Thread by @ajcdeane

#deanehistory 107 – the first to come with what the kids call a “trigger warning”– could give you nightmares.

Erfurt is the capital of the German state of Thuringia &, by all accounts, a nice place. Still it is indelibly associated with one of the most horrible tales in history.

It all had the most unlikely start. Louis the Mild was the Landgrave of Thuringia &, as his nickname suggests, apparently an easygoing sort of chap. He’d inherited a dispute over land with a leading light of the Church, Archbishop Conrad, who ran a neighbouring territory, Mainz.

This rumbled on & escalated to the point that the King of Germany (& later “Holy” “Roman” “Emperor”) Henry VI intervened, even though he was busy fighting the Poles as usual. He called a Diet– not a weightwatchers New Year resolution sort of diet, but a big meeting– in Erfurt.

Thus it was that noblemen from all around were gathered in the Petersberg Citadel in Erfurt in July 1184. Within the Citadel, they were convened in St Peter’s Church, which was big enough to host them all at once. Big enough, but not sturdy enough.

Very soon after they had all crammed in, alas the floor collapsed under the collected weight of the elite assemblage. On the floor below were the Citadel’s latrines; and below that floor, which also promptly gave way, there was a suitably large and full cesspool.

Whilst the King and Louis made it through this business by clinging to the iron bars of church windows until they were rescued, somewhere between sixty and a hundred luckless noblemen perished – some from the fall, most from drowning in liquid excrement.

Imagine it. The flailing, the grasping at one another despite broken bones, and... the drowning.

More unpleasant ways to die can be conceived, I suppose, but not with ease.

Usually, closeness to the Powers That Be is considered a big positive for those movers & shakers seeking to manoeuvre themselves into greater prominence. But this story teaches us that sometimes it really is not worth the Erfurt.