The following excerpt will put our current troubles into perspective. This is what people in the Middle Ages had to contend with: “In France’s misfortunes a young man of twenty, Charles, King of Navarre, grandson of Louis X, saw his opportunity. Whether he really aimed at the French crown, or at revenge for wrongs done him, or at stirring trouble for its own sake like Iago, is a riddle concealed in one of the most complex characters of the 14th century. A small slight youth with glistening eyes and a voluble flow of words, he was volatile, intelligent, charming, violent, cunning as a fox, ambitious as Lucifer, and more truly than Byron “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Seductive and eloquent, he could persuade his peers or sway a mob. He allowed himself the same unbridled acts of passion as Jean and other rulers, but, unlike Jean, he was a plotter, subtle, bold, absolutely without scruple, but so swerving and unfixed of purpose as to undo his own plots. His only constancy was hate. He is known to history as Charles the Bad.” From Barbara Tuchman’s brilliant history of the 14th Century.