"The Royal Cesspit - The day sixty nobles drowned in a latrine" recounts one of the most grotesque disasters in medieval history. In July 1184, King Henry VI called a Hoftag (diet) in the Petersburg Citadel in Erfurt to settle a dispute. Dozens of high-ranking nobles, bishops, and counts gathered in the main hall on the second floor.
Historian Timothy Wells describes the moment the wooden floor, rotten and overloaded by the weight of the heavy chainmail and pomp, suddenly snapped. The entire assembly fell through to the first floor, which also collapsed, plunging the elite of the Holy Roman Empire directly into the massive latrine cesspit in the basement.
"The Royal Cesspit" details how around 60 nobles drowned or suffocated in liquid excrement. The King survived only because he was sitting in a stone alcove. The book explores the political vacuum this disgusting tragedy created and serves as a grim reminder of the sanitation standards of the Middle Ages.
