Book Review: Summer of Blood

Yes, this is out of my usual blogging schedule (and even out of my usual blogging day), but I just finished this awesome book and had to write out my thoughts for it. Also, this may end up being my November read and review due to the holidays, family situations, and the fact that working retail around this time is no joke. I just don’t know if I’ll have time to read my planned book and finish it by November 30th, much less write my review. So most likely, this will be my November Read this year.

Synopsis (Taken from Goodreads):

In the summer of 1381, ravaged by poverty and oppressed by taxes, England’s villagers rose up and demanded that their voices be heard. A ragtag army, led by the mysterious Wat Tyler and the visionary preacher John Ball, was pitted against the fourteen-year-old Richard II and the most powerful lords and knights in his realm, who risked their property and their lives in a desperate battle to save the English crown. Dan Jones brings this incendiary moment vividly to life and captures the idealism and brutality of that fateful summer, when a brave group of men and women dared to challenge their overlords, demand that they be treated equally, and fight for freedom. 

My Review:

One of the reasons I picked up this book is because when people are ignorant of their history, they often repeat it. Unfortunately, we in the western world seem to have forgotten some of our history, as yet another reason I picked up this book is because of how similar those times were to our current times. Just to name some similarities: 

• Financing a foreign war with taxpayer money. 
• Taxing the poor more heavily than the rich.
• Those who were keepers of justice abusing that justice. 
• Keepers of justice not giving due justice.
• Foreigners getting privileges from the government which the citizens did not.
• Corrupt officials in power.
• The elites doing everything they can to retain their power and push the common man down (sumptuary laws, for example). 
• An originally righteous cause (fighting for equality) morphing into one of anarchy and bloodshed. 
• Criminals joining the ranks of normal people to create chaos to get their way.
• A lack of respect for authority and God.
• Racism against foreigners.
• People taking justice into their own hands/creating their own “justice” (revenge on anyone one didn’t like or had a dispute against, for example).
• A twisting of the meaning of certain religious phrases and/or passages to further one’s own goals. 
• The quiet majority being frightened into silence, tolerance or even participation. 

All of these things either prompted, contributed to, or resulted from the Rebellion of 1381 (or Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, whichever name you prefer). And it’s fascinating to see how unarmed, untrained, and uneducated people who were largely dismissed by their government as “less than” and pushovers, could create such chaos that ended the lives of several prominent government officials. 

To me, it’s also a stark warning against natural human behavior. The rebellion started off as an honorable thing. People were being taxed to the point of starvation for a war they didn’t even care about, their daughters assaulted by tax collectors hoping to get more money from them, and their basic human rights being squelched. They saw criminals escaping justice while those supposed to protect the people grew fat off their tax money, foreigners being treated better than citizens, and the rich wanting the poor to finance their hobby wars. The rebellion began as a fight for equality and justice—for everyone, whether rich, poor, noble, peasant, citizen or foreign, to be treated equally and given due justice. 

Even the more violent parts of the rebellion at first were well-controlled. Nobody was killed. Nothing was stolen. Houses, legal records, and property of so-called unjust and corrupt overlords were destroyed, but this was the only way the common people felt they could make a statement, as there was no one they could voice their complaints to and be taken seriously. 

A dark foreshadowing for what was to come, however, did spring up overtime. Common people who did not want to join the rebels were pressed into the rebellion by the threat of losing their homes and livelihood. There were also some people taken captive. But in light of the future behavior of the rebels, this was by no means violent and it was well-policed by the rebel leaders (one man who tried to steal a silver cup from the Savoy Palace, for example, was thrown into the flames as punishment for breaking the no-stealing policy). 

Ironically enough, it was King Richard II himself who (probably accidentally) prompted the most violent parts of the rebellion. At the first meeting at Mile End, the rebels only requested freedom from serfdom and a limit to the price landlords could set for rent. Richard agreed—but then went a step further by giving the rebels permission to catch traitors and bring them to him for judgement—therefore legalizing murder as executions and treachery as justice. Granted, Richard was only fourteen and probably awed by his own power (a fatal flaw of his for the entirety of his life), but still, it created chaos. Instead of listening to the latter part of his instructions (bringing the traitors to him for judgement) the rebels took things into their own hands. 

For the only time in its existence, the Tower of London was breached by a mob. Several of the rebels main targets hid within, and were dragged out and killed. The future Henry IV, Richard’s cousin who was his same age, survived only by the compassion of a rebel who helped hide him from the bloodthirsty mob. Hundreds of foreigners were also murdered, and people were dragged from the sanctuary of chapels and cathedrals which were supposed to have protected them to their doom. Other people made false claims to property and extorted payment from the real owners to keep them from burning and looting. 

It seems here the rebel leaders, who had thus far policed and kept their men in line with the original righteous principles of the rebellion, became overconfident and drunk on power. Now they lost all restraint and started talking as anarchists, wanting no government save for the person of the king. There were also rumors of the rebels kidnapping the king. And when Wat Tyler met Richard for the second round of talks at Smithfield, his overconfidence was the end of him—and the beginning of the end of the rebellion. 

Many of the rebels just went home. Others attempted to continue rebelling, but several wealthy men and nobles gathered forces and completely decimated them. Townspeople rose up against the rebels attempting to bully them into submission and joining their ranks. Richard himself revoked several of the agreements he’d made with the rebels under distress. Those caught who had took part in the grisly murders in London were themselves put to death, with several of the widows of the murdered foreigners executing their husbands’s killers themselves. 

One must wonder what would have happened had Richard agreed to the rebels’s requests at Mile End without tacking on that last bit about rounding up rebels, because it seems after that point that the rebels lost all restraint. Perhaps things would have been different. Perhaps the radical rebels still would have pursued their course of action with the same result. Perhaps lives would have been saved. 

Whatever might have happened, one thing came from the rebellion. The upper classes now knew that the common people were politically literate and could, if pressed, rise in revolt against them with dramatic success. They also had to know that even though this was the first rebellion of the commons, it would not be the last. 

I highly recommend this book to any history lovers, but especially those who enjoy medieval history, stories of historical rebellions, and those who like to see how history sometimes mirrors modern day life.

Rating: 4.75/5 Stars

(I dock a fourth a star only because a few lines were difficult for me to read and understand.)

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Are there any history books you would recommend? Would you be interested in reading this book? Let me know in the comments below.

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