The Great Betrayal
The Great Siege of Constantinople
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Narrated by:
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Michael Page
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By:
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Ernle Bradford
About this listen
An engrossing chronicle of the Fourth Crusade and the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, from the bestselling author of Thermopylae.
At the dawn of the thirteenth century, Constantinople stood as the bastion of Christianity in Eastern Europe. The capital city of the Byzantine Empire, it was a center of art, culture, and commerce that had commanded trading routes between Asia, Russia, and Europe for hundreds of years. But in 1204, the city suffered a devastating attack that would spell the end of the Holy Roman Empire.
The army of the Fourth Crusade had set out to reclaim Jerusalem, but under the sway of their Venetian patrons, the crusaders diverted from their path in order to lay siege to Constantinople. With longstanding tensions between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, the crusaders set arms against their Christian neighbors, destroying a vital alliance between Eastern and Western Rome.
In The Great Betrayal, historian Ernle Bradford brings to life this powerful tale of envy and greed, demonstrating the far-reaching consequences this siege would have across Europe for centuries to come.
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From 1337 to 1453 England repeatedly invaded France on the pretext that her kings had a right to the French throne. Though it was a small, poor country, England for most of those "100 years" won the battles, sacked the towns and castles, and dominated the war. Desmond Seward's critically acclaimed account of the Hundred Years War brings to life all of the intrigue, beauty, and royal to-the-death-fighting of that legendary century-long conflict.
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Superb narrator and fascintating history
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Alexander the Great
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In Alexander the Great, Anthony Everitt judges Alexander’s life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions. We meet the Macedonian prince who was naturally inquisitive and fascinated by science and exploration, as well as the man who enjoyed the arts and used Homer’s great epic, the Iliad, as a bible. As his empire grew, Alexander exhibited respect for the traditions of his new subjects and careful judgment in administering rule over his vast territory. But his career also had a dark side.
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Alexander never gets...old.
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- Narrated by: Andrea Giordani
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- Unabridged
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The Alhambra in Granada, the Mosque in Cordova - these are some of the magnificent physical remnants of Moorish rule in Spain. Their influence on culture, engineering, and civilization has also remained in ways often unacknowledged. Lane-Poole was the first to publish a scholarly history in English about a non-Christian civilization, making this a ground-breaking work. Written with extensive knowledge, wit, and admiration, Lane-Poole’s The Moors in Spain is not to be missed.
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An excellent brief intro to Moors Spain
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The English-speaking peoples comprise perhaps the greatest number of human beings sharing a common language in the world today. These people also share a common heritage. For his four-volume work, Sir Winston Churchill took as his subject these great elements in world history. Volume 1 commences in 55BC, when Julius Caesar famously "turned his gaze upon Britain" and concludes with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.
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Birth of Britain
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Over the few short decades that followed Christopher Columbus' first landing in the Caribbean in 1492, Spain conquered the two most powerful civilizations of the Americas: the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and the other explorers and soldiers who took part in these expeditions dedicated their lives to seeking political and religious glory, helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. But centuries later, these conquistadors have become the stuff of nightmares.
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Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) - one of the most prominent Catholic authors of his time - gives a common-sense explanation of why the Crusades were necessary and why they ultimately failed. Writing in 1937, following the demise of the Ottoman Empire, Belloc believed that the West had finally gained the advantage over its mortal foe; however, he also includes a prophetic warning concerning the eventual resurgence of Islam and its enduring desire to destroy Christendom.
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Brutally Honest Assessment
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When the Jews revolted against Rome in 66 CE, Josephus, a Jerusalem aristocrat, was made a general in his nation’s army. Captured by the Romans, he saved his skin by finding favor with the emperor Vespasian. He then served as an adviser to the Roman legions, running a network of spies inside Jerusalem, in the belief that the Jews’ only hope of survival lay in surrender to Rome.
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A retelling of Josephus's "The Jewish War"
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The Flame of Islam
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A history of the Crusades. Out of the chaos of Muslim tribal warfare and regional animosity arose a military genius such as Islam had never known: Saladin. Uniting the sultanates of Cairo and Damascus, Saladin created a single powerful state. Luring the crusaders into an ill-considered confrontation, he destroyed their army at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, leaving the few remaining crusaders clinging perilously to a series of towns and forts along the Levantine coast. Into this desperate situation stepped the most formidable warrior of the age, Richard the Lion-Hearted.
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An absolute Joy to read
- By gzak on 03-06-15
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The Sacred Band
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From classicist James Romm comes a thrilling deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes - and the saga of the greatest military corps of the age, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers.
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Stop now and don’t buy this book.
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When the once-mighty city of Rome was sacked by barbarians in 410 and lay in ruins, it signaled the end of an era—and the beginning of a thousand years of profound transformation. In a gripping narrative bursting with big names—from St Augustine and Attila the Hun to the Prophet Muhammad and Eleanor of Aquitaine—Dan Jones charges through the history of the Middle Ages. Powers and Thrones takes listeners on a journey through an emerging Europe, the great capitals of late Antiquity, as well as the influential cities of the Islamic West.
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Excellent historical facts
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What listeners say about The Great Betrayal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- JG
- 05-20-24
Five stars - no shortage of betrayals from all sides
This is the third audio book I’ve enjoyed by Ernle Bradford. I constantly referenced a detailed map of Constantinople at that time period that shows the districts, geography, fortifications, palaces, and notable places mentioned in the book. The map really made the audiobook come alive. Who ever heard of a place named Blachernae? So many interesting details. What a jaw-dropping story of massive deceit, savage cruelty, a crumbling empire, and gullible adventurers on the primrose path to disaster.
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- Cthulhu's slobber
- 07-13-23
Great history of the 4th Crusade.
The previous reviewer complaining of Greek Bias in this book is somewhat true but ridiculous. The author does lament the sacking and destruction of Constantinople by the Crusaders and how that doomed the Byzantine Empire. There is no valid justification for the 4th Crusade. The destruction of Constantinople and fracturing of the empire by other "Christian" nations did happen so the author's story rings true.
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- Eric
- 03-05-23
Far too biased, as the title telegraphs
After reading and rereading the primary sources decades ago, my interest in the Western conquest of Constantinople continues to increase. I have benefitted from also reading secondary sources that make interesting points to consider in understanding the subject in a broader context. This secondary source, however, is nothing more than a pro-Greek polemic that could lead a reader to believe that the Greeks deserved better. Evaluating bias is essential in understanding historical events, and bias is to be expected, but this author's bias is invariable and unrelenting. This book is actually interesting in how it so completely excludes facts about, and the historical context of, well-documented Greek crimes and treachery that ultimately led to their destruction.
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