First hand accounts from men sent to make peace
Dinner With Attila the Hun
Attila the Hun operated on the theory that once he had captured someone, they stayed captured. Didn't matter what they did, where they went, or how they got there, they still belonged to him. And Attila was no idle theoretician. Attila's whims drew blood.
Here are fascinating fragments of report written by a Roman official sent to take some of those escaped captives back to the barbarian. He also had to look the conqueror in he eye and explain to him why some of the captives on his list were still missing.
- downloadable MP3
- 40 minutes
- 35 megabytes
The Long and Wonderful Voyage of Friar John de Plano Carpini
At one time, it looked dead certain that all Europe would soon be in the grasp of merciless flat faced horsemen. Just about the rest of the world already was. They rode in off the distant steppes on shaggy ponies, and turned their conquests into horse pastures strewn with bones. Then, suddenly, at the brink of disaster, their khan was poisoned, and they rode away home to elect a new one.
At this juncture, the best idea Pope Innocent could come up with was to send a friar out across the unknown to the end of the earth to tell these strangers they should please stop murdering everyone. This is the report from the man he sent.
- 10 streaming MP3s
- 90 minutes total
- 84 megabytes total
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