shanks - I believe you are a covert historian! Your analysis accords strongly with my own. Like you, I have not (nor will I, most likely - not my period
) read Tuchman, but my immediate response to tsuwm was - "Calamitous - yes; all four horsemen were riding hard through that century, but it would not (could not?) have been calamitous for everybody. Undertakers and shroud makers would have done well, at the very least. In England, many peasants made enough out of their scarce labour (after the Black Death) to buy land and become yeoman farmers, some of whom went on to become great landowners and members of the nobility in later ages."
Calamity - at the time, perhaps, but look at the impact on the future. We all have our view on such things - thank goodness - and it very properly comes out into the open in one's interpretation of History, so that it can be scrutinised and commented on by others - including those who are not "experts, but have a valid viewpoint.
(OK - who decides which is "a valid viewpoint" or not? we can become infinitely subjective along this route!)
As to any period of history "mirroring" any other - !!!!!???!
