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There are many covers of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire that adapt it to different times, but we wanted to give it the bardcore treatment. *Unlike the original, the list is not chronological, and jumps around in time a lot. It very loosely spans from around 400 to 1600, and is from a rather Eurocentric point of view. Thank you to my brother, Friar Funk, for devising the lyrics and providing the majority of the vocals. Many thanks as well to his new wife and our dad for joining us in the chorus at the end.

The image of the monk is from MS Bodleian 602. A scribe at his desk © The Bodleian Libraries Oxford
There are simply too many other images to credit here, but the majority are public domain from wiki media.

Lyrics:
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
Charles the 6th
Hath gone insane
Reconquista
Geoffrey Chaucer,
Michelangelo

Marco Polo,
Magna Carta
Christian Schism
Siege of Acre,
Byzantine iconoclasm
Guillaume de Machaut

We did not start the fire
It was always burning as the world was turning
We did not start the fire
No we did not light it, but we tried to fight it

Charlemagne,
Alfred
Anne Boleyn
Without a head

Few things
Here to read
But the Nibelungenlied

Castile with
Aragon
Second pope in Avignon

Novgorod,
Chinggis Khan
Beowulf, Decameron

CHORUS

Henry Tudor,
Saladin
Richard and the Winter King

Lindisfarne,
Norse raids
Children on crusade

Rome gone,
Castillon
Mona Lisa,
King John
Kalmar Union,
Hanseatic trade.

Kipchaks
Horseback
Constantinople sacked
Song of Roland,
Silk demand,
Wallachia,
Holy Land

Grunwald,
Manzikert,
Barbarossa,
Golden Spurs

Joan of Arc,
Patriarch
Battle of Lepanto!

CHORUS

Canterbury,
Nikephoros
Alchemy,
Matthias Corvinus
Khan Krum,
Sicily
Normans land in Italy

Hippodrome,
Notre Dame
Timur in Afghanistan
Double prince homicide
Seven papal regicides

Edinburgh,
Malta
Wenceslaus,
Bohemia

Hunedoara stronghold
Mansa Musa’s got gold
Ghazi,
Gutenberg
Baghdad and Mosul burn

Gunpowder twofold
Panic, it's the Mongols!

CHORUS

Antioch,
Sassanids
Spaniards in a strange land
Fatimids,
El Cid
Ottoman invasion

Rashidun Arabia
Christian relicmania
Hussites,
Swiss pikes
Executing Templar Knights

Lichtenauer,
Skanderbeg
Holding off the Pechenegs
Black plague, here to stay
What else do I dare to say?

CHORUS

Nicaea,
Troubadours
William Wallace torn in four
Falkirk
Glasswork
Stamford Bridge,
Göktürks

3 year Famine,
Medicine
Barons oust a sovereign
Carrouges versus Jacques le Gris
Carracks sail across the sea

Walpurgis Fechtbuch
Arslan and the Seljuks
Clontarf,
Lombards
Habsburgs,
Bannockburn

Church denied by Thomas More
Montezuma is no more
Curse this German Peasants’ War
I can't take it anymore!

We did not start the fire
It was always burning as the world was turning
We did not start the fire
But when we are gone, it shall still burn on and on and on
We did not start the fire
It was always burning as the world was turning
We did not start the fire
No we did not light it, but we tried to fight it

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