Ogedei. She soon eclipsed Ogedei’s other wives and ruled the empire for five years after his death.

6Alcoholism

As impoverished herders, the Mongols had limited access to alcohol. They mostly drank fermented mare’s milk, which was only mildly alcoholic and not available year-round.

However, after the conquests of Genghis Khan, wealth flowed into the former backwater and many Mongols found themselves living lives of leisure, with unlimited access to wine and distilled spirits. As a result, alcoholism had already become a huge problem by the time of Genghis’s death.

Even the Great Khan’s family wasn’t immune, and at least two of his sons, Tolui and Ogedei, drank themselves to death. Their brother Chagatai was forced to strictly order his servants not to let him have more than a few cups a day.

The problem was particularly acute with Ogedei, who had succeeded Genghis as khan. Ogedei was almost completely dependent on wine, to the point that Persian historian Ata-Malek Juvayni claims that Ogedei often made key decisions drunk.

His minister, Yelu Chucai, repeatedly made the khan promise to drink less. But the promise never stuck, especially since his wife, Toregene, encouraged him to stay drunk so that she could take power for herself.

The problem didn’t end with Genghis’s sons. The European monk William of Rubruck visited the court of his grandson Mongke and reported a pervasive drinking culture, including a silver tree with four pipes that freely dispensed wine, rice wine, mead, and fermented mare’s milk.

5The Kidnapping That Helped Create And Destroy The Empire

Around 1178, a newlywed named Borte was kidnapped by Merkid tribesmen. Her enraged husband, Temujin, quickly assembled a small coalition and attacked the Merkids, rescuing Borte and establishing his reputation as a formidable warrior. It was arguably the moment that put Temujin on the path to becoming Genghis Khan.

Yet if the kidnapping helped create the Mongol Empire, it also helped destroy it. By the time Borte was rescued, she was several months pregnant and no one could say for sure whether the father was her husband or one of her rapists. By all accounts, Temujin accepted the child as his. But the rumors persisted.

Many years later, the aging Genghis Khan called his family together to designate a successor. The obvious choice was his oldest son, Jochi. But his second son, Chagatai, insisted that he should take precedence over the “bastard son of a Merkid,” and the meeting descended into an undignified brawl.

Despite their father’s pleas, the brothers refused to reconcile. This forced a compromise where the throne went to Genghis’s third son, the alcoholic Ogedei, setting the stage for years of infighting and strife that eventually broke the empire apart.

4The Purge

Genghis Khan carefully ensured that his son Ogedei would take the throne without opposition on Genghis’s death. The real problems started when Ogedei drank himself to death in 1241. Political infighting escalated into a vicious purge that almost exterminated the descendants of two of Genghis’s four sons.

Power was initially seized by Ogedei’s wife, Toregene, who ruled the empire for five years while she schemed to have her wastrel son Guyuk elected khan. She succeeded after much intrigue, including the execution of Genghis’s surviving brother, Temuge. But Guyuk turned against her after she tried to keep power for herself. Toregene’s advisers were executed, and the queen herself died under extremely mysterious circumstances.

Guyuk’s own sudden death two years later threw things back into chaos as the descendants of Jochi and Tolui teamed up to put Tolui’s son Mongke on the throne. They were opposed by the Chagataids and Ogedeids, who apparently tried to assassinate Mongke and stage a coup. In response, Mongke staged a massive purge.

The ministers of Ogedei and Guyuk were rounded up and murdered. Meanwhile, the army was formed into a massive line and sent sweeping through Mongolia, rounding up Ogedeid princes for execution. Special tribunals called jarghus were sent through the empire, conducting show trials of Ogedeid loyalists. The Ogedeids and Chagataids took years to recover, as the Toluids cemented their grip on the empire.

3Civil War

The first Mongol civil war almost broke out during the short reign of Guyuk. At a banquet in Russia, Guyuk had been involved in a moronic squabble with Jochi’s son Batu, which ended with Guyuk screaming that Batu “was just an old woman.”

The two were fierce rivals after that, and Batu refused to come to Mongolia to pay homage when Guyuk took the throne. In response, Guyuk summoned his army and marched on Batu’s territory in Russia. Fortunately, Guyuk died en route and outright war was averted.

The Mongols were less lucky after the death of Mongke Khan, as his brothers Kublai Khan and Ariq Boke quickly tore the empire apart in a massive civil war to determine who would succeed Mongke. In the chaos, the Ogedei and Chagatai clans made a comeback.

However, the clans of Jochi and Hulagu, Mongke’s other brother, broke away into independent states in the West, which became known as the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate. The Mongol Empire would never truly be whole again.

2Religious Fanaticism

Although they were among the most religiously tolerant empires in history, the Mongol ruling clan fervently believed they had been set on a divine mission that justified the nightmarish slaughter of their conquests. In 1218, Genghis Khan climbed the pulpit of a mosque in the recently conquered city of Bukhara and informed the quaking citizens: “You have committed great sins. [ . . . ] If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”

Many years later, Genghis’s grandson Guyuk struck a similar note in a letter to Pope Innocent IV: “Thanks to the power of the eternal Heaven, all lands have been given to us from sunrise to sunset. [ . . . ] If you do not obey the commands of Heaven and run counter to our orders, we shall know that you are our foe.”

Another grandson, Mongke Khan, wrote to King Louis of France boasting that “in Heaven there is only one eternal God, and on Earth, there is only one lord, Genghis Khan. [ . . . ] When, by the virtue of the eternal God, from the rising of the Sun to the setting, all the world shall be in universal joy and peace, then shall be manifested what we are to be.”

Hulagu Khan neatly summed things up in another letter: “God . . . spoke to our grandfather, Genghis Khan, through Teb Tengri, saying ”I have set thee over the nations . . . to throw down, to build, and to plant. [ . . . ] Those who do not believe will later learn [their] punishment.”

1The Plan To Exterminate The Chinese

The Mongols were always most comfortable on the open plains, which provided plenty of fodder for their horses. Months or years before embarking on a campaign, they would send smaller detachments of soldiers ahead to burn farms, orchards, and villages. This allowed the land to revert to pasture by the time the main Mongol army arrived.

Infuriated by the difficulty of conquering a heavily developed land like China, Ogedei Khan considered a horrifying expansion of this scheme. Essentially, the plan was to slaughter the northern Chinese peasantry and turn the former territory of the Jin dynasty into one huge pasture.

This genocidal scheme was stopped largely through the efforts of Ogedei’s Chinese adviser, Yelu Chucai. He persuaded the khan that introducing a system of taxation would be more beneficial in the long run by providing a steady stream of revenue to fund the Mongol conquests. Fortunately, Ogedei listened to his minister and never signed off on the plan to ethnically cleanse northern China.

The Inca Empire was prosperous from the mid-1430s to 1572 when Spain’s Francisco Pizarro conquered them. This civilization spread from most of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and part of Southern Colombia. If you were lucky enough not to be part of the 25 percent of kids who died before age five, you would have had a tough upbringing. That doesn’t include all the strange and downright unsanitary things you’d have to endure.

10 The Ceremony That Killed Children

Yes, Incas sacrificed their kids! This may be more of how a kid died instead of lived in the Inca Empire. It’s crazy to think about, but this ritual (called capacocha) was used for special events like a ruler’s death or victory in a battle. It was actually an honor for the chosen child’s family to have their kid sacrificed on the highest mountaintop in Peru. Incas would also sacrifice children to the gods to prevent droughts, widespread illness, etc.

Before the ceremony began, the chosen children were brought to the city’s capital, Cuzco. Tons of citizens gathered to feast there before taking the child up the mountain to sacrifice him or her. Although they didn’t discriminate based on gender, most of the children’s mummies found by archaeologists have been girls.

The kid was given alcohol and poison to drink. This caused the child to vomit and slowly die on the mountain—which could have taken weeks or months to travel to. The child was left to freeze to death if extreme dehydration didn’t take her first. Sometimes, a child was suffocated or died from a massive blow to the head.

9 The Incas Were Ageists

The quipu (pictured above) was the Inca’s way of recording and keeping data. Although we still don’t know how to read a quipu, we do know that the Incas were kind of ageist. About twice a year, they took a census to record the number of people in the empire and to put each individual into one of 10 classes.

The Incas divided their citizens into groups based on age, with those 25–50 years old considered the most prosperous and important to the empire’s economy. The Incas counted them first and considered them higher in class. Next came those who were 60–70 years old, followed by 18- to 20-year-olds, then 10- to 17-year-olds, 5- to 9-year-olds, toddlers, and finally, babies.

This shows that young kids were not seen as beneficial to the Incas. It sounds terrible because the Incas did rely on sacrificing children. Their elders reportedly beat kids often until the children surpassed age nine—probably because kids really needed discipline in this empire.

8 Learning Advanced Skills As A Little Kid

Inca children, especially girls younger than nine, knew how to spin yarn made from llama and alpaca fur. Spanish drawings of the civilization show representations of Inca girls doing household chores at around five years old. They also knew how to brew beer.

Still, kids could not drink beer or eat certain foods like sugary, fatty types. They needed to be as healthy as possible for marriage. Teen boys were like shepherds to their llamas while the younger boys started learning how to trap birds and guinea pigs. Incas ate guinea pigs as a common dish.

Unsurprisingly, young girls were expected to be submissive and had to stay away from men until they were put in arranged marriages. They probably didn’t appear to be very feminine at first to the Spanish conquistadors because these girls had to keep their hair cut short and didn’t wear shoes. Their entire lives were spent in preparation for marriage and taking care of a family.

7 Sick Kids Had To Sit In Pee

If a child was very ill, the Incas believed that he could suck on the umbilical cord (that the parents had preserved) since the umbilical cord soaked up any evil from within the child. It’s unclear how they kept the umbilical cords. However, like the Egyptians, the Incas probably preserved body parts like this by keeping them cold in freezing mountain streams.

Getting a fever, like all kids do at one point or another, was a dreaded thing. At least, it probably would be for us now. This is because soaking in a huge tub filled entirely with the family’s urine supposedly healed kids who had a fever.

6 The Babies And Toddlers Were Treated More Like Things

A Spanish priest recorded how mothers took care of their babies. For fear of giving the babies too much attention or causing them to be constantly needy, the mothers would take the babies to a cold stream in the mountains and bathe them for days.

It wasn’t until the toddlers were two that they earned a name and official place in the family. This was probably because so many newborns and toddlers died in 15th-century Peru. The baby would continue to be taken to these “freezing baths” until they were about two years old. The mother would refrain from even hugging the baby in these early years of the baby’s life.

Of course, a mother would make a pouch sling that wrapped around her back. The baby would sit in the sling while the mother gathered herbs and did other outdoor chores. Once the baby turned two, he or she had a ceremony called rutuchicoy where family members and neighbors gathered to watch the child’s hair be cut for the first time.

5 Schooling Was Surprisingly Not Sexist (Sort Of)

Inca children between the ages of about eight or nine were taken from their homes to attend different schools. The girls and boys may have had different and separate learning to do, but they were fairly equal in their training.

Boys learned Quechua, the language spoken by the Incas. Meanwhile, the girls learned about brewing beer, Inca religion, cooking, and other special skills they would have to use every day.

Of course, only the prettiest girls were selected to go to these special houses for the aqllakuna, which is the word for these chosen women. The boys were also taught about their religion and history at these four-year schools in Cuzco.

It’s not uncommon for some cultures now to separate their females and males. The Incas seemed to be all about class status. Those pretty aqllakuna either became priestesses or wives to men in higher stations. The Sapa Inca, who was their leader, had hundreds of wives.

Noble or not, boys had to go to school to become warriors or husbands and trappers. It was common for boys to know how to farm. It should be noted that only the richer families could send their kids to school.

4 Changing Clothes Was Important If You Were A Kid

At about age 14, boys changed out of their rags (if they were poor) and wore loincloths to symbolize that they had become men. This is largely because children could marry by the time they were in their teens.

At this age, boys also started putting large plugs in their earlobes. As the years went on, they continued to slowly increase the size of the plug earrings so as to stretch out their ears.

As boys continued to grow into men, they carried around pouches that were like purses. There, they kept coca leaves to chew on. The leaves were also good luck charms that were held close to their persons.

This shows that the girls were not given as much in terms of accessories or clothing. Nowadays, women are the ones who wear earrings and carry purses. Of course, young women wore dresses longer than the men’s tunics.

Fun fact: The Sapa Inca only wore a new outfit once. Then it was burned. Some nobility (such as the wives and sons of the Sapa Inca) wore clothing more than once but still wore many outfits. The Incas were masters in textiles and clothing, so they had many tunics and dresses along with blankets.

3 Kids Wouldn’t Have Normal-Shaped Skulls

From the time that Incas were babies, their parents would wrap their heads to deform them to look like cones. Since younglings have soft skulls, it is easy to transform them into any shape.

It’s believed that the Incas did this out of the belief that the higher the head, the higher the mind and the closer to their gods. In some cultures, this practice is still in use today. It was very common among the Maya and other ancient civilizations.

Archaeologists found holes in some of the Incas’ skulls due to head injuries. Carving out a hole helped with the swelling if the Incas fought each other too violently with clubs. Surprisingly, this was a common practice.

2 Kids Were Probably Introduced To Sex And Marriage Too Young

The discovery of pots and statues of people in sexual positions shows that the Incas were accepting of all sexual activity. It was a cultural understanding that the Incas would have sex before marriage with their prospective spouses. It was also expected that young Incas would have a few lovers before marriage. Homosexual sex was also depicted on pottery.

Although it may seem that the Incas were more progressive in the areas of marriage and sex than some of today’s cultures, chastity was still expected of those chosen women (aqllakuna) until they were married. Knowing that girls were married between the ages of 12 and 14, this means that most of them must have been sexually active before then.

In fact, the Incas separated genders into three groups without much evidence of discrimination. There were straight men, straight women, and a third gender group that included transgender and homosexual individuals. This group was called Tinkuy. So it was possible to be a young homosexual child without feeling the need to hide from society.

1 Marriage Was More Of A Business Trial

Men married at a reasonable age (around 20–25 or in their late teens), but women were often married before ages 14–15. The marriage ceremony was more of a business agreement between the two families. There was a feast, though, and a bit of a celebration. It’s believed that this ceremony was fast and not necessarily happy.

Every year, the leader of each village in the empire would line up all the available boys and girls and pair them off in arranged marriages. If two men wanted to marry the same woman, the parents would have to present reasons to the leader why their son should win her hand. The leader made the final decision, though.

Men of a lower status could only marry one woman. Luckily, the spouses were given a trial period of a few years. If the girl was not happy, she could return home. If the husband wasn’t happy with his wife, he could send her back to her home. It was the custom for the girls to move in with the husband after the husband’s family built them a home.

After studying anthropology at Purdue University along with video production and creative writing, Kate decided to go to LA to earn a graduate degree in writing and producing for television. She strongly believes that everyone can learn a lot from informational television, especially from those programs that focus on history.

By modern standards, life in ancient Rome was awful. Slavery was rampant, health care was very basic, and if you were poor, the only route to a comfortable retirement was 20 years of military service. However, it was still one of the most progressive societies on Earth at the time.

When the Populares faction were in power, the government actively worked to empower the people at the expense of the elites. Senate funds were used to buy farms off wealthy people and then give them to the poor, as well as to establish hospitals where the poor could be treated for free. Most public buildings were built and maintained with government money and charged very little for entry. Here, we study ten of the ways ancient Rome was surprisingly progressive.

10 Free Food

In the early years of the Roman Empire, Rome’s population grew rapidly.^[1] At the same time, wealthy landowners were buying up agricultural land outside the city, forcing poorer farmers to head to the city for work. The result was a large, impoverished group of people who struggled to find regular work.

Gaius Gracchus’s grain law of 123 BC tackled this by offering grain at half the market price once a month to anyone who was willing to stand in line and wait for it. The practice of doling out grain to Rome’s poorest would last another six centuries.

The system was overhauled during the reigns of Julius and Augustus Caesar. From then on, the grain would be completely free, but only Rome’s poorest 200,000 people would be eligible. They introduced a test which determined who the poorest were.

Though the grain was free, the people still had to pay for the materials and skills to have the grain turned into bread, unless they were able to do it themselves. In AD 270, Emperor Aurelian altered the system, replacing the grain with fresh bread, and introduced a system where pork, oil, and salt were also regularly distributed for free. The policy finally came to an end when the empire fell in the fifth century.

9 Military Pensions

Throughout the history of the Roman Empire, soldiers received a pension upon completion of their military service (16 years for Praetorians, 20 years for regular legionaries).^[2] In the early years of the empire, payment was usually in the form of land. However, the land was often either newly conquered and on the empire’s border—where it was vulnerable to raiders—or publicly owned land that was often rented or in temporary use by other tenants. Neither of these scenarios were particularly satisfactory for the average soldier, and they often led to land disputes.

In AD 6, Augustus Caesar scrapped the system and replaced it with a monetary payment scheme. From then on, each legionary received 12,000 sesterces when he was honorably discharged—along with a bronze plaque that recorded his completion of service. The value was equal to around 12 years of legionary wages and would have been more than enough to allow the soldier to buy a property with money to spare.

Augustus injected 170,000,000 sesterces from the imperial treasury to start the system and maintained it with a five-percent tax on inheritance and a one-percent tax on all goods sold at auction. Many of the wealthy Roman elite complained, since the taxes were hard on them personally, but the system benefited Rome in the long run by making soldiers reliant on the emperor himself for their pensions. It also guaranteed that anyone, regardless of class, could enjoy wealth in their twilight years if they completed a term of service in the military.

8 Free Entertainment

In the modern world, we think it’s natural to pay for our trips to the stadium or the cinema—how else would they be able to support themselves? In Roman times, however, access to shows, whether they were gladiator fights, theatrical performances, or chariot races, was nearly always free.^[3]

Instead, shows were sponsored by wealthy patrons who were attempting to court the people’s favor. Most of the time, these hosts were aspiring politicians who wanted to get the people on their side. Occasionally, they went even further and sponsored the construction of new public buildings. The most extreme example of this was the construction of the Flavian Amphitheatre, commonly known as the Colosseum. Shortly after his succession, Emperor Vespasian began construction of the amphitheater on the old site of Nero’s personal palace, the ultimate symbol of an emperor granting a gift to his people.

In return for sponsoring the games, the patrons were allowed to host them, which included deciding whether gladiators would die or not at the end of a fight. They were also permitted to give speeches or have people speak on their behalf at breaks between the performances. But the key fact remained: No matter how poor you were, you could go to the show for free.

7 Fire And Police Force

In 7 BC, Emperor Augustus decided to reform the way the city of Rome was organized.^[4] He split the city into 14 wards and put them under the control of officials, whose job it was to oversee their portion of the city and ensure that things like crime, housing, and fires were kept in check.

Premodern cities were massive fire risks, and large portions of them were frequently laid to waste by fires that spread out of control. After a particularly bad fire in AD 6, Emperor Augustus finally decided to create a public body responsible for the safety of the city—the vigiles. Made up of seven cohorts of 1,000 men each, the vigiles fulfilled the roles that modern police and fire departments serve today. Each cohort was responsible for monitoring two of the city’s wards.

In many ways, there was little to separate the vigiles from regular soldiers. They lived in barracks and were expected to commit their lives to the job. They were also responsible for policing the city day and night and generally keeping order, including tracking down and returning runaway slaves.

The vigiles had plenty of specialist equipment, including buckets, hooks for pulling down burning roof material, water pumps, axes, and a chemical compound called acetum, which they used to extinguish fires. They even had a fire engine—a horse-drawn cart with a double-action pump.

6 Free Baths

Baths, much like public entertainment facilities, were free to access—most of the time.^[5] During the reign of Diocletian, the entrance fee was just two bronze pennies, and access was free on public and religious holidays. So they were much cheaper than a modern-day gym membership, and a Roman bathhouse contained many of the same features: a swimming pool, a sauna, an exercise room, changing facilities, massage rooms, and exercise rooms.

In many ways, bathhouses served the same role as community centers do in cities today. They were hives of activity, where friends would go to have fun, politicians would go to preach their cause and win support, and pickpockets would go to steal the belongings of the bathers. Notches found in the walls of Roman bathhouses seem to have been storage for scrolls, so baths may even have provided reading material for their patrons—a much more feasible idea in Roman times, when scrolls were made of animal skin and therefore wouldn’t have been as vulnerable to the moisture in the air.

Most baths were surrounded by places where people could buy food and drink. So the average Roman going to the bathhouse in the afternoon could enjoy a night out with friends, a swim, reading material, and a meal for next to nothing. The only caveat was that public baths were often, unsurprisingly, very dirty, and many of the wealthy built their own private bathhouses that they and their friends could enjoy by themselves.

5 Insulae: Social Housing

A Roman text, known as the Regionary Catalogue, states that there were 44,850 insulae and 1,781 domus in Rome in AD 315.^[6] Both were types of residence: A domus was an individual home that contained a single family unit, while an insula was a block of communal housing occupied by tenants. While many of these insulae were built by private landlords, it seems at least some were funded and built by the Roman government to accommodate the capital’s population boom—or were, at the very least, regulated by laws passed by the Senate.

In many ways, these insulae were very modern: The bottom floor was made up of shops or workshops, while the floors above were private residences of between one and four rooms, accessed by a central staircase. Many of them had balconies. While most were four or five stories tall, and laws passed by the Senate restricted structures any taller than this, some stretched to as many as eight stories.

The Roman cityscape was much taller than many of us realize, and a city of similar height wouldn’t develop until the early modern era. While the Roman state seems to have stopped short of providing free accommodation for the poor, it was certainly concerned by the dodgy construction standards some of these insulae were built to, and by the late Roman era, they were even being built out of an early form of concrete. While these Roman blocks of flats certainly didn’t provide the highest of living standards, they were constructed en masse and regulated and monitored by the government in a way that housing projects wouldn’t be again until after 1500.

4 Free Water And Toilets

Ancient Rome, much like modern cities today, provided free public toilets and water fountains for their population.^[7] However, a Roman public toilet wouldn’t meet the standards of many of us these days: A public toilet was a single room, with lavatories around the side walls that emptied into a sewer (sometimes) or a pit. There was no privacy, and anyone who used the toilet would have to use the sponge on a stick that everyone else used. Roman toilets did, however, contain running water fed by an aqueduct—and they were free to access. Public toilets wouldn’t exist again in cities for at least another millennium.

Far more important, though, was the provision of free, fresh, and clean water in fountains. In his De Aquaductu, written around AD 100, Frontinus states that the nine aqueducts that fed Rome its clean water supply fed 591 fountains across the city with enough water to satisfy 900 people each. This wasn’t just the case in Rome; in Pompeii and many other Roman cities, water collection points were regularly spaced across the city. For most Roman people, a fresh supply of free, clean water was less than 46 meters (150 ft) away—a better ratio than many modern cities!

3 Free Health Care/Subsidized Doctors

In ancient Greece, like many places in the ancient world, health was considered a personal matter that people dealt with alone. If they were rich enough, they could pay for access to a consultant or a doctor. For many people, though, the best medical treatment they’d have access to would be common home remedies or family medical knowledge.^[8]

In Rome, however, times were changing. Rome’s first public hospital was built in 293 BC on Tiber Island, using Senate funds. Though hospitals were uncommon across the empire, they were always free to access and built using government funds—often from the purse of the local magistrate. Running costs were often subsidized by donations from people who used the hospital, or wealthy philanthropists.

Much more common, though, were private doctors who ran their own practice (clinicus). Many of these doctors received a salary from the Roman government and used an unusual method of charging patients by increasing the price depending on the assets of the patient. For the very poorest, diagnosis and prescription were very cheap, though treatment was never actually free.

2 Collegia: Social Clubs

In the days of the Roman Republic, almost anyone could form a club, or collegium. All it took was three individuals who agreed to form it.^[9] These groups were very important in everyday society, essentially operating like guilds did in medieval times. Groups of people from the same craft would come together and pool their resources, putting money into a collective pot that would work in a similar way to insurance if any of the group members fell ill, died, or lost their house.

A collegium was like a modern-day corporation, social club, and political party rolled into one. Some collegia, like the example described above, were a kind of social security system for individual traders. Others, however, would have been business or trade ventures, while some clearly existed to support a certain political candidate or to express a certain political view in organized action.

Since any three free individuals could form a collegium, they quickly became popular with the poorer people in society to lobby for political action. These kinds of collegia became increasingly common, until they were seen as a significant threat to the state. When the republic gave way to the empire after the rise of Julius Caesar, one of his first acts was to strictly limit people’s ability to form new collegia, making them have to personally get permission from the emperor rather than just the consent of two other people. Collegia largely disappear from history at this point.

1 Natural Theory Of Disease

In 36 BC, Roman writer and scholar Marcus Varro wrote that new buildings shouldn’t be built close to swamps because of the risk posed by minute creatures that couldn’t be seen by the eye, which enter the body through the nose and mouth and cause serious illness.^[10]

While this idea was far from mainstream in Roman society, most Romans subscribed to a natural theory of disease rather than a divine one. Most commonly, they believed bad smells could be the cause of disease, as could having an imbalance of fluids (called humors) in the body. Marcus Varro’s statement was the closest they came to discovering the existence of germs—but their theories about how to avoid illness were largely accurate: Keep fit, rest when ill, drink clean water, don’t camp in one spot for too long, avoid moist environments, and clean yourself regularly.

The British Empire was easily the largest empire in human history, encompassing about one fourth of the world’s total land area and population at the peak of its power. Throughout that time, numerous priceless cultural artifacts from around the world were seized and taken back to be displayed in British museums or sold to private collectors, where they remain to this day.

10. Gweagal Shield

The Gweagal shield is a traditional shield made by the aboriginal Gweagal people of Australia. It’s believed to have been used in ceremonial and defensive contexts, before it was captured from a native fighter during James Cook’s 1770 expedition to Australia’s southeastern coast. According to some accounts of the encounter, a group of Gweagal warriors were confronted and defeated by Cook’s landing party on the beach. Other reports, however, claim that Cook ordered his men to open fire after they were attacked, forcing them to retaliate.

Whatever might have happened that day, the shield – along with spears and a few other items – was seized by Cook and brought back to England. It’s still held in the British Museum’s collection in London, along with several other objects stolen by Cook and his men from indigenous Australians during their early voyages to the continent.

9. Benin Bronzes

Before the British expedition to Benin in West Africa in 1897, it was one of the oldest and most developed regions in the world. The capital, Benin City, is said to have been larger and better-built than most European cities of the time, with city walls four times longer than even the Great Wall of China. The empire was particularly known for its sophisticated art, including the famous Benin bronzes – a collection of thousands of works of art made using the lost-wax casting technique. It’s estimated that there were around 4,000 of these objects made by skilled craftsmen from across the region, including sculptures, plaques, and other decorative items.

Sadly, all that would come to an abrupt end In February, 1897, when the city was invaded and sacked by a 1,200-strong British force commanded by Sir Henry Rawson. It was a brutal, punitive campaign, resulting in the looting of almost all of the royal palace’s priceless artifacts, including the bronzes. They were taken back to Britain and sold to museums and collectors around the world, with most of them now residing in private and state collections in Europe.

8. Moai

The Moai statues are monolithic sculptures made by natives of Easter Island – a Chilean territory located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Sculpted with compressed lava ash, these pieces are believed to represent deceased ancestors and occupy an important place in the culture of the Rapa Nui people.

One of the most famous of these statues is the Hoa Hakananai’a, which translates to ‘the stolen or hidden friend’. Measuring almost 2.5 meters – or 8 feet – in height and about four tons in weight, it was taken by the British navy and brought to the British Museum in London during an 1868 campaign, where it remains until today. Despite being on display in London for over 150 years, the Hoa Hakananai’a remains an irreplaceable artifact in Rapa Nui culture. 

7. Hevea Brasiliensis Seeds

This one is mixing things up a little bit, because we’re not talking about a specific artifact. We are, however, talking about taking away something monumentally important to another part of the world. You see, demand for rubber was rapidly increasing around the world in the late 1800s, especially in Europe and the United States, where it was used to manufacture tires, clothing, and various other products. The rubber industry in Brazil and the larger Amazon region was booming, as the government strictly controlled the trade and prohibited the export of the rubber-producing Hevea Brasiliensis seeds out of the region. 

In 1876, an explorer and naturalist named Henry Wickham was hired by the British government to do something about it. After months of preparation and backdoor deals with local tribes, Wickham managed to smuggle about 70,000 rubber tree seeds out of Brazil and back to England. It was a turning point in the history of the global rubber trade, as it allowed British planters and traders to plant the seeds in colonies like Ceylon and Malaysia. By 1913, Britain would overtake Brazil as the primary exporter of rubber around the world.

6. Parthenon Marbles

Parthenon Marbles – also called Ergin Marbles – are a collection of sculptures and architectural features that once adorned the Parthenon – a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena in Athens, Greece. Made some time in the 5th century BC with Pentelic marble and limestone, the artifacts depict various scenes from Greek mythology, including battles, religious ceremonies, and the birth of Athena.

The marbles were originally owned by the city of Athens, though in 1801, Lord Elgin, a British diplomat, received permission from the ruling Ottoman Empire to remove and ship them to England. They were then purchased by the British government, and are now on display in the British Museum. That’s despite several calls by the Greek government to return them, as they were allegedly taken from Athens without their consent, while the British Museum maintains that they’re part of their collection and are better preserved in London.

5. Tipu’s Tiger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GefplfGGUM

Tipu’s Tiger refers to an automaton made for Tipu Sultan – the ruler of Mysore in south India from 1782 to 1799. Built in 1793 in the form of a life-sized tiger attacking a European soldier, it was both an impressive automaton and a powerful symbol of local resistance against the British. According to accounts, the tiger could even produce realistic growls and roars, while the man screamed in agony.

The tiger remained in Tipu’s possession until 1799, when British forces defeated and killed him during a military campaign. It remains on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London today, along with many other prized possessions taken from Tipu’s palaces across south India. 

4. Maori Heads

From 1769 to the 1970s, thousands of ancestral remains belonging to the Maori and Moriori people of New Zealand were taken out of the country and sold to private collectors, museums, and medical institutions around the world. The most prized of these are the toi moko, or tattooed heads of notable leaders, family members, or defeated enemies preserved by native communities as souvenirs. 

According to the records, the first ever trade of a toi moko was done by a member of James Cook’s party, Sir Joseph Banks, some time in 1769. Soon, they were in demand across Europe and beyond for their detailed artwork and cultural value, resulting in a kind of a gold rush but for mummified tattooed heads instead of gold. The ever-rising global demand for the artifacts – peaking during the 1800s and 1820s – directly led to several conflicts and violent confrontations between the settlers and natives. While many of them have been returned to New Zealand as a part of the government’s efforts to repatriate national treasures, thousands still remain hidden in private collections around the world. 

3. Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele created during the Ptolemaic Period of Ancient Egypt. At its most basic, a stele was a large ornate stone slab used in Egypt to commemorate significant events or individuals. In this case, the Rosetta Stone was a part of a larger collection of stelae issued by a council of priests in 196 BC. 

The Rosetta Stone is unique for many reasons, including the fact that the information inscribed on it is written in two languages – Egyptian and Greek – and three other writing systems – hieroglyphics, the demotic script, and the Greek alphabet. Specifically, the text refers to a royal decree of benefactions issued by King Ptolemy V in honor of his coronation. 

It was discovered by a French soldier called Pierre-Francois Bouchard during the French occupation of Egypt in 1799, and then seized by the British in 1801 following their victory in the Napoleonic Wars. The Rosetta Stone was eventually transported to England and donated to the British Museum in London, where it remains on display today. 

2. Ethiopian Tabots

Ethiopian tabots – or plaques – are sacred objects made of wood or stone that represent the Ark of the Covenant. They’re an important part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church – an institution that predates the European colonization of Africa – and are only meant to be viewed or handled by their priests. According to the stories, there are believed to be 44 tabots in total, each representing a different church or region in Ethiopia.

11 of them, however, now sit in the British Museum as a part of its vast collection of historical and cultural items from around the world. They were taken during the British expedition to Abyssinia in 1868, when British soldiers looted a number of valuable artifacts from the Emperor’s treasury and transported them back to London. There have been a number of attempts by the Ethiopian government to return them back to the country in the years since, though to little success. 

1. Great Star Of Africa

At 3,106 carats and about 4 X 2.5 X 2.3 inches in dimensions, the Cullinan diamond was the largest clear-cut diamond ever found. It’s named after Sir Thomas Cullinan – the owner of the Premier Mine near Pretoria, South Africa – where it was discovered back in 1905. The Cullinan diamond was later split into several smaller stones, the largest of which was the Great Star of Africa at 530 carats, also known as the Cullinan I. 

Currently, the Great Star of Africa – along with other pieces from the Cullinan set – is mounted on the Sovereign’s Scepter as a part of the British royal family’s crown jewels. South Africa has made several demands for the diamond’s return over the years, but the British government has refused all of them, usually citing legal and historical reasons.

The French Empire officially refers to the geopolitical entity set up by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804, though the French colonial empire is way older than that. French colonies started showing up in the Americas and India as early as the 17th century, and some of them still remain under French control. For the purposes of our discussion, though, we’d draw the line at the Algerian war of Independence in 1962, which is considered by many to be the effective end of the French colonial empire.

Throughout this long period, French society went through many profound changes in its government and social structure – changes that had a cascading effect on Europe and the rest of the world. One can find traces of many political currents that swept across the world in the 19th and 20th centuries within the history of the French Empire, including our modern ideas of liberty, freedom, revolution, and nationalism. In many ways, France is where the modern era began, despite strong, often well-armed resistance from the old one. 

10. Revolutionary And Napoleonic Wars

The Revolutionary Wars were a series of conflicts between revolutionary France and almost all other major European powers at the time, most of them absolute monarchies. Beginning in 1792, the conflict would go on for more than two decades, pitting France against some of the largest, most battle-hardened armies of that time, including Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and sometimes even the Ottomans.

The Napoleonic phase of the conflict is now known as the Napoleonic wars, beginning with the establishment of his consulate in 1799. Despite the overwhelming combined superiority of the rest of Europe, France – at least in the first phase – proved to be an exceptional military foe. Many factors have been proposed for their early successes, including the military genius of Napoleon Bonaparte, introduction of the mass conscription system still used in countries around the world, and high morale among French soldiers.

Conflict continued until 1815, when Napoleon was finally defeated and exiled for good, though this entire period would have a defining effect on European affairs for a long time to come. For one, its revolutionary nature helped spread the ideas of the revolution across the land, such as universal suffrage, worker’s rights, liberty for all, and all that other good stuff. 

9. The Original Vietnam War

The French Empire’s early experiments with overseas colonies might not have been as successful as, say, Britain or Spain, though it emerged as a formidable colonial power in the early part of the 20th century. Of all of its colonial possessions, Indochina – made up of modern day Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and parts of China – was one of the most lucrative. It was also strategically placed, which would be crucial in the upcoming World Wars.

That wouldn’t last long, however, as this was also a time when nationalist sentiments were growing within the country, especially Vietnam. As soon as WW2 was over, a majority of rebel fighters grouped under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, and declared a people’s republic in North Vietnam called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. 

The first Indochina War lasted from 1946 to 1954, and resulted in one of the largest military defeats for a European colonial power at the hands of a native rebel army. While it was the end of French presence in the region, they left a country divided between communist-held areas in the north, and US-backed, royalist territories in the south, paving the way for what we now know as the Vietnam war. 

8. Belle Époque

The French golden age – or Belle Époque, translated to ‘beautiful age’ – was a period of growth in arts, culture, living standards and general quality of life right after the Franco-Prussian war of 1971. It was also a relatively stable time without any major conflicts, allowing freer expression of ideas in all spheres. From 1871 to 1914, France tripled its GDP, made new strides in the upcoming fields of aviation, electronics, railways and automobile, and raised its urban wages by more than 50%, among many other achievements.

Some historians, though, object to that rosy view of this period, arguing that the time wasn’t a golden era for everyone involved. While some of the poorer sections of the society did benefit from this period of relative excess, most French citizens – especially outside its urban areas – saw little change in their day-to-day conditions. This was also when popular discontent started moving towards reactionary, racist points of view instead of the original ideas of the French revolution.

7. Left Vs. Right Wing

Left and right seem to be an arbitrary measure to describe political leaning, as there’s nothing inherently political or ideological about directions. Still, we continue to place conservative and reactionary ideologies to the right of the political spectrum, and those advocating for change or progressive reform on the left. 

Similar to a lot of other commonly used political phrases today – like the ‘Fourth Estate’ – the left and right wings come from the French Empire. Precisely, they refer to the revolutionary National Assembly established in 1789 and its seating arrangement. The supporters of King Louis XVI – who’d be executed by the guillotine in January 1793 – and other royalists sat on the right. The left was taken up by all kinds of radicals, from the Jacobins to moderate Girondins to the more conservative Dantonists. 

6. The Failed Colonial Empire

The history of the French Empire runs in stark contrast to other major European powers of the time. While others like Britain, Spain and Portugal already had thriving overseas colonial empires by the end of the 18th century, the French experiment with colonies didn’t turn out to be as successful, as they had lost most of their colonial possessions to Britain by the end of the 18th century.

That didn’t matter, though, as the political and social currents within France of that time would still have a major impact on European politics in the next century. While Britain’s colonial strategy was focused on overseas expansion, France developed theirs around battlefield superiority within Europe, and it turned out to be immensely successful during Napoleon’s reign. At the height of his power, France controlled almost the entirety of western Europe, with perhaps the largest army ever assembled in Europe up to that time.

5. Invasion Of Russia

We often compare the French invasion of Russia with Hitler’s disastrous Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union, though this interpretation is wrong on many levels. Most importantly, Napoleon’s wars, while still French, nationalistic and immensely bloody at times, weren’t ideologically or politically driven by the same interests as the Nazis; not even close. Strategically speaking, too, Napoleon fought a different, monarchist Russia that was far weaker compared to the Soviet war machine, making these comparisons illogical in many ways. 

What they did have in common, though, is the final outcome of the war: absolute ruin for the invading force. Napoleon’s Grande Armée lost just the same as Hitler’s, and in much the same way, too, thanks to bad roads, harsh weather conditions, and a massive scorched-Earth campaign undertaken by Russian forces to destroy everything in their retreat back into the interior. Napoleon – despite his extraordinary genius on the battlefield back in Europe – lost more than 300,000 of the 500,000 troops in the entire campaign, leading to his downfall and first exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba. 

4. The Paris Commune

While the French Revolution of 1789 did a lot to dismantle feudalism, its contribution to the emancipation of the most downtrodden parts of the French population was questionable. Many later thinkers consider it to be the end of feudalism and the beginning of industrial-era capitalism, as it did little to improve conditions for the rapidly emerging working class during the Industrial Revolution.

The Paris Commune of 1871 was another attempt almost a century later, though this time, it would be crushed far more brutally and finally. Set up in the immediate aftermath of the siege of Paris by Prussia in 1870-71, it was started by members of the National guard – a unit made of mostly workers defending the city – and went on for two months, before being suppressed by royalist forces. Some estimates put the number of dead at around 20,000, along with several other harsh measures against revolutionaries and other opposition groups within Paris. 

3. War in the Vendée

The Vendée uprising was an exceptionally brutal phase of the immediate post-revolution years in France. Historians at the time saw it in the binaries of revolution and counter-revolution, though as we’ve come to realize in the years since, it was far from being that simple. The rebelling population was largely Catholic, royalist, conservative, and in favor of the restoration of the monarchy. However,  it was also entirely made up of the local petty bourgeoisie – such as priests, administrators, military commanders, etc. – and working class people with their own idea of freedom. 

The threat of counter-revolution had been a part of revolutionary theory in France since its early phases back in 1789. The Vendée uprising was the first organized effort by counter-revolutionaries to retake France, blurring the line between popular revolt and revolution, as in this case, popular sentiment supported the re-establishment of the Ancien Régime.

Historians have tried to explain it in many ways,, including the overwhelmingly Catholic and conservative population of the Vendée. Whatever the causes, the revolt – which had quickly turned into full-fledged warfare – went on from 1793 to 1796, and saw some of the most brutal violence against civilians in post-revolutionary France.

Estimates vary, though anywhere between 117,000 to 200,000 people may have died throughout this war. Most of them were civilians, too, with cases of rape, torture, summary executions, and intentional destruction of civilian property rampant across the Vendée region. 

2. The Haitian Revolt

The Haitian revolt was an important event for colonial and revolutionary movements around the world, and is still referred to as the only successful slave revolt in history. Beginning in August, 1791 and ending in January 1804, it was one of the longest wars involving the French empire. 

It was also the perfect example of the inherent contradictions within revolutionary French society – slavery and colonialism were treated as antithetical to the ideals of the revolution and banned within France, while still extensively used for labor and profit in the American colonies. For the Haitians, it was a particularly paradoxical position to be in. 

Regardless, the revolt was fought on pretty much the same principles, espousing the ideas of liberty for everyone, separation of state and church, land reform for the common good, and freedom of religion. It’s debatable if those goals were actually achieved in the long term, though just like the French revolution that inspired it – which ultimately failed and resulted in an even stricter monarchy of the Bonapartists –  at least they tried. 

1. The Terror

By now, it’s clear that the French Revolution weighs heavily on the history of the French Empire. In some ways, it is the history of the French Empire, as France only reached the height of its imperial power in its immediate post-revolutionary years.

On the other hand, the revolution of 1789 also strengthened the forces of monarchy and royalism, largely triggered by the execution of Louis XVI by the guillotine in January, 1793. Within France, the event would further radicalize an already radical segment of the government, resulting in its bloodiest phase until that time – the Reign of Terror.

Beginning in September, Robespierrists – a radical Jacobin faction within the National Assembly – executed more than 40,000 people without trial for actions they perceived to be against the revolution. Between 300,000 to 500,000 were arrested across Paris, though accurate numbers are hard to come by due to the fog of war. 

It remains one the most controversial parts of French history as well as revolutionary theory, and would have a major impact on events within France and the rest of Europe in the coming decades. For one, it would associate images of bloodshed and wanton murder with the relatively egalatarian and progressive ideas of the French revolution, massively weakening its appeal among the more conservative sections of European society.

The Byzantine Empire was actually the Roman Empire, just further East. It existed from the year 330 AD all the way until 1453. Constantinople was the capital, serving as the head of Roman interest in their Easter lands because the Empire had spread so far it needed another base of operations. Travelling by land from Rome to Constantinople, or modern-day Istanbul, is over 1,300 miles.

 For all the Roman influences, the Byzantine Empire did do things its own way sometimes. And some ways things were back then can be pretty shocking.

10. Political Mutilations

One way that modern society can separate itself from ancient society is how we punish criminals. In most of modern Western society we either imprison those convicted of crimes are, in a very few cases, they will be imprisoned and then executed for their crimes. Back in the day, punishing crime was like an exercise in creative sadism. The more bizarre, horrible, and unique ways you could come up with making someone pay for something, the better it seemed The Byzantine Empire was no different.

Mutilation was a favourite method of punishing criminals back in the day. However, it was also a method of settling political rivalries as well. Imagine if instead of having an election, presidential candidates went out of their way to see who could cause the most pain and suffering to the other one’s body as a method not of killing them, but just stopping them from getting in their way.

Blinding political enemies was fairly commonplace because a blind enemy certainly couldn’t lead armies. If that didn’t work, castration was also a choice. Not just for the obvious reasons, but also because they considered castration the ultimate injustice a man could suffer. It made them no longer a man, and it also prevented you from having heirs.

John Athalarichos tried to overthrow his father, the emperor Heraclius In the year 637. It didn’t go very well for him and he had his nose and hands amputated.Constantine Diogenes was accused of plotting against the emperor and was blinded before he ended up committing suicide. 

9. Chariot Racing Was Huge

You can’t deny that people love to watch sports. According to Wikipedia, of the 24 most watched broadcasts in world history have all been sports-related. That includes many Olympic Games broadcasts, World Cup soccer, and even two Muhammad Ali boxing matches. Both the London and the Rio Summer Games share a record of about 3.6 billion viewers. So it’s not surprising to learn that, during the Byzantine Empire, sports and competition were just as popular.

Roman-style chariot races were one of the biggest sports of the Byzantine Empire. And remember, chariot racing differed from a modern foot race, or even a NASCAR race. Sure there was high speed, but the potential for death and Mayhem was extremely high. Chariot Racers could be smashed against the stone pillars or dragged to death behind their horses.

The appeal of racing for the fans seems to be the adrenaline, bloodshed, and money to be made gambling. For the racers, it was the potential for fortune and freedom. Many of these charioteers were slaves, but they had the chance to win as much as 15 bags of gold for winning a single race.

The most famous charioteer in history was Diocles, and it is said that he earned 36 million sesterces over his career, which could have fed the entire city of Rome for a year. For some context, a Roman soldier might have earned about 1,200 sesterces in a year.

They were four teams in Byzantine Chariot racing, the Whites, the Greens, the Blues, and the Reds. Eventually these teams merged and became just the Greens and the Blues. And fans were so passionate about the sport and that when they weren’t throwing nail studded tablets under the track to sabotage their opponents, they were breaking into bloody riots to support their own team. At one point the Greens ambushed the Blues and killed 3,000 of them.

8. They Created Greek Fire

If you’ve never heard of Greek fire before, or maybe you at least heard of wildfire from the show Game of Thrones. Essentially a mysterious and alchemical kind of napalm, it’s fire that burns even on water. Pretty cool in a fantasy-based TV series, and also inspired by the legends of Greek fire.

Historians believe it was invented in the 7th Century in the Byzantine Empire. Greek fire could be shot out of a tube like a flamethrower or thrown in clay pots. Just like napalm or Wildfire from Game of Thrones, it was sticky and couldn’t be extinguished out with water. 

Famously, Greek fire was used to defend Constantinople from an Arab fleet in the 670s. Weirdly enough, Greek Fire disappeared from history in the 15th century. It’s believed that a Jewish refugee named Callinicus of Heliopolis created it. They kept the recipe a strict secret, and then it seems to have been lost completely. 

These days we can make educated guesses about what Greek Fire probably was, most likely included petroleum, naphtha, quicklime and sulphur, But they are just that, guesses.

7. They Created Their Own Silk Industry

Prior to the 6th century, if you were interested in getting anything made of silk in the world, you were going to China to get it. It’s hard to conceptualize just how important and valuable silk was back in the day by today’s standards but the fact that the major trade road across the world was known as The Silk Road ought to give you some sign of how highly prized this commodity was.

Keeping the Silk Road open was a constant struggle, especially since it traveled through Persia and Persia would not allow trade during times of War. In the 6th century the Byzantine emperor Justinian became frustrated with the inconsistent silk trade and came up with a solution.

Under instructions from Emperor Justinian, two monks went to China and nabbed some silkworm eggs, which they smuggled back to the Empire hidden in their canes. Before the monks went to China, no one even knew really where silk came from. The Byzantines actually thought it came from India. The entire journey took the monks two years. And it also paid off.

They started silk factories in Constantinople and in other cities throughout the empire. They toppled the Chinese and Persian silk monopolies, and the Byzantine Empire started their own across Europe. This was a cornerstone of the entire Byzantine economy for well over half a millennium. They still produce silk throughout Turkey and Greece today.

6. The Nika Riots

As big a deal as chariot races were in Byzantium, you can’t really get an appreciation for how seriously people took them without talking about the Nika riots. The riots took place for a solid week of the year 532 AD. In modern times we’ve seen riots on television and the potential chaos that ensues when common people clash with law enforcement or groups of others with opposing viewpoints, nothing in modern history comes close to what went down to release riots. or, to put it another way, 30,000 people died, and they burned half the city to the ground in that one week.

By the time that they had separated the Chariot teams into two groups, the Greens and the Blues, loyalty to one faction or another was seriously scary stuff. The Emperor would often choose a side not because he particularly supported one came over the other, but to ensure that one team supported him so that both couldn’t join together and overthrow the empire.

Unfortunately for Emperor Justinian, he didn’t feel the need to support one faction over the other. He was trying to eliminate partisan politics from how society worked, but the general population didn’t see it that way. Along with some civil unrest because of his unpopular policies and a war in Persia, everything blended together to create a state of chaos.

Members of the Blues and Greens plead with Justinian at a race to have mercy on some of their teammates, who were set to be executed for a previous riot. Justinian declined, and the crowd shouted ‘Nika,’ which meant victory and was chanted typically at charioteers. The fuse was lit, and the riot began.

Rioters released all the prisoners from a local jail and began burning down the city. They trapped Justinian inside of his palace and both factions teamed together to declare a new emperor. It was only through the clever machinations of three of Justinian’s generals, all of whom were barbarians and had no loyalty to either faction, that they were able to sow discord between the Greens and Blues and slaughter anyone who dissented.

Ten percent of the City’s population was thought to have been killed by the time the riot was over and the would-be Emperor propped up by the Blues on the Greens was killed for his trouble.

5. Adulterers Lost Their Noses

It wasn’t just criminals or political rivals who suffered meaning in the Byzantine Empire. As part of the reforms to the legal system administered by Emperor Leo III, he put laws regarding personal relationships into place. Violating these rules could prove to be exceptionally painful.

Under Leo’s rule, a married man who committed adultery was to be corrected by a flogging of 12 lashes. There was also going to be a fine to be paid. If an unmarried man was caught fornicating, they were going to get six lashes.

If a person was found to have carnal knowledge of a nun, they were going to have their nose cut off. If a husband knew that his wife was having an affair and not doing anything about it, he was going to be flogged and exiled. However, the wife and the person she was having the affair with would both have their noses cut off.

4. The Justinian Plague

Anyone who got through the year 2020 in one piece knows what it’s like to live in a pandemic. That’s with modern technology and modern communication to help get us all through it. During the year 541 to 542 amidst the Justinian plague, things were a little different.

The plague itself ravaged the world for about 225 years but didn’t hit Constantinople until 542. Travelling thanks to rats and fleas, it moved along trade routes wherever humans travelled with goods and commodities. People migrating to escape cold weather make the situation worse, and the plague was able to spread and kill literally millions of people.

The Bubonic plague is thought to have killed about half of the population of Europe or around 50 million people when it reappeared in the 14th century. The writer and historian Procopius blamed Justinian for the plague and declared that he might actually be a devil, or at least being punished by God.

The plague spread in Constantinople for four months. Emperor Justinian caught the disease but didn’t die. The streets were said to have been filled with corpses while graveyards and tombs overflowed such that they dug trenches to handle the excess bodies. They dumped some into the sea, some were stored in empty buildings. 

Those who couldn’t afford to see doctors, or couldn’t find one because they were so busy, tried to treat the disease at home with cold baths, magic trinkets and blessings. Estimates put the death toll at 5000 to 10000 per day in Constantinople alone. Around 25% of the entire Empire was believed to have died, anywhere from 25 to 50 million people.

3. They May Have Invented Bagpipes

If someone asked you to list the things you think of when you hear Scotland, there’s a good chance your list would include things like the Loch Ness monster, haggis, and bagpipes. While the first two are certainly popular in Scotland, and there’s no denying that bagpipes are profoundly Scottish in the modern world, there’s evidence to suggest that the Byzantine Empire invented them first.

The Director of the Centre for Byzantine Research at Oxford believes Persia is where you should look if you want to find the historical origins of the bagpipe. He believes that Persia’s much longer history of shepherding is a good point in favour of this as bagpipes have long been an instrument of shepherds, and that the Middle East actually seems to be the origin for most instruments that became popular throughout Europe including the lute and the guitar. 

2. The First New England Was There

These days when someone references New England you know that they’re most likely talking about the Northeast United States, places like Massachusetts. That New England is not the first New England to be founded, however. The Byzantine Empire also had its own New England once, when a group of English immigrants settled there in the year 1075.

Over 4,000 English immigrants settled in the area, including a majority of them in a place they renamed Nova Anglia which means New England.

Byzantines hired English soldiers to fill out their ranks at the time, along with Scandinavians soldiers as well. English mercenaries for well-regarded by Byzantine forces. The founding of this New England happened shortly after the Norman conquest of 1066, and many of these English people would have been refugees from the war.

Normans were now at war with the Byzantine Empire, so the English would have had even more reason to side with Byzantium and have a chance to fight their enemies once again. As for that location of the Byzantine New England, that’s a mystery. Documents show that many of the English joined the armies of Constantinople, but where they may have settled has been lost to history.

1. Constantinople Fell to a Massive Cannon

There’s never been one single thing that toppled an Empire. The Byzantine Empire is no different. Many factors from economic to political and so on led to the fall of the once mighty Empire. But, when it comes to how Constantinople itself fell, you can put a heavy amount of blame on one piece of military equipment, the massive cannon commissioned by Sultan Mehmed II.

In 1,000 years the city of Constantinople had been attacked 23 times and not a single army had made it through the walls. Constantinople was already on a downturn, economically crippled and losing ground on all sides. The sultan commissioned the biggest cannon the world had ever seen to help break down the walls. What he got was a 27-foot long bronze cannon with eight inch thick walls and a barrel that was 30 in in diameter so that a man could actually crawl inside of it.

The cannon fired cannonballs that weighed about half a ton. It took 200 men and 60 oxen to drag the cannon across the countryside, 140 miles to Constantinople. They manage progress of two-and-a-half miles per day.

When the cannon finally arrived, it lived up to its promise and more. The devastation was unseen in the world before. It tore defensive walls that had stood for literally thousands of years to shreds. One single weapon had laid waste to the powerful defenses of the previously unconquerable city. Even though the massive cannon could only be fired seven times a day, the psychological impact was more than enough.