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Nick Holmes

Welcome to Echoes of Empires. If you’re looking for a podcast about history, you’ve come to the right place! Because you’ll find over a hundred episodes here about the Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Arab Caliphates, Charlemagne’s Empire, the Dark Ages, the Crusades and I’m adding to them all the time.

WANT A FREE EBOOK? Then head directly to my website www.nickholmesauthor.com.

The Fall Of The Roman Empire

Welcome to Echoes of Empires, my new podcast which is the successor to the Fall of the Roman Empire. 

In this episode, I want to look at the First Crusade. This crusade was quite different from all the others. Not only did it establish and define the entire crusading movement, but it was also probably the largest military expedition put together in Europe since the days of the Roman Empire. Over 100,000 people, a large proportion of whom were knights and foot soldiers, marched east to give battle to almost the entire Islamic world. In the next few episodes, we’ll look at why they did this, what motivated them and what they expected to achieve. But whatever the answers to those questions are, one thing is abundantly clear. The First Crusade was astonishingly successful. The first crusaders were never defeated. Instead, they fought and routed every Islamic army they encountered. From Turkish nomads to Bedouin horsemen and Ethiopian infantry, they triumphed all the way from what is now Turkey down to Egypt. 

No wonder medieval Europe spent the next century living in the shadow of the success of the First Crusade. The story was recounted repeatedly by troubadours in the banqueting halls of castles and in the market fairs of peasant villages. And it’s little wonder that on the other side of the Mediterranean, Islam was shaken to its very core. It had been shattered and broken by the crusaders. But it would come back. Eventually, the Islamic world found one of its greatest leaders: Saladin. And he would lead an Islamic resurgence that in its turn would break the power of the crusaders.

But long before we get to Saladin, I want to go back to the origins of the First Crusade to ask why did it happen at all? What was it that produced the most extraordinary single event of the entire Middle Ages?

And to find that answer, I want to start on a cold winter’s day in a field outside the town of Clermont in central France. That day was the 27 November 1095.

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

Episode 131: The First Crusade: A New Hero in Byzantium

The Fall of the Roman Empire podcast is now called Echoes of Empires.

Why change the name? Well, as you know, this podcast has already moved beyond the fall of Rome to cover a broader range of historical topics. In the last few episodes, we’ve covered Charlemagne, the Arab Caliphates, the Vikings and Byzantium. And going forward I want to cover a host of new subjects including the Crusades, Medieval Europe, the Seljuk Turks, Saladin, Genghis Khan and much more!

And I’m going to begin with the First Crusade: yes, the story of history’s greatest crusade, the crusade that defined not just the whole crusading movement but also medieval Europe and Islam. Now, the First Crusade has attracted praise and criticism over the centuries, according to changing intellectual and cultural fashions. The purpose of this podcast, as it has always been, is to look at history on its own terms. I’m interested in looking at the past through the eyes of the men and women who lived at the time. To try to understand what mattered to them, to understand what their hopes and fears were, and to understand why they behaved as they did.

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

Echoes of Empires: New Name, Same Show!

I wanted to let you know that my latest book, The Inheritors of Rome, is now available in both paperback and ebook on Amazon and will be available through most major book retailers soon. Click here for the Amazon link.

Why did I write the book? I wanted to close my series on the fall of the Roman Empire with an examination of what happened after the fall.

I look at a period often called the Dark Ages. And yes, I think they were dark for many people. But they were also the birthplace for not just modern Europe (and to some extent America as well) but also for Islam.

I think it's difficult to understand the modern world without knowing what happened in the centuries after Rome fell.

So, the book covers the period from around AD 700-1000. It examines the collapse of Roman civilization in Europe to the rise of Charlemagne’s empire. From the explosive expansion of early Islam to the resilience of Byzantium. From the devastation of the Vikings to the birth of medieval Europe. It aims to paint a sweeping, interconnected portrait of a world in upheaval.

I aim to shed new light on forgotten turning points, revealing how environmental pressures, religious conflict, economic dislocation and cultural reinvention laid the foundations for the rebirth of Europe after the fall of Rome.

If you’ve been listening to my podcast, you’ll be familiar with some of these subjects but I think you’d still find the book worthwhile since it has more content than my podcast and includes 7 maps, 21 pictures, a chronology, a detailed bibliography, notes and an index.

And if you do read it, I’d be thrilled to hear your thoughts. Of course, if you enjoy it, a review on Amazon would mean a great deal to me.

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: The Inheritors of Rome

In the century from 860 to 960 Byzantium was reborn as the greatest power in western Eurasia. Its armies were invincible, spearheaded by regiments of heavy cavalry which terrified its opponents. In this episode, I want to look at how Byzantium achieved this and why, in my view, in its hour of triumph, it lay the foundations for its fall in the eleventh century. 

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

The Fall of the Roman Empire Episode 130 "The Rise and Fall of Byzantium"

In today’s episode, I’d like to switch from the Abbasid Caliphate to the Byzantine Empire. The fortunes of both were of course connected and the Caliphate’s decline during the ninth century created an opportunity for Byzantium. But it wasn’t an easy path for the Byzantines and there were some serious setbacks in the first half of the ninth-century. Nevertheless, ultimately Byzantium would emerge once again as the strongest power in western Eurasia, which was a truly remarkable achievement.

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

The Fall of the Roman Empire Episode 129 "Byzantium: The Slow Road to Recovery"

Many historians call the Abbasid caliphate ‘the Golden Age of Islam’ but in this episode I want to analyse the contradiction in this description since, at a time when Islam underwent an undisputed cultural flowering, it also collapsed politically.

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

The Fall of the Roman Empire Episode 128 "The Abbasids: Golden Age or Age of Collapse?"

First, let me wish you a Happy New Year and I hope you had a good break if you took time off. This episode tells the story of one of the greatest empires in history – the Umayyad Caliphate. Its territories stretched from Samarkand to the Atlantic. Like the Roman Empire, it straddled three continents – Asia, Europe and Africa. But appearances can be deceptive, and to most contemporaries the Umayyad Caliphate seemed much more fragile than it does to us today with the benefit of 1,400 years of hindsight. Find out why in this episode!

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

The Fall of the Roman Empire Episode 127 "The Rise and Fall of the Umayyads"

In this episode, we’ll hear about one of the most chilling rulers of Byzantium – the empress Eirene. She was Byzantium’s only empress to take on the reins of government in a sole capacity. Her reign is controversial because she took sole power only after she’d killed the reigning emperor by gouging out his eyes. And the emperor in question was her own son. Even by the shocking standards of the Dark Ages, this stands out as pretty extreme parenting. And yet despite that, today she is a saint in the Greek Orthodox church since she restored icon worship, overthrowing the iconoclasts we talked about in the last episode. 

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

The Fall of the Roman Empire Episode 126 "Eirene: The Monstrous Empress of Byzantium?"

In the first half of the eighth century, Byzantium stemmed the Arab advance into Europe. Critical to this achievement were two emperors: Leo III and Constantine V. In this episode, I explain why I think these two men were heroes of the Dark Ages who changed history. And their lack of visibility is explained by a conspiracy against them which echoes the cancel culture of our own times. 

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

The Fall of the Roman Empire Episode 125 "The Forgotten Heroes of Byzantium"

In this episode we turn east to consider Byzantium. We last spoke about the eastern Romans, or the Byzantines, in episode 113 when I described the emperor Leo III’s victory in the winter of 717/718 over an immense Umayyad army and navy intent on taking Constantinople. This was a pivotal moment in history. Few people at the time would have expected Byzantium to survive. But it did. And the Umayyad Caliphate’s advance into Europe was blocked. 

But before we move on to the rest of Leo’s reign, the question I want to ask in this episode, is how did Byzantium do it? How was it able to fend off Islam, by far the greatest power of its age? 

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

The Fall of the Roman Empire Episode 124 "Byzantium: The Empire That Refused To Die"

In this episode, we revisit the 'Late Antique Little Ice Age' and the Justinianic Plague, and consider whether these contributed to the rise of Islam in the seventh century AD.

For a free ebook, maps and blogs check out my website nickholmesauthor.com

The Fall of the Roman Empire Episode 109 "Climate, Plague and Catastrophe"

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