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The Treaty of Brétigny would not, as hoped, put an end to the conflict that would come to be called the hundred years war, but it did represent a significant change in the conflict. What is perhaps most interesting, however, is that the treaty did not result from a military victory by one side or the other. Rather, three weeks earlier, the course of European history had been changed by a hail storm.
In 1891, British humorist Jerome K. Jerome wrote that “Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.”
The Reconquista, or Christian reconquest of Iberia, took nearly 800 years. The fighting did not come without great attempts by Muslim powers across the strait trying to reestablish their presence in mainland Europe. The last gasp of that effort came in the 1330s, when the powerful Marinid sultanate of what is modern Morocco invaded in an attempt to reverse Christian gains and secure the perilous position of the Sultanate of Granada.
The plot of the Rue of Saint Nicaise and its use of an infernal machine played a vital role in the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, and transformed the very concept of assassination, resulting in a new definition of a word all too familiar today: terrorist.
