Timeline

The events of Part 4 take place in the Dordogne River Valley in France on April 7, 1357, in the midst of the Hundred Years War. The Hundred Years War was a series of armed conflicts fought intermittently between the kingdoms of England and France during the Late Middle Ages, from 1337 to 1453. Drivers of the internecine conflict were English invasions of French land and the right of King Edward III of England to the French throne. Battles were sporadic and often fought by mercenaries. One such mercenary was the French Arnaut de Cervole (c. 1320-1366), a former-priest-turned-mercenary known as “the Archpriest.” After the French king, John II, was captured by the English and could no longer pay his troops, many of these mercenaries, including Cervole, turned to brigandry. By 1357, Cervole led a company of approximately 2,700 men. (“Fourteenth-Century Mercenaries.” United States Naval Academy). These events provide a colorful backdrop for Michael Crichton’s historical fiction.

In Timeline, Arnaut is trying to take the castles of La Roque and Castelgard and the surrounding land from the English Lord Oliver. The area’s mill and market are important sources of tax revenue that Arnaut wants to control. Although this battle is fictional, it is emblematic of the kinds of conflicts that occurred throughout France during the Hundred Years War. (The text cited by Crichton referring to this conflict, The Hundred Years War in France by M. D. Backes, does not exist.)

Indeed, while Timeline is based on extensive factual research that is documented in the bibliography, Crichton interweaves multiple fictional elements to further enrich the world. While Arnaut de Cervole was a real historical figure, the English knight whom he fights in Timeline, Sir Oliver de Vannes, is a fictional creation that is loosely based on the real-life historical figure of Olivier IV de Clisson (1300-1343). Like Sir Oliver de Vannes, Olivier IV was also nicknamed “the Butcher.” This Breton historical figure was put to death in 1343 for allying with the English against the French king and losing the city of Vannes (S. H. Culter, The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 148). The castle of La Roque, Castelgard, and the Monastery of Sainte-Mère are also fictional, but they are based on real medieval buildings in the Dordogne region, such as Castelnaud-la-Chapelle and La Roque Sainte-Christophe.